Un-Training
“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 voice 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 un-training.
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, our 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 have heavily influenced our behavior and we 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 to potential singers 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, but if it does then you’ve got some un-training 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 efficiently use our muscles when speaking. This is expected to happen naturally. It usually doesn’t. Normally, emotions dominate our motor reflexes and shape the way we talk and so speech becomes a direct extension of our personalities. You learn way more about people if you focus on the way someone speaks rather than what he or she says. 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 tend to take the advantage of learning to play a pre-balanced, consistent, instrument for granted. Open your mouth to sing and any number of obstacles can compromise range, tone, volume and flexibility. In other words, in order to learn to sing, you got to build an instrument first. Most instruments we buy today are the result of many years of refinement. As techniques for making pianos and guitars improve, their sound and ease of play improves as well. Another benefit of learning to play a musical instrument verses learning to sing is that instruments basically stay the same from day to day. This provides a great foundation for developing the skills. We don’t have that advantage 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 limitations are not genetic or “natural,” so they are removable.
Building an instrument requires nothing more than clearing a path from inspiration to phonation. Whatever is blocking the flow needs to be un-done. I’m not suggesting it’s easy, we worked hard to achieve these rigid states and the brain is not going to be happy to let them go. What I am suggesting is that you don’t have to accept your voice “as is.” The laws of sound are the same for everyone, which means if you release your throat you’ll have a great tone. If you allow your vocal folds to stretch freely you’ll have great range and accuracy. Return your breathing back to a reflexive, natural, state and you’ll have dynamic control. Think of developing all these skills as un-training and you’ll have a big head start on the process.
