Below, you can find a PDF offering a referenced argument for the importance of intention when learning to sing. Whilst I would write some of it differently now, the references are strong, the implications compelling, and the conclusions still shape my thinking about singing and teaching singing..

The article considers, amongst other things: external focus vs internal focus, the organisation of movement in the brain, effective strategies for improving motor skills and what the singing teacher can learn from effective speech therapy strategies.

There is a vast body of research literature into these areas, with vivid suggestions for vocal pedagogy, suggestions it sometimes appears vocal pedagogy ignores.

It is quite a long paper, with over 100 references. So, I asked ChatGPT to summarise it for me. It did a decent job! Here is what is said, with a few tweaks from me:

Summary: A Consideration of a Role for Intention in Vocal Pedagogy — Alex Ashworth

This paper explores whether intention—the purpose or goal behind an action—plays an important role in learning to sing. It draws on research from neuroscience, motor learning, and speech therapy to argue that the singer’s intention whilst learning to sing, their intention whilst doing exercises physical and vocal, influences the success of those exercise in learning, and in improving their singing.

1. Intention and Singing

The paper asks whether intention—the aim behind an action—is important as one learns to sing. Intention motivates and organises movement: for example, the intention to pick up a cup directs coordinated arm and hand motion. In classical singing, possible intentions include communicating emotion and meaning through words extended in pitch and resonance, or producing beautiful, resonant tone across all vowels and dynamics.

However, in significant and popular pedagogies, intention is often changed during learning. For example, changed to manipulate individual muscles, or body parts, such as tongue, jaw, larynx, soft palate. Or intention is changed from singing to perhaps yawning, swallowing, sobbing. What effect does altering the intent have upon learning?

The author argues that whichever intention is considered central to classical singing, understanding and maintaining that intention may be key to effective vocal teaching. How exercises and instructions influence a singer’s underlying intention—whether they preserve it or distort it—could determine their value in pedagogy.

2. Movement and Intention

Neuroscience shows that the brain organises movement not just by muscle or body part but by task or goal. The same muscles act differently depending on the intended action (e.g., chewing vs. speaking). For singers, the intention to communicate may activate respiratory and vocal systems differently from purely technical exercises.

3. Internal vs. External Focus

Studies in sports and performing arts show that focusing externally (on the sound, audience, or expressive goal) improves motor learning more than focusing internally (on body parts or muscle movements).

An external focus preserves natural coordination and reduces interference from conscious control. Internal focus often leads to tension, inefficiency, or fatigue—explained by the constrained action hypothesis.

4. Implications for Vocal Teaching

Traditional vocal exercises often use internal or anatomical instructions (e.g., “lift the soft palate”), which may alter the singer’s true intention and reduce learning effectiveness. Exercises that encourage external or expressive focus (e.g., “fill the room with sound”) appear to support better performance.

5. Evidence from Speech Therapy

Research into non-speech oral motor exercises (NSOMEs)—tasks like tongue or lip movements used to treat speech disorders—shows little evidence that they improve speech. Speech is task-specific: the articulatory system behaves differently when the intent is to communicate. This parallels singing, where exercises detached from communicative or acoustic intention may have limited value.

6. Conclusion

The evidence suggests that:

• Movement and learning are intention-driven.

• External, task-related intentions (e.g., communicating through sound) are more effective for improving singing than internally focused or anatomically based ones.

• Vocal pedagogy might therefore benefit from prioritising exercises and language that preserve or reinforce the singer’s expressive intent.

Thanks ChatGPT.

The article represents an extensive attempt to draw together different strands of scientific research to urge caution when deploying some popular methods of teaching. I still feel this caution, but today I would try a different approach to persuade you to consider your singing and your pedagogy from the perspective of intention.

Firstly, because art is art and science is science, and we need to trust art on its own terms. We can’t always run to teacher science to beg for answers. Science is hugely informative, but, when it comes to vocal pedagogy, largely descriptive, and often provisional. Description is not the same as instruction. It is almost impossible to stress this enough. A good singing teacher can be well-informed of studies that attempt to describe some of what happens during singing, but, even if these descriptions are accurate and relevant, they cannot use those descriptions except as background information, to ground and explain the actual pedagogical system they are using. I plan to write more about singing teachers and science elsewhere. In case I’m giving the wrong impression, I actually read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, so I am not anti-science, or a wafty metaphorical imagineer. I’ve just heard and seen much confused singing arise from trying to implement the descriptions of science. And this leads to my second point…

…because yet more experience teaching since I wrote it has actually encouraged me to go further. To help most people most of the time, anatomical manipulation is absolutely definitely not what is required, even if the singer thinks it is. In fact, misunderstood, perhaps impossible, anatomical manipulation is probably what is making people sing badly. The body can be taught cleverly, indirectly, kinaesthetically, rigorously, but rarely directly and manipulatively. Maybe if singers had three hours of singing lessons per week, this could work, but they never do and it rarely does.

This is the kind of point that the article below attempts to “prove”, albeit through a patina of balance. But science never proved anything artistic, and artistry, in teaching and singing, demands we take a belief and move strongly forward with it, sculpting it through experience.

Anywa, below is a link to the full PDF for the bold.