This week I want to write about a huge discovery I made in my practicing. Let me begin with a little of my singing history. I have been singing pretty much as long as I have been speaking, but the first time I took individual voice lessons was my freshman year of college. All of my other voice experience and knowledge had come through choir and listening to other amazing singers, like Julie Andrews, sing and trying to imitate them. Because of this I was never really taught how to practice singing prior to college. Because I came to college with enough raw talent to get by, my first voice teachers assumed I had previous training and never taught me the basics of how to practice my voice and what specific warm-ups I should use to help build technique. Because of this I really struggled to improve my voice and especially struggled when it came to attempting to put what I learned into the practice room. In all honesty, I have survived vocally up to this point by figuring out how to memorize my jury pieces and progressing as much as I could in my lessons by complying with everything my voice teachers have told me to do. But, because I didn't know how to practice, that is as far as I was able to get. Then I came to Utah State University Junior year of college and we were on zoom. This made progressing in the lesson time extremely difficult and I felt like I scraped by, but I received a little more structure in what warm-ups I should focus on and was able to slowly introduce that to my "practicing." I learned to record my lessons and did so diligently. But I still felt vocally stuck. I simply wasn't finding the same freedom in my practice sessions that I had found in my lessons and I couldn't figure out why. And to top it all off I still didn't really know how to practice and I hadn't figured out where and when to practice. So this was all a big problem for me.
Finally I step into vocal pedagogy last semester and I read The Talent Code and discussed different practice strategies and for the first time in my life I finally knew how to practice. I started applying these principles to my piano practicing but I still hadn't quite figured it out for voice. The master-classes in person also helped and I absorbed everything I learned. Then I'm in a vocal coaching with Dr. Chiesa for the opera this week and she says something that strikes a chord deep within me that seems to slowly unlock this disconnect I've had with my voice for the past three and half years. She says, "You know, when you are confident in what you are singing you sound so beautiful." Or something along those lines. In the moment I just said "thank you" but her words really stuck to me. As I left her office after the coaching I began to really ponder on what she said and it hit me. My anxiety, stage fright, self-consciousness, that is what is causing me to have so much tension when I am practicing. I've known that for awhile now but how was this different today? I pondered on it a little more.
I often wonder how I am in the vocal program. I understand why I tried to get into the program but why or how I got into the program remains a mystery to me. Sometimes I feel like an imposter, like I don't belong because I don't have the same background that others might have or the same amount of training. I feel like I don't have the same performance experience that someone else might have. But I do have my voice and for whatever reason it was good enough to get into the vocal performance program at 2 different universities. Not to say that it doesn't have room for improvement because it definitely has loads of room for improvement. Back to what Dr. Chiesa said though, confidence=beauty. The only way that I have gotten this far is because somehow when it counts, I have worked on my songs enough that I feel confident enough to sing them as freely as my voice can at that given point. That's great, but practice makes better so how can I apply that principle to my practicing when the whole point of practicing is to learn and be uncomfortable?
I thought on this some more and I thought of how I have learned to do everything in my life. I thought about how I learned to walk, read, write, and even talk. I began by observing so that I had a mental map in my mind of how to do whatever task it was. For example, I would listen to my parents read to me and would give them ample opportunity to do so. I would watch others walk and study their every movement to understand exactly how this thing called walking worked. Then, I would carefully and methodically practice the task on my own with a safety net, such as walking around the house with my hand against the wall or the furniture. When it came to reading I would study the letters of a simple children's book and sound it out one word at a time trying to match what I had heard my parent's read. Then and only then would I attempt the entire task on my own, such as reading the entire book to my mom, or walking around the house without holding onto the perimeter, confident that I could do it without stumbling or falling down. And the thing is, I didn't stumble or fall down. Last year I thought of this caution as something that needed to be corrected, something that was wrong with me because I wasn't willing to make mistakes. But starting this last Thursday I now see that caution and attention to detail as my super power. Inspiration struck and I felt like I had unlocked to door to my voice's potential.
I rushed to the practice room to try out my idea and luckily it wasn't in use. I had 20 minutes before I needed to be anywhere so I set the timer on my phone and got to work. I began by listening to the piece I wanted to work on to get it into my ear as to how the rhythms and melody should sound. Then I took a couple of measures at a time and played the notes on the piano over and over and over again. When I felt comfortable with the notes, I then added my voice and it sounded and felt a lot more free than it had earlier in the day when I had practiced for an hour. I slowly added another section following the same pattern and by the end of the 20 minutes I had sung and learned the notes and rhythms for the first page of two different songs and had sung them both freely and correctly. This was a HUGE breakthrough for me! I did it again the next day with the same results and reviewed the work I had done the previous day and it was like a night and day difference. Because I already felt confident on the notes and rhythms before I even opened my mouth, I was able to allow my body to feel free and sing free knowing that it would be correct, and it was. And the few mistakes I did make I was able to quickly correct upon the second attempt. I am planning on using this practice strategy just about everyday for the rest of my life! It only seems a shame that it took until my 8th semester of voice lessons to figure it out for myself.
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