Sound-oriented singing is based on the Lichtenberger method. Here is an example of what this means.

Suppose you’re having a lesson and you sing a run of notes as an exercise or in a song and your teacher notices your jaw is tense. In an ‘ordinary’ lesson your teacher would tell you to relax your jaw.

In sound-oriented singing the teacher asks you not to correct this tension but to feel where the tension is in the sound, and see if you can connect with this place and this tension. Initially the focus is on awareness of the tension and investigating it. By making the sound it is easier to connect with the tension, and feel what it has to do with and what it evokes. But the sound does more than help you connect with the tense place and be aware of it. It can bring back movement to this place and more freedom. The teacher enables this process by asking questions (e.g. where do you feel the sound?) and by stimulation (e.g. place your fingertips on the jaw bones). These questions and stimulation help the body to recall the original relaxation and freedom. Eventually you feel that your jaw relaxes by itself without you having to do anything. Hence the name sound-oriented method: it’s the sound itself that does the work!

At first the relaxation in the jaw is temporary, brought about by will and muscle power and you have to work at it every time. It is something you have to do, just like following any ’technical’ advice.

Eventually you recover some of the original relaxation in the jaw. It doesn’t feel like you’re actually doing something – but as something that happens. And that applies to singing as a whole: it becomes more and more something that happens, is easy and trouble-free, precisely because you have learnt not to get in your own way and manipulate yourself with a whole lot of technical advice and corrections. At the same time you have been working on the tension in your body, because this method is a form of body work. You learn not only to sing better, but you and your body feel freer!