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YOUR
REAL VOICE - the vocal ezine for real people
June 20,
2006 #26
FEATURE EDITORIAL
What Is
It That You Are NOT Saying?
A few YRV's ago I mentioned my student Katherine, who has taken eight
years of voice lessons from me. I know her and her voice quite
well after that amount of study, and what I have seen over the years is
that, like ALL of us, the number one factor that effects her voice,
both technically and emotionally, is the Goofy Voodoo (also discussed
in a previous issue of YRV). During one of her lessons about a
year ago, she said before singing a particular high note, "but I can't
do that! It will sound LOUD." To which I thought, "So
what. What's wrong with sounding loud?"
Ah ha! The answer to my question is all in our two different
perceptions! In my world as voice teacher and singer working on
proper technique and relaxation, of course a treble E in her voice is
going to be loud. To me as the listener and teacher, if it's
somewhat loud at first, that means she's doing it RIGHT!
But.... in her perception, laced with the past and all her thoughts and
opinions and everything she had been raised to believe since her
childhood, loud was BAD! Especially coming from a properly sweet
and quaint and well-behaved little British girl being raised by proper
parents in Malaysia.
Which perception do you think wins out in her singing?
HER'S! No matter what I as the teacher have to say about
technique, and no matter how much she conceptually KNOWS the technique,
until we burst the bubble of her perceptions and beliefs, her voice
will stay contained inside the fenced-in area known as her "beliefs
about what it means to be good." For her entire childhood and
schooling until she graduated, the notion that girls must be sweet,
mannerly, quiet and ladylike was repeated over and over until it became
a part of who she knows herself to be. It was unexamined in her
voice until that lesson last year. She had been trying to hold
back her volume in her high notes for her entire life! This
despite the fact that every singer she revered had big, resonate and
ringing high notes! It was almost as though she had completely
forgotten that "glorious" was a way of singing that was available to
HER. She often used that word to describe the voices of OTHER
singers that she liked. She just never let herself have access to
singing that way because "glorious" was something that other singers
are allowed to be. Good little mannerly and well-behaved
Katherine cannot be LOUD because it is BAD!
All of us want to be "good" somehow. There is a very natural
human drive to be what we have been taught is "a good person." We
all have loads of unconscious and conscious beliefs that define what is
good and what behaviors we have to follow to be "good." Until we
as singers examine how those beliefs are controlling our voices, the
beliefs remain unconscious while we are singing, and THAT is what
controls and determines the technique and sound of our voice.
The exercise for this time actually doesn't involve any singing.
Start with a blank sheet of paper and a pen and time yourself for five
minutes. Write down everything that pops into your head to answer
what it means to be "good." Don't think or try to make what you
write sound good on the page or follow proper grammar. Just get
every idea out of your head down onto the page and don't sensor
yourself in anyway. This is a "write and don't think" exercise,
and your goal is to write as much as possible. You want to get as
many ideas as you can down on paper as FAST as you can for a few
minutes. Write as fast as you can until your brain is totally
empty of ideas. Then flip to a new page and do the same exercise
again answering the question "what does a good singer sound like?"
Again, you want to write as fast as you can and get as many ideas down
as you can in five minutes. When you are done both lists, compare
them and see for yourself what you believe about being "good" as a
person, being a "good singer" and what are on the lists. I hope
it is a very revealing exercise!
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REAL VOICE is the best vocal e-zine for real people! It
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Contact Athena by e-mail at info@sing-in-
tune.com
or learn how to sing
perfectly in tune at her web site at www.Sing-In-Tune.com
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