"I never took any vocal training"
About this Quote
There is a quiet flex in Marvin Hamlisch admitting, almost offhandedly, "I never took any vocal training". Coming from a composer who trafficked in melody the way others traffic in small talk, the line lands as both a demystification and a provocation: you dont need the sanctioned pathway to make something that people feel in their bodies. Its not anti-skill so much as anti-gatekeeping, a reminder that the ear can be as rigorous as any conservatory.
Hamlischs career context sharpens the point. He was a crossover artist before "crossover" became a marketing category: Broadway, film, pop arrangements, the whole emotional-industrial complex of American song. In those worlds, voice is less a pristine instrument than a storytelling device. The subtext is that his training was practical, social, and iterative: rehearsal rooms, sessions, auditions, listening closely to singers and writing for the particular grain of a voice, not the idealized one.
Theres also an implied critique of credential culture in music, where legitimacy is often policed by technique-talk. Hamlisch reframes the hierarchy: the real qualification is whether you can communicate. That matters because his best-known work trades on intimacy and immediacy; it invites audiences to hum along, to feel included rather than examined.
The line reads like modesty, but its also a mission statement: craft doesnt always announce itself in formal pedigrees. Sometimes it hides in taste, empathy, and an almost journalistic attention to how people actually sound when they mean something.
Hamlischs career context sharpens the point. He was a crossover artist before "crossover" became a marketing category: Broadway, film, pop arrangements, the whole emotional-industrial complex of American song. In those worlds, voice is less a pristine instrument than a storytelling device. The subtext is that his training was practical, social, and iterative: rehearsal rooms, sessions, auditions, listening closely to singers and writing for the particular grain of a voice, not the idealized one.
Theres also an implied critique of credential culture in music, where legitimacy is often policed by technique-talk. Hamlisch reframes the hierarchy: the real qualification is whether you can communicate. That matters because his best-known work trades on intimacy and immediacy; it invites audiences to hum along, to feel included rather than examined.
The line reads like modesty, but its also a mission statement: craft doesnt always announce itself in formal pedigrees. Sometimes it hides in taste, empathy, and an almost journalistic attention to how people actually sound when they mean something.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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