BRIEF REPORT: A Response to Moreno's Organic Form of Psychomusic in a Psychodrama Training Course: First, Warm Up the Singing Voice

Abstract

In Latin America, as a psychodrama graduate student who had a previous conservatory degree in singing, I realized that Moreno (1977) in his organic form of psychomusic had unwittingly omitted warming up the singing voice before participation. Nonetheless, a slow vocal warm-up should be a routine practice; if participants become hoarse after a sung psychomusic session, the responsibility for that lies with the director. To prevent abuse, misuse, and overuse of the voice, psychodrama participants who are nonprofessional singers need to receive at least minimal basic instruction on this subject (see Feder, 1991; Levine & Finnegan, 1987). If participants are taught good posture and correct breathing and if they explore the range of their singing voice while refraining from belting and harmful excessive volume, they may be more eager to participate in experimental singing than otherwise.