This is a sneak preview of a post I wrote for The Enlightened Singer. Further down this post you will find details of how to join the private Facebook group. Come and join us!
Although I still do try to do my own singing I spend most of my life these days helping others find their voice. This is through private singing lessons, group lessons and through my work with my 4 choirs (yes, somehow I now run 4 choirs). One thing I find, from the people I teach is, almost everyone wants something they don't have.
I include myself in this. Some people want to be able to sing higher, some lower, some more sweetly, some more belty etc... However, over my many, many years of singing I have learnt to love the voice I have and work with what I've got. Of course I always strive for more but I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. The sooner you accept the voice you have the easier it is to start improving it as you won't then be chasing a voice you can NEVER have.
Of course this doesn't mean we give up on our "dreams" it just means with acceptance comes clarity (sorry, didn't mean to make up an inspirational quote there). Once we are clear as to the kind of voice we have, and what it is capable of, we can work on making the changes that are possible for our individual sound, if we actually need to make changes.
This doesn't mean we don't need singing teachers and coaches, we do. Another pair of ears listening to us is very important as the sound we hear in our own ears/head is not the sound everyone else hears. A singing teacher or vocal coach can help you realise that the way we feel when we sing is as, if not more, important as how it sounds to us.
A big thing I find when listening to the singers I teach is many do not realise that we sing with more than just our larynx. In order to make the best sound we can our whole body needs to get involved. With this in mind many things can be "fixed" with our voices by working on our breathing. We will cover this in a bit more detail in a later blog post.
For now I have a little task for you. I want you to pick a song. It can be anything but needs to be something you know really well, Happy Birthday would suffice. I want you to close your eyes and hum it but I want you to take your time over every phrase, no rushing! How does the sound feel in your body? Try not to think about the sound just enjoy the sensations. That is all you have to do to start with. There will be an accompanying video to go with this so don't worry if this sounds like gobbledegook right now.
In order to see the aforementioned video go to The Enlightened Singer on Facebook and join the group so you can join me live on Wednesday 31st August (I'll let you know the time a couple of days before). I hope you don't mind me digressing from the usual type of post I put on here but they do say, variety is the spice of life!
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