[6] As Smith's father did not approve of his musical interests as a child, his first job was mowing a neighbor's lawn every week in order to be able to afford to pay for piano lessons on his own.
[9] He was then hired as a one-year sabbatical replacement choir director at Oklahoma Christian University, and remained on the faculty when a professorship was created for him the following year.
[10]: 7 During his first year at OC, he became interested in the pedagogy of Inez Lunsford Silberg, who taught voice at the nearby Oklahoma City University.
[13][14] Subsequent to his appointment, he founded the Naked Voice Institute, a summer program of Northwestern University that instructs students in his method of pedagogy.
[15] Prominent students Smith has instructed include Christine Brewer,[10]: 39 Joyce DiDonato,[16] Rod Gilfry,[8] Brian Mulligan[17] and Eric Owens.
[18] Smith's pedagogy differs from this tradition in that he has developed a series of six vocalises, which he trains in sequence,[10]: 46 that he has designed to first isolate two specific activities that produce vocal sound: phonation, as in conversational speech, and breath release, as in a voiced sigh.
[10]: 46 Smith's first vocalise, a slow, sostenuto declamation of the phrase [niːneːnɑːnoːnuː] on a single pitch,[10]: 51 isolates intention to speak as the primary force of tone generation.