“I would love to be able to sing better but I’m not sure if training would be worth the effort.” People often toss me this statement to see if I’ll throw back a sales pitch about voice lessons. I never do. I figure if someone refers to improving skills as effort, then they have no passion. What good is any artistic adventure if there is no passion? What I do offer is a different perspective on the singing lesson experience. We all know of someone who has an incredible voice and never had a bit of instruction. These people just open their mouths and beautiful sounds fill the air. Lucky for them! However, the common belief that some people are born to sing doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to sit on the sidelines. Anyone can improve the sound of his or her voice; my advice is to think of it as untraining.
Pay a visit to a maternity ward and it’s obvious that we are born with the ability to produce sound. Crying is reflex behavior. Singing is crying -- minus the tears. A short time after birth, personalities emerge and influence our basic instincts. Some babies cry louder and more often. As toddlers, we begin to experiment with different vocal tones and the responses they provoke. When two-year-olds whine enough, they will either get another cookie or be sent to their room. By the time we reach six, the results of these experiments heavily influence our behavior and establish core traits which stay with us a lifetime. If you doubt this, visit a senior center and notice how much a bingo game looks like a kindergarten class. It’s not that the seniors are acting childish; it’s that they are being themselves again. What this means for vocal improvement is that, from a very early age, we have trained our muscles to produce sound in a particular way. Your particular way may or may not interfere with singing. If it does, you’ve got some untraining to do.
Most vocal problems can be traced back to speech. As kids, we’re taught the meanings of words and how to pronounce them, but not how to speak efficiently. This is expected to happen naturally. It usually doesn’t. Culture and emotions dominate our motor reflexes and shape the way we talk until speech becomes a direct extension of our personalities. You learn way more about people if you focus on the way they speak rather than what they say. There is a difference though, between normal and natural. Natural is efficient; normal is what we are used to. Unfortunately, we are so accustomed to the way we speak that our trained-in tensions go unnoticed until we start to sing.
Sit at a piano or pick up a guitar and the instrument is ready to play. Musicians take this advantage for granted. Open your mouth to sing and any number of obstacles can compromise range, tone, volume and flexibility. In other words, to become a better singer you’ve got to build a better instrument. Another benefit of learning to play a musical instrument verses singing is that instruments basically stay the same from day to day. This provides a great foundation for developing skills. No such luck with singing. Many things can interfere with the “playability” of our voices, from talking all day to tension held in the jaw. The good news is that most of these learned limitations are not genetic or “natural,” so they can be untrained.
Building a better singing voice requires clearing a path from inspiration to phonation. Whatever is blocking the flow in your brain needs to be untrained. To do this, you’ll need clear musical targets. What pitch, volume, timbre and timing are you asking for? It’s OK if you miss the targets, it’s not OK if you don’t have something specific in mind. “Good” is not a musical target; it’s a wish for something better! Vocal exercises are better than songs for untraining your brain because exercises trigger less performance anxiety. The goal is to observe your behavior objectively rather than subjectively. I’m not suggesting this is easy. What I am suggesting is that you don’t have to accept your voice “as is.”
To supply the inspiration needed to untangle decades of unconscious training, think of untraining as a super-power. That’s not hype. The effort to overcome inhibiting behavior is killing your joy when singing. But just imagine if your singing required zero thought – and therefore zero doubt! Imagine if your voice instantly reflected every emotion you wanted to convey! Imagine wailing for hours without fatigue! Well, that’s exactly where you started as an infant. To get your joy back, untrain what is holding your voice hostage and your dream-voice becomes a reality. Sure seems like a super-power to me!
