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YOUR
REAL VOICE - the vocal ezine for real people
July 3,
2005 #6
FEATURE EDITORIAL
Where, Oh Where Did I Go?
How does each of us learn to sing?
We all started as fans first! No one got up and grabbed a mic in
the cradle one morning already knowing how to sing. How we
learned to sing was by listening to other singers, especially those we
liked on radio or CD's, and spending lots of time singing our favorite
songs by them. I know how easy it is for me to lose myself in a
favorite song, and sing like my life depends on it. But life DOES
depend on it! We're singers because there's a particular
experience of being alive that can only be found in singing and we'll
do anything to have that experience because it feels so
great. So losing myself in singing a favorite song is an
experience of my aliveness, and I can easily find that in favorite
recordings by other singers.
But here's the catch: when we learn to sing this way, we get used
to losing ourselves in the experience of singing as a fan, a listener,
even though we sing along with everything we've got. It's the singing
ALONG that sets up the problem. Essentially, we are following
another singer and connecting ourselves with their emotional
experience, that is, losing ourselves in the emotion their singing
inspired in us.
So what happens when we step in front of the mic ourselves, as a solo
singer with no one else's emotional lead to follow? This apparent
crisis became very clear to me recently during a young student's weekly
voice lesson, and her dilemma really got me thinking. What does
it REALLY take to generate our own emotional experience and
interpretation when we sing someone else's song? My young
student, a particularly talented singer, had never had to deal with
GENERATING the song, really being its source. Yet to really sing
and move others with our voice, we need to be the source of the emotion
and what each word means to us. For most singers, this is the
real deal of singing. Forget about high notes! How we
really sing is by tapping into our own emotional core and communicating
our real truth with the voice. But what if we've always been
singing along, and haven't separated the experience of singing as a fan
from singing as THE emotional source of the song, with no other voice
to lean on or lead us? This ability is what truly defines a
singer and their impact on an audience. The singer's job is to
communicate to us so deeply that they make us feel what they
feel! But how can we do this if we haven't examined specifically
what we mean to communicate?
So here's the lesson: pick a song you'd like to sing and write
out the lyrics on lined paper, using every other line. On the
blank lines between the lyrics, using a different color, write below
each line of lyric exactly what that line means to you, in your OWN
words. Find a way to restate it that is specific to you.
Then go back and read the lyrics as they originally were written.
Do they speak to you more now that you have examined them in a new
way? Now read the "new" version of the song in your own
words. Does the song have a new or deeper meaning for you?
If it doesn't, go back and repeat the exercise until it does.
Then, once you have reached a new emotional level with the song, sing
it without listening to the recording. Don't pay any attention to
how you sound. Only pay attention to how you feel. Can you
put all your emotion into the voice? I hope so, because this
time, it's really YOUR emotion!
If you are interested in taking the full seven-part email course, The Emotions Course that studies
emotion, interpretation and really communicating with your singing,
please visit the sign-up page.
I'd love to hear some of your results from these resonance
experiments. Send me an email of your success
stories! If this is something you are trying for the first
time and have questions or are unclear about any part of it,
please email us at info@sing-in-tune.com
YOUR
REAL VOICE is the best vocal e-zine for real people! It is a
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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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