First Singing Lessons

Working with a relatively new singer this week reminds me how easy it is for us to let our self-criticism get the better of our training.


We hear our voice so differently to how others hear it around us. We hear it louder and harsher than we feel it should be, so if we sing louder than usual, we think its ugly, harsh, or like shouting. Just that thought makes us suppress the voice and turn off our initial intention to make the noise. Thats where we tend to go wrong! If we start to question what we were singing, it won't sound right!


A lot has to be said for confidence of using the voice. That comes from doing it, training it, repeating it, having fun with it, experimenting with it and finding out what noises you can make! We do loads of noises when we're kids, but when we grow up we formulate and idea of what our voices should do to fit into certain boxes. i.e. our singing voice must sound nice!


The first time you noise through a song, you'll think it sounded like shouting, but did it hurt? Was it easy to do? Most likely it didn't hurt at all and was very easy, it just didn't sound as nice as you thought it should. But to me, the listener, it had attitude, it was exciting! It communicated something that the default 'nice' singing can not!




Experimentation is so important. As long as your technique is good and you are getting stronger, its important to experiment with the voice so that you can find out what range of sounds you can get. Any sound goes and every sound can be made safe!


A lot of new female singers will come to me with a well-developed head register, or they will sing in falsetto. They may do it very well as they've practised it all their lives.
Using this mode, we release more air, we can't go too loud and our tuning can be difficult without adequate support. Since they've been singing with it for years, they don't know how else it can be done! 


Once we've played around with a few noises its clear that their voice is capable of many other ways to sing. We can quickly find a sound that may not sound right at first but it uses less air, it can go louder and tuning is spot on! Its then just a case of relating it to singing and getting used to the new way of using the voice.