Wednesday, September 24, 2025

 🎙️Weekly Insight #58 -Listicles Aren’t Mystical: From Checklists to Integrated Practice

Checklists give you the items, practice tells you what really belongs in your cart.

Using lists as starting points, not finish lines, in voice work.


I recently saw an article titled ‘5 Techniques to Build a More Powerful Speaking Voice.’ Lists like this can point out the basics — breath, pace, articulation — and give us benchmarks to track. What matters most is how we practice those reminders and integrate them into our own system.

Most people don’t spend much time thinking about their voice until a moment demands it — a presentation, an interview, a performance. That’s why lists are appealing. They offer a quick way to make sense of something that feels complex. And that’s what listicles were designed for in the first place: not to give the full picture, but to offer simple entry points. The value is in using them as a starting point, not as the final word. For each individual voice user, the real work begins when you take those reminders and test them in your own system.

As Jordan Peterson once put it: “If all you can teach is the words on the appropriate list, you could just be replaced by the list.” That’s the trap with surface-level advice. It risks making the teacher — and the learner — interchangeable with the list itself.

Another list, this time from Speakeasy Inc., promises to build “a voice that commands respect” through breath, articulation, and pacing. The categories are familiar — the same buckets most lists return to. That repetition isn’t a flaw. It shows that these elements really do matter. But the lists can only give you a doorway in. The rest of the work is figuring out how those elements function in your own voice.

An article on “Why Authentic Narration Improves Training Retention” points out that learners remember more when the voice is emotionally connected. Breath, tone, articulation, and pacing are the means that allow that connection. The difference is whether you stop at the list or use it as a springboard to explore how those elements work for you.

That’s the step Harshaw pressed us to take. She didn’t deny the importance of the buckets — breath, vowels, articulation, posture. She pushed us to individualize them: to notice how I breathed, how my vowels shifted, how my body reacted. Once those elements were integrated, then authentic narration was possible. In my own recital work, I can tell when I’m focused only on the sound. But when the vowels and breath are ingrained, I can shift my attention outward — toward text, story, or audience — and the connection changes.

Presence isn’t a commodity or a medal you earn after following steps. It’s emergent. It shows up when the basics have been practiced and absorbed, and when the listener feels engaged in return. It’s relational — a back-and-forth between speaker and listener. In a (BA) Business Analysis workshop, I can see it when participants lean in; in a recital hall, when the silence sharpens around a phrase.

  • Presence is emergent — it shows up when practice and integration free you to connect.
  • Presence is relational — it’s co-created between voice and listener.
  • Presence is adaptive — it varies, and you refine it through feedback and adjustment.

Francesco Pecoraro’s “Developing a Strong Vocal Presence” outlines a step-by-step sequence for resonance, pacing, and confidence. This kind of structure can be helpful when you’re first paying attention to your voice. But presence doesn’t appear because you follow a sequence. Lists can point you toward the right pieces, but the foundation of voice depends on exploring how those elements work in your own voice.

And this connects to focus.
“If you are everywhere, you are nowhere.” – Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 2.6

Training is about projecting focus as if your life depends on it — because in many ways, it does. Harshaw’s five-vowel exercise on a single pitch worked the same way. It narrowed attention to something so specific that, once mastered, it became automatic. From there, focus could shift: to text, to phrasing, to connection. Like the selective attention exercise — when you train your eye on one thing, you miss the gorilla walking by — practice forces you to look closely at one element until it’s ingrained. Then you can release that focus and widen your awareness.
“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good." – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17

That’s also where Stoicism connects. Epictetus didn’t say, “Follow these three easy steps to virtue.” He taught that habits are built in the small, repeated actions you choose every day.
“If you have properly trained your desires and aversions, you will never fail, never fall into what you would avoid, and never be thwarted.” – Epictetus, Discourses 1.1

In one place he writes that if you’ve trained yourself to know what is in your power and what is not, you won’t be derailed when events don’t go as planned. The same is true for voice. Shortcuts can give you a quick boost, but they rarely hold up in the moments that matter. What holds up is the patient work of aligning breath, tone, and words until they move together without thought. Natural talent can get you far, just as raw athletic ability does, but it only becomes reliable when you understand how it functions under pressure. Lists can help point you toward the buckets, but real presence comes from testing, repeating, and integrating those elements until they belong to you.

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Further Resources





Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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#DevelopingYourAuthenticVoice #VoiceMatters #Clarity #Presence #StoicWisdom #Epictetus #IntegrationInPractice #VoiceTraining #CommunicationSkills #SpeakingTips










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Wednesday, September 17, 2025

🎙️Weekly Insight #57- The Light Behind the Clouds: The Will That Remains Our Own


Epictetus, Margaret Harshaw, and Ardis Krainik on what it means to choose rather than drift.


 
The will to choose, the voice to carry it.


On a recent morning here in Duluth, I looked out expecting another gray sky. For several days the clouds had hidden the sunrise, and more than once I decided to go back to bed. Today, though, the light was different. The clouds were still there, heavy and gray, but the water reflected a brightness that surprised me. The light wasn’t gone—it was simply waiting behind the clouds.

That image brought to mind a line from Epictetus:

“My will is my own. Nothing can truly hinder me unless I consent.”

Clouds block the view, rejections sting, evenings feel aimless—but these only take as much power as we give them.I remember one of the hardest parts of working with Margaret Harshaw wasn’t when she asked me to sing louder or higher. She never did that directly. What she pushed me to do was notice. To sense what my body was doing rather than wait for an outside signal. She asked me to pay attention to the choices I was making, not to the sound itself or the approval of someone listening.

And when I struggled—when I thought, Why isn’t this working? What difference am I supposed to feel?—she would remind me: “Singing is 95% mental. You will the voice to do what you choose for it to do.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. I thought will was about effort. But what she was pointing to was clarity. First, you have to know what you are willing the voice to do. Without that, you just repeat exercises mindlessly, hoping something will change. The mental part wasn’t about force. It was about choosing, then directing the voice toward that choice.

During that same period, I was at Lyric Opera of Chicago as a young artist. Harshaw came in my last year and a half there, and she wasn’t the only powerful figure I learned from. Ardis Krainik, the general director, had an unmistakable clarity about the direction she set for the company. In my exit interview with her—something she offered every young artist, which I thought was a mark of real class—she looked at me and said, “Elias, I’m not concerned for you. You have the volontà.”

I knew the word meant “will.” At the time, I thought, Well, I’d love a job more than a compliment. But many years later, those words echo differently. Epictetus wrote:

“First decide who you choose to be, then act accordingly.”

That’s what she must have seen in me—the capacity to will, to choose, and then to act with that choice..

Choice shows up in quieter moments, too. Around seven in the evening I often feel caught in a strange limbo. I’m not ready for bed, but I don’t know whether to keep working, rest, or reach out to someone. The pull is strong to drift into nothing in particular. Yet that, too, is a matter of consent. If I give in, the evening slips away. If I direct my will toward even one small action—calling a friend, reading a passage, or simply stepping outside—I change the quality of that hour.

The same principle applies in professional life. Recently I reflected on how impersonal rejection letters feel. They arrive polished but cold, with no real acknowledgment of the person who applied. The words can sting, but they only gain real force if we let them. We can consent to let them define our worth, or we can move forward with the work that matters.

Music reinforces this truth in its own way, and I felt it most clearly last week at the recital in Duluth Heights. Those concerts in retirement communities often take place in smaller, more intimate rooms. The space there had tall windows that opened onto the same kind of weather I saw this morning—gray light and shifting brightness. The acoustics carried well, and you could feel how the sound reached every corner.

The songs themselves carried the weight of Epictetus’s insight. Purcell’s If Music Be the Food of Love, with the line For then my listening soul you move. Stephen Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer, wake unto me. Gerald Finzi’s To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence. And in Mozart’s “Abendempfindung,” with its reminder that life’s stage passes quickly and that each scene becomes a pearl and a crown, I could see how the words landed.

That’s the power of live performance. The notes are fleeting, but in the moment they awaken something in the listener. You can see it in their faces and feel it in the room. The acoustic vibration stirs memory, longing, joy, and sometimes tears.

Stephen Foster’s songs captured this truth directly. In All the Voice of Bygone Days, the lyric speaks of “weeping old time sorrows, or smiling as in days of yore, when each heart its burden bore of love and pity, bliss and pain.” That is what comes alive in performance—the way a song recalls burdens carried, joys remembered, and feelings once thought forgotten. The “voice of bygone days” does come back again, whispering to the weary-hearted.

Which brings me back to Epictetus. The music awakens because both singer and listener consent to be moved in that moment. The clouds, the rejections, the restless evenings—none of these can hinder the will unless we hand over that power.

When I looked again at the lake later that morning, the light still pressed through the gray. The clouds didn’t lift, but they didn’t stop the brightness either. Circumstances, doubts, or setbacks may cover the sky, but they cannot control the will unless we hand them that consent.

The voice works the same way. Harshaw’s lesson wasn’t about ignoring difficulty—it was about choosing how to meet it. Whether in a rehearsal, a job search, or an evening at home, the question remains: will I let the gray decide for me, or will I choose to bring forward the light that’s already there?

That choice doesn’t erase the clouds. But it keeps the will, and the voice that carries it, firmly our own.


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Further Resources




Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025

🎙️Weekly Insight #56 - The Art of Listening: From Epictetus to Purcell

When the soul listens, the voice follows.

How listening deepens speech, song, and memory.

Epictetus often reminded his students that our human faculties come in pairs. Sight and vision, reason and choice, speech and hearing. Each depends on the other. What use is speaking without someone to hear? What use is listening if it never stirs response?

“for then my listening soul you move.” — Henry Purcell, If Music Be the Food of Love (text after Shakespeare, adapted by Henry Heveningham)

That line has stayed with me as I prepare for this week’s recital in Duluth Heights. One of the songs I’ll sing is Purcell’s If Music Be the Food of Love, with Heveningham’s line above. It’s a reminder that listening isn’t passive. To listen is to allow movement in the soul—something that shows up later in memory, in speech, even in the courage to sing.

Epictetus himself made this distinction. He said there’s a difference between “common hearing” and “musical hearing.”

Common hearing is universal: the ability to notice and distinguish sounds. Everyone has it, unless physically impaired.

Musical hearing is cultivated: the trained ability to recognize intervals, harmonies, or subtleties that only a musician (or someone with practice) can pick out.

The same is true of voice. Everyone has a basic vocal ability—to speak, to tell loud from soft, high from low. But trained vocal skill is something more: hearing subtle differences in tone, sustaining breath, or shaping vowels with intention.

So when Purcell writes, “for then my listening soul you move,” it’s not just about sound reaching the ear. It’s about the kind of listening that moves deeper, the kind we cultivate.

I’ve seen this in past recitals. At Quality Living Inc. in Omaha, many in the audience could not speak easily, but their listening was unmistakable. The silence in the room carried weight. In Chippewa Falls, people told me afterward not about my phrasing or technique, but about memories the music had stirred—moments that had been dormant until listening gave them life again.

Another line from Heveningham’s text is another line I’ve carried with me: “And all my senses feasted are, / Though yet the treat is only sound.”

That’s exactly what I’ve witnessed—listening that goes beyond the ear, stirring memory, emotion, and even the body.

The best artists also start with listening. Sinatra described his process in a way I’ve remembered ever since. He began not with the orchestra, not even with the melody, but with the lyrics on a page—reading them as poetry, listening for the emotions and inflections behind the words. His advice was simple: “You sing the song. If the take is good, you’re done.”

I sometimes imagine him in conversation with Giovanni Battista Lamperti, a 19th-century Italian teacher whose Vocal Wisdom is still read today. Sinatra says, “I speak the words first, experiment with inflections, find the emotional core before I ever sing a note.” Lamperti replies, “The voice must unite word, tone, and breath—diction, diaphragm, and focus forming an eternal triangle.” Two different traditions, but the same principle: listening first, then expression.

That kind of listening—quiet, attentive, patient—makes speech and song honest. Margaret Harshaw used to tell me that singing is 95% mental, which was her way of pointing to the same truth. Listening aligns mind and voice before a note is sung.

And it’s not just about performance. In daily life, listening is what grounds our speaking. Try this: send a short voice memo instead of a text this week. At the end of the day, listen back as if it weren’t your own voice. Notice the rise and fall, the pauses, the tone. It may feel uncomfortable, but it’s a way of letting listening guide your speaking, just as Epictetus said one faculty completes the other.

“for then my listening soul you move.” May our listening souls be moved—and from that movement, may something worth remembering be spoken.


Related Posts

If you’d like to explore related posts from earlier in this series:

Weekly Insight #6 – The Silent Saboteur: How Negative Self-Talk Undermines Your Performance https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/09/weekly-insight-6-silent-saboteur-how.html


Weekly Insight #15 – Choosing Exercises with Purpose https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/11/weekly-insight-15-choosing-exercises.html


Weekly Insight #22 – The Thoughtful Power of Your Voice https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/01/weekly-insight-22-thoughtful-power-of.html


Weekly Insight #33 – Pitch, Presence, and the Power of Vocal Variation https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/04/weekly-insight-33-pitch-presence-and.html


Weekly Insight #41 – The Quiet Power of Giving the Benefit of the Doubt https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/05/weekly-insight-41-quiet-power-of-giving.html


Further Resources

Wikipedia: Margaret Harshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Harshaw


Wikipedia: Giovanni Battista Lamperti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Lamperti



Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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#DevelopingYourAuthenticVoice #VoiceMatters #Clarity #Presence #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipCommunication #ListeningSkills #StoicWisdom #Epictetus #TheArtOfListening #Purcell




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Wednesday, September 3, 2025

 🎙️Weekly Insight #55 – Moments with Maggie: Why 12 Minutes Can Be Enough

What I learned from Margaret Harshaw about short, intentional practice.



From Maggie to the MuppetMe: keep your focus where it counts.


Maggie’s Curiosity

When I worked with Margaret Harshaw during my apprentice years at Lyric Opera of Chicago, she was already in her 80s. She had sung at both the old and new Met and taught at Indiana University. With all she had accomplished, what consistently struck me in lessons was her curiosity. She always wanted to know how each singer produced sound.

At her home in Lake Forest, lessons weren’t about singing nonstop. We’d sit for tea, talk, and then work in stretches. She kept a small mirror on the piano. More than once she had me hold it up and say, “Notice what is moving.” At first that felt intimidating. Later I realized it was her way of training attention—always noticing, always connecting sound with what the body was doing. And in her way, she echoed what Epictetus asks: Is this necessary?

Everyday Voices

She didn’t stop with singers. She listened to newscasters and television voices, noticing when someone was speaking freely or when they were constricting their sound. Her reminders weren’t just about eyebrows—they were about watching your mouth, your tongue, and the exact shape of your articulators. That’s what I learned from her: exercises help you see what you’re doing, and how small adjustments in tongue or mouth shape can form vowels clearly without extra tension.


12 Minute Sessions

Her teaching showed me that practice doesn’t need to be long. It needs to be intentional.

A morning session of 12 minutes might include:

  • Breath awareness: steadying airflow before a note ever begins.
  • Vowel exercise on one pitch: /i e a o u/ in half steps, learning how much air each transition really needs, and noticing what your articulators are doing.
  • Middle register activation: the part of your voice you’ll use all day when speaking.
  • Text exploration: speaking or intoning a line of poetry you plan to sing later.


Conservatory Habits

In conservatory, it was the opposite. We’d spend hours in small practice rooms, often repeating phrases until our voices were tired. Sometimes we left more discouraged than improved, not really knowing if what we were doing was helping. There was a law of diminishing returns—more time didn’t always mean better results.

Each practice room had a Steinway, and people would set up camp with books and scores, staying late into the night. That felt like practicing. But it wasn’t directed. We were given general rules, not guidance for how to tailor practice to our own voices. You never really knew which nuance applied to you.

There were mirrors in the practice rooms, but no one showed us how to use them in relation to what we were studying. Of course, we all knew how to look in a mirror, but we weren’t guided to notice the specific movements of the tongue, jaw, or lips as they connected to the sound. Without that focus, the mirror wasn’t a tool—it was just an object in the room.
Pomodoro Parallels

Another place I saw this confirmed was years later when I was teaching students about study habits. I came across the Pomodoro Technique, which uses short blocks of focused work followed by a break. The original method was built around 25 minutes, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer its creator used. But whether it’s 25, 15, or even 12, the point is the same: concentrated attention works better than endless hours.
Selective Attention

It reminds me of the well-known experiment in selective attention. The point isn’t just about watching closely, but about knowing what to focus on. That was missing in conservatory practice. Harshaw, by contrast, directed our attention. She told us exactly what mattered in the moment. (If you’d like to experience the experiment yourself, here’s the link: Selective Attention Test – YouTube. Best to try it before reading about it.)


Star Pressure


You see the same thing with great pop singers. Christina Aguilera can run scales with ease, Adele can pour emotion into her sound. But natural talent only goes so far under pressure. Technique gives you something to fall back on when stress or fatigue creeps in. Even a subtle shift—like adding a bit more air in the middle range—can keep the throat from tightening.

I think back to Aguilera’s advertisement for her online masterclass, where she demonstrated an impressive vocalization. It was beautiful, but to my ear it sounded more like a performance than a daily exercise. That difference is important. The daily work isn’t about showing what you can already do—it’s about finding what helps you stay steady under pressure.
Ticket Stub Trauma

I remember it clearly in my own career. My first Figaro in The Barber of Seville was with Arizona Opera. I saw a ripped ticket stub on the ground and realized someone had paid $100 for that seat. Not to hear “Rossini” in the abstract—but to hear me sing Figaro. That awareness hit me hard. Pressure like that changes how you breathe and how the voice responds. Having exercises and habits to rely on kept me steady when nerves might have taken over.
Authenticity

Harshaw probably wouldn’t have used the word authentic. But that’s what she was pointing toward. She wanted each singer to discover how they vibrated vowels, how much air pressure they required for the passage they were working on, and what their voice did when breath was prepared with intention. In a time when we were encouraged to imitate famous singers on recordings, she pushed us to sound like ourselves.

That is the root of this 12-minute practice idea. It doesn’t have to be long. It does have to be intentional. And that’s what makes it yours.


Related Posts:


If you’d like to explore connected insights from earlier in this series:

Weekly Insight #2 – The Mental Game of Voice: Lessons from Margaret Harshaw Harshaw’s emphasis on awareness and presence over pure technique. 


Weekly Insight #3 – The Mental Game of Voice: Practice with Purpose (Part II) How practice changes when guided by deliberate intention. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/09/weekly-insights-3-mental-game-of-voice.html


Weekly Insight #7 – Repeating with Purpose: How Mindful Practice Leads to Authenticity Why repetition without awareness falls short — and how mindful rehearsal connects to authentic sound. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/10/weekly-insight-7-part-1-repeating-with.html


Weekly Insight #17 – Building Your 12-Minute Practice Plan: Start with Breath Lays out the short daily practice structure that connects directly with #55. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/12/weekly-insight-17-building-your-12.html


Weekly Insight #29 – When Pressure Hijacks Your Voice: How to Stay Present and In Control Explores how stress alters breath and voice, and what helps you steady yourself under pressure — closely related to the “ticket stub” story. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/03/weekly-insight-29-when-pressure-hijacks.html


Further Resources:


Wikipedia: Margaret Harshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Harshaw


Selective Attention Test – YouTube

Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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