"My head hurts!"
Mine too - but that's more about the Bourbon I consumed last night
THis isn't really important, but what is important is that, if you want to be in any way a proficient singer you need to treat your voice as a musical instrument and master it in the same way
MacColl always made a bign thing of this when he worked with other singers; he evolved a series of exercises to keep the voice in good shape - still works for me nearly fifty years later
Below are excepts fom a long series of interviews we did with him in the early 1980s
Jim Caaarroll

Recording 4.
“Now you might say that working and training to develop your voice to sing Nine Maidens A-milking Did Go or Lord Randall is calculated to destroy your original joy in singing, at least that’s the argument that’s put to me from time to time, or has been put to me from time to time by singers who should know better.
The better you can do a thing the more you enjoy it. Anybody who’s ever tried to sing and got up in front of an audience and made a bloody mess of it knows that you’re not enjoying it when you’re making a balls of it, but you are enjoying it when it’s working, when all the things you want to happen are happening. And that can happen without training, sure it can, but it’s hit or miss. If you’re training it can happen more, that’s the difference. It can’t happen every time, not with anybody, although your training can stand you in good stead, it’s something to fall back on, a technique, you know. It’s something that will at least make sure that you’re not absolutely diabolical         
The objective, really for the singer is to create a situation where when he starts to sing he’s no longer worried about technique; he’s done all that, and he can give the whole of his or her attention to the song itself, she can give her or he can give his whole attention to the sheer act of enjoying the song”.
(Interview tape 3).

This is what he said in response to the often repeated claims that traditional singers did not concern themselves with technique but produced their songs “naturally” without thought or preparation; in other words unconsciously.

“I believe that this notion really begins in the Romantic Movement. It begins with that notion of the rude, unlettered hind with a heart of gold and all the rest of it. Basically, today, I see it as a very reactionary and very bourgeois point of view. I think it stems from a belief that the working class are incapable of doing anything which demands a high level of expertise and a high level of skill, particularly in the creative field.
How is it possible then, that this body of music that we call folk song and folk music, traditional song, traditional music, whatever you like to call it, how is it possible that this, which has been made by labourers, seamen and all the rest of it, should have, should demand this level of expertise, should demand this high level of craftsmanship on the part of its performers. “No”, they say, “the songs are simple”, and all the rest of it. And that is nonsense; that is utter nonsense.
To some extent it’s the same idea that the nineteenth century English folk song collectors had about the music itself; they talked about it being simple, “the simple music of unlettered people”. But unlettered there is used as a pejorative term, as though the ability to read and write is all important. The implication being that if you can read and write, then you are going to be a better singer than if you can’t read or write, and we know that’s nonsense.
It’s this snob thing and it’s the snob thing which makes them say “you don’t need to work at it; you don’t need a high level of craftsmanship to perform this.
The best of folk music in the world, wherever it comes from, whether it’s a Joe Heaney or whether it’s that young man singing those Azerbaijani songs, is full of the most extraordinary expertise, full of the most extraordinary physical ideas, vocal ideas I mean, I mean physical in the vocal sense”.
(Interview, tape three).