Robert Hart on stage fright and discovering your true voice
An interview with Fractal University's singing teacher.
REMINDER: The deadline for Summer Session 2 courses is May 17th.
A sampling of classes offered:
Quantum Mechanics
Intro to Motorcycle Repair
Intro to Painting
Urban Cycling
How to Live Near Your Friends
And Many More!!
An Interview with Robert Hart
Robert Hart teaches Singing from Shy to Fly: Owning Your True Voice. Apply by May 11th.
This summer, he’s also launching TeachLab, co-taught with Taco Belle. Apply by May 17th.
Tell me about yourself. Who are you? What’s your background in music?
I grew up in Atlanta, singing mostly church music, and started learning piano at 7. My teacher was a strict perfectionist, scaring me into performing correctly for other people’s approval – a mentality that stuck with me for too long. In my teens I started teaching myself guitar and writing songs, and in college I joined an acapella group. Despite my love for music, though, I hated performance because I was terrified of mistakes.
When I left religion in my early 20s, music was the first place I found spiritual nourishment. But with crippling stage fright, I lacked the courage to perform solo. Over a decade later, I finally admitted I had to take intentional steps to unlearn that fear, or I’d never be satisfied musically. So, I got a job playing piano & singing solo on a cruise ship – basically 4-5 hours of exposure therapy every day.
It cured me! After just three months, I was fearlessly taking the stage for the joy of it. I kept the job a couple years, growing as a performer and enjoying free world travel. Towards the end of that job, I wrote a cabaret show about overcoming stage fright, which I performed on the ship’s mainstage every couple weeks. That was my final project – after two plus years as a nomad, it was finally time to find community and put down roots.
How did you end up teaching at Fractal University?
It took about a year after leaving cruise life to finally wind up here. Prior to the performance gig, I’d been a teacher for 8 years, mostly tutoring high schoolers. I loved helping people discover their natural abilities and writing voices, and it excited me like nothing else to empower someone’s growth. Once I quit ship life, I had several people ask me for music lessons, and I started saying yes. It turns out the skills I’d learned from tutoring translated perfectly into the role of singing coach.
Fast forward a year, and I had a job I could take anywhere. I also had a bunch of side projects I needed help with – writing a novel, hopefully starting an artist’s residency somewhere/somehow, and wrangling an unwieldy ML project that was driving me nuts. Fractal U had a list of Spring classes that answered those exact needs, so I moved to NYC and jumped in with both feet. A month later, Andrew and Madhu heard me perform a few songs at Tyler’s birthday, and they asked me to teach a singing class. I couldn’t say yes fast enough.
What’s the structure and curriculum of your singing class? Why did you design your class that way?
It’s called “Shy to Fly,” and it’s designed to help each student transform from “I’m so shy I only sing in the shower” to “I love my voice, and I’ll gladly share it onstage.” I designed the curriculum around the body – specifically, cooperating with your physical and emotional body to develop courage, competence, and confidence in your own voice. Each class, we do a short workshop activity to learn a practice or perspective on somatic (i.e. embodied emotional) singing. Then, every class member takes a turn singing a song they’ve prepared for the rest of the class, who offer them feedback in a gentle but effective way that helps them understand how their performance was received.
I designed it this way because the thing that broke my own fear of performance was performance itself – so I wanted everyone to get as many reps in as possible.
[Pictured: Hart and his friend singing at Fractal]
What did you learn about teaching singing from the first round of your class? What surprised you?
One thing I was thrilled to learn was that my secret hunch was correct – the students not only got bolder and more expressive, they also got more aesthetically attuned and technically proficient without ever focusing on correctness. That was a huge win, and a bit of a surprise; another part of me expected we’d be making a trade-off between singing confidently and singing competently, but the reverse was true. The more confident people got, the more their natural ability could shine through.
“I expected a trade-off between singing confidently and singing competently, but the reverse was true. The more confident people got, the more their natural ability could shine through.”
I also learned that I had to loosen my grasp on things like time management and covering all the material in my lesson plan. A workshop is a wilderness where anything can emerge, and the best response is acceptance, improvisation, and curiosity. By the third week, my lesson plans went from several-page outlines to memorized lists of activities to try. The quality of students’ experience only improved once I learned to let go.
Can you tell me about a meaningful moment from your class?
I’ll never forget our field trip – Busking Day. Midway through the semester, I took the whole class to Washington Square Park with a karaoke speaker, and they performed for strangers for almost three hours. They were like kids at the pool on the first day of Summer – excited to swim, a little squeamish in their bathing suits, but mainly scared shitless of getting in the cold water. But once they jumped in and swam around, the timidity melted away; they started connecting with the audience and feeling the music. Crowds stopped and watched, kids danced along, and people even gave tips. One guy tipped them a twenty! It was such a huge boost to their confidence. The entire class got braver and more excited to perform after that day.
What sort of outcomes have your students seen? How has taking your class affected them?
Well, I’m thrilled to say I think it has affected more than just their singing. One singer started the course with apprehension about showing her power, darkness, or sexuality – and finished the final showcase with a jaw-dropping and sultry performance as the Queen of the Underworld. At a (very intentionally awkward) party later that day, she was singled out as the most attractive woman in the room by a voting panel of the opposite sex – and she was pretty much at ease with the attention!
Another singer came into class with a set of issues that reminded me particularly of my own – she had a deep passion for music, and overwhelming nervous energy onstage that made her voice quaver. Week by week, she found deeper grounding and calm in her body that permitted her to sing with more control and ease, and even allowed her to connect emotionally with the audience without freaking out. She shared with me on the final day of class, after giving her best performance yet, that she’d been asked to be the lead singer of a band!
But this one might be my favorite: one guy experienced major healing at the final showcase, singing a song dedicated to his dad that expressed grief and love he’d never been able to share before. Not only did his voice resonate far deeper and purer than I’d ever heard him before, he also overcame the distress of public singing and let the whole audience connect with him in a beautiful moment of raw vulnerability. It brought me to tears, both then and now.
What is someone’s “true voice”? What are the impediments to finding it?
Many people don’t realize it, but the voice they sing with and even speak with is layered with armor. From an early age, we learn that there are certain modes of expression that work for our caretakers and other modes that don’t, so we adapt our voices to the expectations around us. We take on habits of tone, diction, posture, and breathing that become second nature – not first nature. These habits are always more constrained and rigid than our voices would naturally be, and they tend to hide our depths while showing things we don’t intend to show at the surface, like fear of judgment. One’s true voice is always more flexible and capable (perhaps even beyond their own belief), and it can freely express their emotional depths while letting go of resistance to being felt/heard by others. There’s even a whole system of resonating chambers within the body that open up and reflect brighter, more interesting frequencies when we relax and allow our whole emotional experience to be felt and heard.
The biggest impediments to finding one’s true voice are the same ones that hid it in the first place – fear of social rejection. We believe that if we let ourselves feel and show our inner state, we’ll lose respect, care, or safety. The best way to recover one’s natural voice is to reconnect with it somatically, share it openly, and stay very present to realtime evidence that it’s received and appreciated.
What advice would you give to someone who is “tone deaf”? Or to someone who is scared to sing in public?
Ugh. Don’t get me started on “tone deaf.” It’s overdiagnosed, to say the least, and it’s borderline abusive for teachers to label students this way. What people really mean when they say “you’re tone deaf” is “you need to build a skill that I already have naturally, but since I don’t know how to teach it to you, I’ll just blame you for not having it.” It’s not that complicated to learn; the best way is 1-on-1 with a compassionate and knowledgeable teacher. I’m available for online and IRL lessons, and would be happy to help people get rid of this label.
To those scared to sing in public, my best advice is, if you’re both scared of a thing and inspired about it, do the thing more often. Do it so often it becomes normal – once a week at least – and your inspiration will grow as the fear shrinks. If this is you, take my class!
What are your ambitions for the coming semester?
I’m stoked about teaching the second cohort of Shy to Fly, of course. And I’m gonna be leaning into a few creative projects in fiction, songwriting, and performance, which are stretching me to grow new skills. I’m also excited to be co-facilitating an inventive new Fractal U class called “TeachLab”. It’s a combination of a teachers’ cohort, a teaching workshop, and an education laboratory. Throughout the semester, each person will take over for one lab session and run an experiment with the rest of the class as their guinea pigs, subjecting us to a pilot lesson of their own. It’s an opportunity to play-test educational games, try new instructional methods, and see what works in real time. After the lab session, we’ll discuss the lesson as fellow teachers, giving the experimenter helpful reflections on what worked and what didn’t. Even a failed experiment could lead to a breakthrough, so we’re encouraging people to get brave and try out methods they’re truly curious about. I think it’s going to develop some great new teachers, and maybe even some new Fractal U courses!
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to enroll in a summer course, check out the course listings ✨