FINDING YOUR REAL VOICE

      “Every day there is a necessity of choice {a fork in the road.}

     “Shall I do this, or shall I do that? Shall I go, or shall I stay?” Many people do not know what to do. They rush about letting other people make decisions for them, then regret having taken their advice.

     There are others who carefully reason things out. They weigh and measure the situation like dealing in groceries, and are surprised when they fail to attain their goal.

     There are still other people who follow the magic path of intuition and find themselves in their Promised Land in the twinkling of an eye.

     Intuition is a spiritual faculty high above the reasoning mind, but on that path is all that you desire or require.

“The Secret Door to Success”  Florence Scoval Shin

To find your true voice is a wonderful adventure. This new millennium is a great time to make this your goal. Your sound happens because of the total lack of ego. Each day it takes a determination to keep moving on this path. When doubts start to creep in, just relax and get in touch with your higher mind. Doubts are a negative form of ego. Give your conscious mind a rest, for it is in an altered state that we find ourselves. The subconscious mind has been programmed by information from many sources. Confusion reigns until we decide that something is wrong and we must find a new way to look at our dilemma. It is important to seek advice from others, but we must be very discriminating in our choices. There will always be people who offer their criticism and advice without your asking for it. As well intentioned as it might be, we must always be alert to who is giving us this advice. Everyone has a right to their opinion, but one must “consider the source,” and weigh these statements carefully. We all like praise when it’s deserved, but we must also be aware of false praise that feeds our ego. How often we would like to think we are doing fine, when in reality we are off the path. Most of the decision to find your voice is to become aware of yourself. We must be determined enough to let neither negative criticism nor well-meaning false praise turn our thoughts away from the path. This is an exercise we can do each and every day—quiet your conscious mind, and ask for the information and strength to stay on this path. The phrase “in the twinkling of an eye” does not mean you have found a quick fix. But it does mean you must stay with the correct information to lead you to the coordination you need to sing well. We can relax when we know we’re on the right path even though we run into detours from time to time.

Your real sound is neither good nor bad—it just is. No one is more surprised than you when it pops out with no interference. The trend of today seems to want to stuff it back in your throat again before somebody hears it. It is very easy to make singing an intellectual exercise. One of the greatest offenders is trying to correct faulty diction. If the criticism is about understanding the words, the critic is not listening for your true sound. Trying to pronounce words is totally different than being involved in the language. You can pronounce into a microphone because the speaker system will amplify the voice. Microphones and amplification systems are not kind to organic voices until they are 100% correct. Amplification systems were devised to take the place of natural amplification. This natural amplification must be complete before all the details can fall into place. Once perfected, the control one has over his/her sound is unlimited. Until that time, people will always be giving you advice—many times stopping your progress because the sound is too big for a sound system. This also begins to give you doubts about the path because it doesn’t fit in with what somebody else hears at the present time. Your own ears must also be trained to hear in a different way. Only after the voice has found its correct coordination long enough does the singer accept this new sound. Being told to make a beautiful sound is another suggestion given to singers. What sounds beautiful to the singer is not usually the most beautiful to the listener. You have what you have, so it’s not a decision you consciously make. Therefore, one must reaffirm his/her commitment every day to stay on the path and become the unique person that is within. Quiet your conscious mind and slip into that quiet, intuitive place.

Before you view the “David” by Michelangelo in Firenze, you pass through a room with many uncompleted statues. One wonders what they might have been when finished. Some more chipping away to find the real figure within, the final polishing to enhance the details, and we could have another masterpiece. One could criticize the embryonic pieces of stone, but then when you see one of Michelangelo’s completed works there are no words to express the results. So we must make up our minds to keep working for these wonderful results no matter what the medium. The voice is very similar to a marble statue because the artist has to use his imagination to go inside and create his art. Each throat is unique. Just like each slab of marble varies in its size and coloring, so does each voice. We cannot change what we have. Our duty is to find the work of art within. It matters not about the size of the finished sculpture, but it must be a finished piece of work before it is buffed and polished. So often we think we are in control of the size of our voice, but the statue is not going to be larger than the piece of marble being sculpted. Therefore, the properly produced voice will sing whatever it is suited for. If the voice is operatic, it sings opera. If it is a Broadway voice, it sings musicals. If it be country/western, jazz, etc., etc., it does not matter. A voice should be used for communication. The quality of sound is what matters, not the quantity of sound. At first, the free voice seems too big and “operatic.” This is only because we have hidden it away to control it with our conscious mind. The pianist must also free his muscles to create the proper vibrations, and at first the sound is too loud. Now the proper balance of the muscles can occur, and this full sound can still exist while playing “ppp.” Allowing the finger to rest on the key like a feather takes much time, but with persistence becomes an emotional expression, not a physical one. The voice is the same. When the full sound can be produced when singing in a whisper, everyone in the hall can still hear the quality of your sound at the same time. Our energy never stops. We stand in awe of the human voice when this happens. It seems to be, and is, effortless. So often a singer will make a piano effect by singing falsetto—which by its very name is false—, or by covering the sound. The true sound does not require a manipulation. It is not using false muscles. We should be using our brain for these effects. Too many of these “trick sounds” can begin to deteriorate the voice. If used with great discretion and understanding, no harm will come to the voice, but we are really cheating the audience out of the thrill of a properly produced pianissimo. The one is muscular and intellectual—the other is pure magic and great singing.

     “A pianissimo tone is never a repression of a louder tone.”

            “Some Staccato Notes for Singers”—Marie Withrow

Falsetto is a repression of a louder tone. In fact, it is a repression of your true voice. The belief that a full sound can develop from this false position is erroneous information. More and more we hear singers using this effect, but it takes the thrill out of the sound. More importantly, it loses the correct coordination and the ability to project.

Teaching singers to protect their voices is also another way to repress your sound. Indeed we do want the voice to be healthy, but not to the extent that we do not use our full sound. In fact, the fullest sound is the healthiest sound. A voice with no muscular interference rings true. When the energy is coursing through our bodies with nothing blocking it, the result is your voice. Then your conscious mind can take care of all the details of singing—language, acting, interpretation, style, loud, soft, etc.—but the sound remains full and detached from any obstructions. A voice in a protective position becomes uncoordinated because the voice, by its very nature, wants to grow. The thoughts and muscles used to protect it are now holding it in a smaller position. The color of the sound is missing. We must use the voice, but not abuse it. Keeping it in a position that does not allow it to ring free is not doing your throat any favors, let alone your public.   

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. We can draw unto ourselves the truth when we are able to admit we need help. If we are uncomfortable with what we are doing, then no amount of running around to find the answers is going to help. Always ask questions. Start using your own brain. Like a child, start asking “why does this happen? Why does that happen?” You must take the responsibility of unlocking your voice. Getting in touch with your intuitive mind is the way you can begin to open the door to right thinking. Seek information that awakens your own power. Right thinking brings to us what we need to help us on our path. Getting unstuck requires a definite leap of faith. This is the first step is beginning to know yourself and trusting yourself. The fad is to run from teacher to teacher, only to get more and more confused. There are definite answers, but these answers are a part of esoteric thought—we have to see the whole picture, not just parts of the puzzle. There is a story of three blind men describing an elephant. One has hold of the elephant’s ear and says the elephant is like a fan. The second man has his arms around the elephant’s leg and describes him being like a tree. The third has hold of the elephant’s tail and claims the elephant is like a rope. Seems logical. Only when you begin to “feel” the results, are you on the right track. You begin to “see” the whole elephant, and it’s bigger than you thought it was. Only then can you begin this great adventure with joy and fearlessness. The Warrior in us takes over, and we delightfully plunge ahead even though we can’t see the outcome. Our vision becomes clearer and clearer about what we want the result to be, and with persistence we can reach our goal. The whole process is a game—it’s fun! If one thought doesn’t lead us there, try another. Don’t stay stuck. Move on. Be curious. Even though our conscious mind hates it, dare to rethink problems, try a different approach. The most important thing is not to lose momentum. Begin to use your brain to sing, not your muscles. Your brain gives you the energy to sing—the body ultimately comes along for the ride because it is coordinated correctly. The body was built to be efficient. The game is to undo all the blocks we have placed in the way of our allowing the body to take a complete breath.

The conscious mind begins to understand how the body breathes, and the breath is used to open our computer—the brain. We start to “see” how it works.  Easy?  Not at all. We are so programmed to reason things out that it takes a long time to trust the most marvelous computer of all—our brain. All our “weighing and measuring” prevents us from feeling. The transition comes when we entrust this work to the unconscious mind. We are finally free to enjoy the wonders of the voice. Now language and interpretation and musicality are the polish we can consciously concentrate on. Until we learn to trust and stay in our altered state of mind, the conscious mind holds us prisoner. I read an article about men who kept committing crimes so they would be sent back to prison. It was safer there, and everything was taken care of for them. Prison is secure. Being out in the world is frightening. Being free demands a great commitment to becoming your own person, otherwise we are living by somebody else’s rules. Always having someone telling us what to do gets us out of taking responsibility for our own lives. You must DARE to find your complete voice. Don’t be a prisoner of your fears. 

A typical student of voice often has a voice teacher to learn about the voice, a vocal coach to learn the music, and a diction teacher to learn the words. If these three are not in sync with one other, the student is actually attempting to make sense out of three differing pieces of advice. The placement of the voice is the most important, and yet we want it all before the voice is actually ready. Putting the importance of words or style before the sound is working against oneself. Since voice placement must be learned only when the body has had time to mature, we are very self-conscious. By the time we’re in our teens, many fears are already firmly in place. A child learning to walk is not embarrassed by crawling first, then taking a wobbly step and falling down time after time. The voice must be learned in this way, too. Cracking a note is as close as you can come to proper singing because you aren’t holding onto the sound with muscles. It takes a while for this coordination to happen. In college, the singer should be there to take these baby steps and gain confidence in his balance. Instead, he is bombarded with diction, style, and presentation long before he is ready. If all this information he is accumulating works together, the student has a chance down the road to fit the puzzle together. As a fledgling singer, he/she is expected to sing arias, give recitals, and be in opera performances. It’s as if we expect the baby to balance on the tightrope before he can walk across the room. It also becomes a competition, and there is no room for competition when we are seeking to be an artist. Each of us has our unique place. Our world seems to be accelerating at such a rate that we no longer seem to have the time to allow the seed to grow into a mature tree. We want all the elements of a mature artist in the not yet mature body of a singer with no experience of what life is all about. It is premature to expect a finished product. The singer is taught to manufacture an imitation of the real thing. We must also be very discerning about who we listen to. Just because a new singer is getting a lot of publicity does not mean they are singing correctly. So many young performers are like comets that flash across the sky, very visible and very bright, but soon fade away only to be replaced by another one. They become a disposable commodity because they were encouraged to manufacture a voice and jump into a career before they were ready. You must have a sense of yourself, and know when you are ready. It is such a temptation to rush ahead and have a career before the groundwork is firmly in place. Know your own capabilities. If you sing because you love music, you’re on the right track. If you sing because you want to become a star, it is the wrong motivation.  

Another huge confusion comes because there is the belief that different kinds of music require different sounds. We have one sound. That sound is our trademark. It makes us unique. It is readily identifiable. We each have a unique color to our voice. When we are told that different compositions require us to have a different sound than our own unique one the trouble begins. Recordings have practically ruined out ability to hear correctly. Many times you will hear a recording of a singer, then go to an opera house to hear the same singer in the same role, and wonder what happened to the voice. Sounds great on a recording. These machines have distorted sound to such a degree that we are no longer aware of an organic sound. We are getting margarine instead of butter. No machine, no matter how sophisticated, can take the place of hearing a live singer in a concert hall.  After a while we could just not notice whether or not it’s butter, or lose the ability to tell the difference. We must care enough not to lose this information—this sense—, or the sound we are talking about will become extinct. We are in the twilight era of sound. 40 years ago, any other than the organic sound was not accepted. Now, anything goes! What’s more, the organic sound is even being called the old-fashioned way of singing. And yet, when an audience hears and feels that sound, they know. We must keep the flame alive to educate our young people that opera is not fat ladies, grimacing faces, and hollering, or singing carefully or sweetly either. There must be more to popular singing than sticking a microphone in front of your face and turning up the volume. It is an involvement in the music that communicates through sound. This involvement will also involve the listener, and that is what is so sorely missing these days. We need that connection to each other’s energy.

Why is our conscious mind so confused? The confusion comes because we are learning too many things at one time. The voice is a moving instinct. The sound we have naturally is not connected to the words or the musicality or the style. When these three are imposed on the natural voice, they destroy it. The sound is all. The voice is the sculpture, the rest is only the polish.  When diction is insisted upon, the conscious mind turns its attention to pronouncing, and forgets the sound it is supposed to make. The throat must remain open all the time—the finished sculpture. The pronunciation of words can now be addressed. Only when the sound is free does pronunciation become the important element in singing. The time it takes for our conscious mind to accept this fact is long indeed. As we learned walking and talking by the intuitive process when we were very young and very open and unafraid, we have nothing to which to relate. Everything else we have learned has been a “thinking” process resulting in an accumulation of information that seldom becomes knowledge. Pronunciation of words does not take the place of being able to speak the language. Most of the time it’s nonsense syllables in the guise of language. However, if the brain finally takes over the job of pronunciation, we’re free. Many facial muscles have been involved in all this pronouncing. These muscles have become a security blanket, and are terribly difficult to get rid of mostly because we use them in everyday speech. Singing in our own language is very difficult, because we do not use singing speech in our everyday lives. Think how long it takes to get nonsense syllables out of those muscles—the tongue, the jaw, the lips, the palette—when they have been carefully taught and insisted upon. 

The job is to bake the cake before you put on the icing. Without cake we only have the outer decoration. There is no substance. We have the sizzle, but no steak. We have a fan, a tree, and a rope, but no elephant. Look inside. Within resides a rich, wonderful world that we can only scratch the surface of in one lifetime. My advice—start scratching!       

If you have read this article by Martha Graham, take the time to reread it. Whether you have or haven’t read it, please detach this reprint from the Newsletter and post it on your refrigerator door, your bathroom mirror, or wherever it can remind you of this information as often as possible. Make a copy and give it to a friend, perhaps. Even these small steps are taking action and getting your energy to move. The more we remember and connect with these thoughts, the fuller and more rewarding our lives become. The more rewarding our singing becomes. The two are inseparable. 

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       “There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep directly open to and aware of the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

                                                               MARTHA GRAHAM