I swear I wasn't making fun of anyone's haircut. I was just leading a group of singers in an extremely effective, though admittedly silly-looking, vocal exercise and giving a little explanation along the way. But if you happened to walk in at that precise moment, you might have been tempted to call the local mental hospital for a mass pick-up.
In my role as musical director and vocal coach, I've said a lot of crazy-ridiculous things over the years. In the context of the rehearsal hall or studio, they all made perfect sense (but then, you'd expect me to say that). Outside of those particular settings however, they add up to little more than a bunch of anatomical absurdities with just enough of the asinine thrown in for good measure.
(For the record, there's lots of really good reasons for all of that decidedly nonsensical music-speak, but I'll save that discussion for another time. Now, back to my story.)
Our ears aren't literally in the wrong place; they're just not in any position to tell us what we really need to know for our voice to be at its best. This is not some tragic flaw in human anatomy; it's not even something that needs fixing. It's just one of those bits of reality that's good to know. There's an important life principle at work here that goes far beyond anatomy and vocal pedagogy, but let's start there.
What we hear of our own voice comes, mostly, from within our own head. And, what we hear (again, inside our head) has little to do with how we are heard or how we sound to others. If you've ever been shocked to hear your own voice played back on a recording, you already know this. You may have even uttered, “This is just a bad recording; I don't really sound like that” as you conveniently destroyed the evidence.
If we sing under the assumption that what we hear is the same as what everyone else hears, we're setting ourselves up to recreate one of those sad American Idol rejection scenes. We're actually putting our brain to work, organizing and adjusting all of the muscle groups and systems for singing, under false information.
But whether it's our impulse to sing or any other desire, the brain can only organize, adapt, interpret, and make adjustments in how we engage and experience life in accordance with our awareness and our habits. Our lives, like our voices, are not free to do or to be all that we hope they will be if we persist in assuming too much for the habits and patterns of our perspective.
In the vocal studio we use any and all forms of metaphor and imagery to interrupt patterns that may not be serving us well; the crazier the better. But it's not so different in other areas of our lives. We all have habits and patterns that may, or may not, be serving us well. Sometimes we just need a little craziness to interrupt them if we don't want our lives to resemble a bad karaoke singer cliché.
(For the record, there's lots of really good reasons for all of that decidedly nonsensical music-speak, but I'll save that discussion for another time. Now, back to my story.)
Our ears aren't literally in the wrong place; they're just not in any position to tell us what we really need to know for our voice to be at its best. This is not some tragic flaw in human anatomy; it's not even something that needs fixing. It's just one of those bits of reality that's good to know. There's an important life principle at work here that goes far beyond anatomy and vocal pedagogy, but let's start there.
What we hear of our own voice comes, mostly, from within our own head. And, what we hear (again, inside our head) has little to do with how we are heard or how we sound to others. If you've ever been shocked to hear your own voice played back on a recording, you already know this. You may have even uttered, “This is just a bad recording; I don't really sound like that” as you conveniently destroyed the evidence.
If we sing under the assumption that what we hear is the same as what everyone else hears, we're setting ourselves up to recreate one of those sad American Idol rejection scenes. We're actually putting our brain to work, organizing and adjusting all of the muscle groups and systems for singing, under false information.
But whether it's our impulse to sing or any other desire, the brain can only organize, adapt, interpret, and make adjustments in how we engage and experience life in accordance with our awareness and our habits. Our lives, like our voices, are not free to do or to be all that we hope they will be if we persist in assuming too much for the habits and patterns of our perspective.
In the vocal studio we use any and all forms of metaphor and imagery to interrupt patterns that may not be serving us well; the crazier the better. But it's not so different in other areas of our lives. We all have habits and patterns that may, or may not, be serving us well. Sometimes we just need a little craziness to interrupt them if we don't want our lives to resemble a bad karaoke singer cliché.
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