Boring and Effective: Embracing the Timeless Process of Mastery
In the Rush of Instant Results, Cultivating Patience, Persistence, and Deep Understanding
I'm restarting my writing after a small hiatus. I preach a lot about consistency. I've never had trouble finding time to sing or practice and explore my voice every day. Yet these weeks, I've found it difficult to sit down and write. So be it. I’m back at it. The voice shows who you are and most of the time, one doesn't like the sound of their own voice. I sense that by listening to oneself, one can detect the sound of all the insecurities that afflict us as human beings. It still amazes me when friends of mine, whom I consider to have a great voice, constantly tell me how they don’t like the way they sound in a recording!
That's why I've learned not to judge the sound of my own voice. I let people decide whether they like it or not. My only concern is to communicate, to be clear about what I want to say.
When people decide to study singing, they come to the studio with a baggage of voice use that is generally efficient and allows them to communicate without problems. But they are completely unaware of this efficiency.
I love helping people realize that the elements and techniques needed for good singing are already within them. Most of the time, the idea you have of what "singing" should be or how your voice should sound when singing is what gets in the way of expressing yourself through your voice.
Whenever you fight against your nature, you lose. The only way to be true to yourself is to understand how you work. Understanding how you work requires paying attention. Paying attention to the obvious things that may seem boring but are the basis of understanding.
How does your body work? What moves or activates when you breathe? The names of the body parts involved in singing aren't important to me. It doesn’t matter. Start by observing the subtle movements your body makes to speak, to produce a sound. Understanding deeply means total involvement with your body and your mind. And this involvement is more about feeling, about dancing freely with yourself. Following your instinct. Playing with your instrument, with joy. Also, discovering it yourself.
I always expected the teacher to tell me exactly what to do. And if they didn't, I assumed they had no idea what they were talking about. I was also impressed by the technical jargon of reciting names of the vocal apparatus or the mechanical functioning of the voice. However, the deepest learning I have had and continue to have is with people who, in addition to technical knowledge, have understood that the teacher can only show the way and to a certain extent accompany, but it is the student who must explore inside themselves to discover their truth. Contrary to the trend of finding a "method" that assures you of getting where you want to go. Especially in this era of optimization and time efficiency.
If the understanding, the awareness of how your body works is not there, you will find yourself fighting against your nature. Trying to impose forms and postures that go against your being. Acquiring that self-knowledge takes time. It requires paying attention every day, every moment. See how a thought arises in your head out of nowhere, feel how your face contracts with certain thoughts or how a thought awakens an emotion. Notice how your breathing changes with the emotion. How your voice reacts automatically to that motivation.
These days I decided to start with someone I greatly admire, a practice of conscious movement to reconnect with the subtlety of the body and my voice. I get the feeling that in the rush to find the trick or "hack" as they call it now, we forget the importance of understanding how everything fits together in your body so that the sound is produced. Understanding in your head is not the same as understanding in your body. Everything goes through the body. The mind is embedded in your neurons which are physical entities. So ultimately everything is movement. If you want to understand, you must move. From big movements to subtle movements.
Discovering through practice takes time, I know I repeat myself but it's important! It requires patience, immersing yourself in the slow. Let your body guide you. When there is a contraction or discomfort, listen to what it wants to tell you. There is always more than one way and in no case is it about pain or suffering. This is not the army. You don't have to suffer to create art, you don't have to suffer to express yourself. That's it for today.