|
We all need a little incentive and motivation to stay on top of our practice. If you think you'd benefit from a "carrot" (you'll get a small token gift and note delivered via snail mail!) please consider joining the monthly Practice Log & Incentive through my Patreon page. For just $4/month (a coffee! :) you'll get a ton of singing resources and access to this practice incentive. The main point of this project is to incentivise you to practice. The secondary benefit is to demystify practicing and give you insight into what other people do when they practice. I'll provide some templates and guides for practice sessions, but remember that practicing is a very individual activity: we're all working on myriad techniques, tension issues, styles, psychological blocks, and life/time constraints! Keep making headway into exploring and developing YOUR voice. This month, the incentive is a unique hand drawn/painted card by yours truly: 
1 Comment
Don't spend all your time smelling stapelias... In pursuing improvement, we have to concentrate on the imperfections, the challenges, and the roadblocks that keep us from a level of polish and accomplishment we want to reach. But when these foci dominate our practice, singing can begin to feel like a burden of things to overcome: too much negative feedback throws off our motivational homeostasis. To balance this unavoidable pull to the negative, build into your practice some intentional focus on positive aspects of your voice and the act of singing. What do you appreciate about your voice? What vowels / range / songs / styles / musical contexts do you feel good about? What do you enjoy about the act of vocalizing? Observe the individuality of your tone, your musicality, your expressiveness, the physicality of singing, and spend some time indulging in the qualities you like. Remind yourself that this is not vanity or a waste of time - neglecting the positive aspects of your singing voice (and positive music-making contexts) undermines your motivation, your confidence, your enjoyment, and the whole point of why we sing in the first place.  I love this interactive model of the vocal tract - it helps us see how slight adjustments in our mouth and throat shape change our resonance. I think of singers as sound sculptors: we sculpt the medium of a buzzing sound wave created by our vibrating vocal folds and mold that buzzing air into something expressive, communicative, and unique to our body and interpretation. With slight adjustments in our malleable vocal tract, we can achieve impressive nuance and artistry. Use the link below to find the interactive Pink Trombone and adjust various aspects of the tongue, throat and lips to see how shaping affects our sound. https://dood.al/pinktrombone/   For those of us who enjoy the whys and hows of what makes the voice work and work well, using imagery and metaphors as pedagogical and technical tools can seem too vague and subjective to bother with. While the imagined should never replace an understanding of the physiology behind our vocal technique, combining physical actions of the body into a single concept can be extremely helpful in consolidating multifaceted body coordination. By packaging our multitasking technical feats into a single image or idea, we free up brain space to concentrate on something else: musicality, expression, intonation, counting, listening, etc... We need to understand and feel for ourselves how a certain metaphor fits into our technique - each image will incorporate differently for everyone - and we need to practice accessing its coordinated bundle with consistency. The imagery should be an additional tool to help us recall the sensations of our practiced physical technique with more efficiency and ease.
What imagery do you use and what technical skill does it help you access?  I found a NYT short video called "Ten Meter Tower" touching and an apt representation of and analogy for trying to work through anxiety.
The shot is set up so we are voyeuristically watching everyday people face a 10 meter leap into a pool. We see their hesitation, hear their muttering, and watch a universally human reaction to facing a psychological fear. It's fascinating to watch each diver in dialogue with their own resistance, negotiating between reason and emotion in a struggle to take the plunge. It's also disturbing to watch for this reason. We understand how uncomfortable many of these divers are. Person after person struggles to do something that is perfectly safe, but mentally terrifying - impeded by an overprotective response. Watch the full NYT short documentary and my musings posted on my Patreon page... The payoff for taking the plunge into our intimidating and frightening goals is almost always exhilaration.  It seems too simple, but boosting our general body energy level does wonders for improving the ease of our vocal production. When we can tap into a full-body engagement, the systems of the body that are essential to good singing can coordinate: our core engages and our breath support feels more accessible; the vocal folds compress and vibrate more efficiently; we anticipate adjustments of range and pressure with more agility; our tuning tends to be me more accurate; we maintain our vocal tract shaping and sustain better resonance; we commit our musical intentions through to the ends of phrases; . . . How do we access "Energy" when we're exhausted or not motivated to sing? "Fake it 'til you make it" CAN work! Lead with affect: affect (v.) an affect (n.) for effect (n.).Try working with an intense emotion, like frustration, elation, anger, etc . . . Make fun of yourself. Go over the top. Remind yourself that Energy ≠ Tension. We can energize without tension, and if we commit to that full-body energy, the coordination we access usually prevents tension.
Ever notice that "lightning bolts" look kind of like musical rests? Use that as a reminder to ENERGIZE every time you have a rest or breathe between phrases.
We often want to go straight to the complicated vocal exercises. We reason that we'll rise to meet the challenge - we feel tough. But sometimes the simple exercises give us the most payoff for our time. Try droning on a single note for as long as you can stand - breathing whenever you need to. This exercise should be meditative, observational. Start with a friendly syllable like YOU. How easy can you make this drone feel? Shoot for steady, unforced airflow, and a consistent resonance. Does your resonance change as you move from the Y to the OO? Move through this syllable in slow motion, keeping the air steady through the Y glide and resonance forward as you move to OO. How does it FEEL? If you try this on a word with more mouth movement, and more open vowels, like WOW, can you still maintain a consistent resonance and airflow, the same ease of sound production? Try it out, take your time, get in the drone zone :)
Ideally, we'd all have a practice space where we feel free to make loud, experimental, and maybe unpleasant sounds without the worry of bothering a neighbor or housemate. While this is rarely possible, try to find a way to make yourself feel comfortable letting loose in the space you do have. Concern for others' ears and the insecurity that builds out of fear of judgment only lead to vocal tension and limit our exploration of new sounds and sensations. It may take practice to override the worry, but continue to give yourself permission to take up vocal space. Playing white or pink noise in the background can act as a sonic security blanket and help us feel less vocally vulnerable. Try turning up recorded rain or ocean sounds when you sing - you may find your practice space more conducive to confident vocalizing and less restraint-induced strain.
Singers’ get a bad wrap for the neurotic behaviour and routines surrounding the voice, but almost anyone with a voice is a little vocally neurotic. Whether we are about to sing with intention or about to speak up in class, we all perform some collection of preparatory sounds, movements, or thoughts. These preparations usually reflect our lack of trust in what our voice might produce and the caution we feel before we so vulnerably release it into the ether and expose it to the judgement of a listener. Why are we so anxious about the possibility of phlegm catching in our throat or our voice cracking in public …… ? As with most events that lead to embarrassment, the cause is a lack of control...and that, to most of us humans, is a sign of infirmity, some mental or physical weakness that we are socially conditioned to feel ashamed about.
Controlling the voice is a slippery task: it is invisible, just sound waves . . . air from our lungs vibrates our vocal folds and then resonates in our vocal tract. We can feel this vibration and resonance in our body but the sensations shift and the source feels split between thought, breath, throat, mouth, and the outside world. How do we gain some sense of security, a modicum of control over our rascal vocal entity? Warming up as an observation and preparation ritual will help to prepare our mind and our body so that when we begin to add more to our vocal multitasking plate, we are more likely to proceed with ease and efficiency. It should give us a sense of control over our intangible medium, and hopefully, reduce some anxiety and neurosis so we can enjoy our voice and share it with confidence. To hear me dig deeper into our neurotic vocal preparations and how a 4 step vocal "ritual" focusing on mind, body, sensation, and diagnostics can help you manage and trust your voice, check out my podcast Voice Lab and the upcoming Voice Lab Sessions available through my Patreon page. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2022
Categories |
RSS Feed