Understanding your voice

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The first step to understanding your voice is being honest about the type of voice you have. Try to stand back and be objective about the noises you’re making. Whether you like them or not, for starters:)

You might wish to be a rock singer, for example, and yet simply not be born with a rock voice.  Opera singers are born.  As also are Jazz or pure voiced folk singers.

Often it’s the way you feel rhythm, what deep emotions you need to express and, usually, simply gravitating to a genre of music that feels right to you.

Once your voice is developed, and you have strength in your range, you can usually move between the genre’s and sound convincing. In my experience, though, people usually gravitate to a genre of music that moves them the most:)

What type of singer are you?

What type of singer you are also depends on how you feel rhythm.  If it’s more in the center if the beat you probably veer toward pop.  If it’s singing with power, then you’re a rock singer.  If it’s behind the beat then it’ll be hip hop or Jazz, both being in a similar bag.  Or a bag that’s grooved with the same tool, at least:)

If it’s something that wells up and you have to express it from the chest, heart and diaphragm (predominantly), then you’re a soul or blues singer.  

This feeling is of course also singing in general, but it’s that feeling of the dam building up and it having to burst that is pure soul, and blues.

The “soul” genre says what it means, and I personally feel soul is a natural progression from the blues. And you’ve might well have realized this already:)

Yet sometimes we ping pong around genres, never finding our voice, never finding out what we really want to say, what kind of singer we really are.

Record yourself.  Listen to it when you’re ready, then keep practicing, and listen to it a few months later.  If you’re developing in the right way, you’ll hear a difference. This can be as simple as recording it on your phone.

The way in

Try to be as present as you can by connecting with your breath.  Experience your breath, learn to enjoy simply breathing in.  

Breathe into the back, and let it be a gentle sideways expansion that you feel could go on for ever.  It simply reaches it’s natural fullness, and then you can easily access it’s power through the diaphragm, back and stomach all working together,

Because you’ve created the space by relaxing and opening the diaphragm, you can then access the center of your diaphragm and use its energy.

Your diaphragm, lungs, heart, back and stomach are then working together like a huge bellows.

Try and control the breath and this won’t be your experience, and the note and the song will suffer.

You are great

Believe that you have greatness within you, and that you can be a great singer.  Simple stuff, but most of us feel that that can never happen and that we’re not capable of it.  So we always fall short, never achieving our potential, or being afraid of achieving it.

The key is to be authentic, who you really are. Which is essentially a place of peace and silence.  Beyond the stories of who we are, that’s our essential energy – the energy at the center of the chakras (related Level 2 articles below).

Come from that space, and the center of the heart, and you’ll always be one step ahead of the ego – or aware of its foibles, at least, even if you still fall for them now and again.

Find that place of giving your all by letting it happen, rather than trying to make it happen.

Let yourself suck

And let it suck.  It has to suck, at some point – we have to learn how not to do it before we can find how to be less suckier.

Don’t judge it when it sucks, and don’t get tricked by your brilliance when you get it right.  Stay centered and focus on making it all about the song.  The story of the song, the feeling of the song, and your commitment to surrendering to them both with absolute honesty.

And you’ll probably go between those two camps (and perhaps a few others), especially at first.  Put judgements and pre-conceptions in a box and tell them you’ll deal with them later.

Rather than suppressing the judgmental voice, keep your attention in the heart and let it be part of your performance. You’ll then eventually get bored with this negative energy and it’ll change into something else.  Because by observing it, from the heart space, it then has no power.

For if you try and push the negative voices down, they’re all you can think or obsess about.  Letting your insecurities be a part of your performance (since they’re part of the whole you), can help to accept and, eventually, not judge them.

So, for example, If you feel nervous, be nervous. Let the feeling flow through you. The fear is all ego. Put your attention in your heart, focus on the breath. The ego has little power in the heart. Try to commit to the meaning of what you’re singing. 

Simply doing this can work wonders.

You might only get to a place where you feel centered and like the note you’re singing for only one note, then one line, then one verse.  But it’ll be worth it. When you’ve found it once, you can find it again, and again, until it’s for a whole song, and singing simply becomes something you do – effortlessly.

In this case, it is indeed “practice, practice, practice” but also “focus, focus, focus”.  And remembering to enjoy it!

Related articles:

Level 1

 Create your own singing lessons 

Learning to like your voice 

Practicing a new song – the basics 

Let yourself suck!

Dealing with stage fright 

Stage Fright – my own journey 

Give Yourself a Grounding Cord

Good voice bad voice 

How to breathe properly 

How to feel rhythm 

How to practice with the vocal exercises 

Being in the center of a song

Being Authentic on stage

Level 2

The Four Pathways of Energy 

Spirit vs.Ego, the Old Battle 

The imagination pathway (river of energy)

Zen qualities of singing 

The chakras, and the multiverse 

Why Meditate?