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.
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 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. The genre says what it means. And you’ve might well have realized this already. In my experience we naturally gravitate to our type of thing, we’re drawn to it.
And 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.
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. Breathe in this way, then learn to access the center of your diaphragm to use it’s 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.
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 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.
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 put off 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, let it be part of your performance. You’ll eventually get bored with it and it’ll change into something else. If you try and push it down, it’ll be all you can think or obsess about. Let your insecurities be a part of your performance, since they’re part of the whole you. Accept them, and try not to judge them.
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:
Let yourself suck
The anti-world
The chakras