I get really enthusiastic about these threads on singing. Not that I'm good at it or anything like that but it's great to see the information. I can't really contribute anything of value but I can learn a great deal. Thanks to Alice and Don (and their ilk) we have a collection of threads on vocal technique to go along with the threads on instrumental technique.

Still, I have a question. Isn't the formal training given classically trained singers analogous to formal study at Juilliard or Berklee for guitarists? If so, is there a coherent subset of classical training that might be useful for folk singers just as folk/country/blues guitarists often lack classical training? Have session players and studio musicians all been classically trained on their instruments. Do folk/country/blues performers regularly perform needed warm up exercises on their instruments prior to a performance?

Those of us who admire traditional music and sources love to listen to field recordings of singers lauded in their own communities for the percieved quality of their singing. Often these singers are dismissed and even reviled by educated musicians but they may be the very role models some of us would like to emulate; maybe not all the time but at least sometimes. Have any of the folk scholars documented the vocal preparation these original sources make for a performance or the sort of training they were given when learning their arcane styles?

      - Mark