To someone reading your original post completely out of context with no backstory it was as I said. You didn't at all explain WHO the post was to or that you were being sarcastic or facetious - Just making radical claims and claiming technique was "over-rated". Perhaps you should to be more thorough in your communications so you are fully understood by your audience and avoid miscommunications such as what we had. In it's current context you were basically saying - "screw technique, just learn what you want because it's all irrelevant and impractical anyway". I thought you were nuts!! LOL

Funny how you disagree with my technique v. style comment, then reinforce it. Again, bad communication. Technique being a "blank canvas to color with any style" as I said and "giving freedom to use the voice how we want" as you said - are in fact the same thing. But technique does not create style, the singer does - You can have style with no technique and vice versa, so although they aid or retard each other they are separate entities to be developed. Therefore technique - in it's true form - again, true form as in solely technique, technique all by itself - is completely separate from style developmentally. If your technique is hindering your style or adversely effecting it then you are misusing , misinterpreting or just missing the technique all together. You must work on the canvas before you can hone in on your colors. Then you have to remix the colors so they show up right on your canvas. Old style and new technique can sometimes cancel each other out.

I think what beginners fail to realize is that "tension" - in the context coaches are conveying - is not a small muscle flex, it's consistent, hindering tension. If we had no tension AT ALL when singing our vocal folds wouldn't produce sound! I think "stiffening" is a better term to explain it. Muscles are meant to flex, move, support & suppress - but they shouldn't get tight and these "tensions" should be passing, not permanent. If you have specific musculature constantly stiffened and stressed you are forcing other muscles to compensate for the "abnormal" posture of the tense muscle(s) as well as causing wear and possibly injury to the tense muscle OR possibly even causing a domino effect and damage to the other musculature that is working so hard to compensate. But once you understand technique and relaxation you can have these passing tensions because you are aware how things should feel and can return to it.

I THINK what you were trying to say in your original post was that you have to have a solid foundation and practice of the "rules" so that when you break them you can do so properly and safely.

I too have "been around" the vocal world, have gathered much information from MANY (possibly too many) techniques over the decades and helped many people...I too have been on stage for many years, writing, recording, preforming, but I will NEVER in any aspect consider myself done learning or evolving. Like you, I don't speak out of theory... unless I'm actually discussing music theory.

When I write a long post I write it in a text editor just incase my internet freezes up. Then I copy and paste from the text editor to the browser. For some reason I must have not copied the original post I was referencing. So all you got was my reply to it.

There is no sarcasm or facetiousness or radical claims. No matter how good the communication is there is always a level of interpretation. If you are unsure of what I am communicating please ask me to clarify and I will be happy to do so.

"If your technique is hindering your style or adversely effecting it then you are misusing , misinterpreting or just missing the technique all together."

What you said here is the entire point of my initial post. Nice analogy to painting by the way.

Good singing to you,
Phil Moufarrege
Grow-The-Voice.com