Lessons Singing has Taught Me

Welcome to the blog, I'm so glad you're here!

I'd like to take this first post to introduce myself a little bit. I am a singer and voice teacher with a bachelor's degree in vocal performance from Colorado State University.

I think a lot about teaching my students how to sing, and this got me thinking: the process of learning to sing has taught me lessons that I never would have learned just from being told. Some things just don't sink in until you experience them. Many of the things I've learned apply to all of life, not just singing. I think that this is a huge part of what makes music lessons valuable. It gives you a place to learn things that mature you as a person.

Here are just a few of those lessons with some tools that may be helpful. You'll still have to experience them for yourself, but hopefully this can give you a head start!

Intention Pays Off

You can sing something over and over and over again. You may even sing it well multiple times in a row, and you might improve, but that will never be a substitute for working with intention and understanding. Doing an exercise just because you've heard it done before, or you've done it in lessons can help some. It will help a lot more if you know what the goal of the exercise is and why you are using it.

Tool: Journaling Your Practice

Write down what you are working on in an exercise or song and what tools you are using to reach that goal. Make observations about what you feel in your body or hear in the sound. Experiment, and keep track of what you notice. This can be such an exciting process, and you will understand your own instrument better as a result. I use a bullet journal because I'm motivated by the creativity of the journal itself. There are a million ways to journal; find a format that works for you!

Embrace the Journey

It is a process; there's nothing you can do to skip over it anyway. You might as well enjoy the ride! I spent a lot of time early in my undergrad being frustrated that I could understand something in my head long before I could get my muscles to do it in an exercise and it was even longer before I could apply it to a song consistently! I felt like I was failing, but the truth is this is completely normal. In fact, it's one of the coolest things about singing! You never run out of room to grow. The more you learn, the more unexplored territory you can see ahead of you. Singing is a lot like life in this way. It can be overwhelming, but that means you can just keep on exploring and improving as long as you want! If you could just skip ahead to perfection, that would mean there was nothing new left to discover.

Tool: Notice the scenery

Take note of where you are in your journey and where you've been. Recognize that you are improving, which is exactly the same thing the most successful people are doing! Celebrate the victories along the way and try to redefine roadblocks as opportunities. The journal can come in handy for this, or just making the time to reflect on it. It's good to have long term goals, but if you "Keep your eyes on the prize" so much that you miss the joy of getting there, what's the point?

Anyone Can Sing

I have been singing for a long time, and I have heard so many people say things like "You're lucky, I just didn't get the musical genes in my family" or "I just can't carry a tune" or "I wish I was had musical talent," as though singing were some mystical gift bestowed on the lucky few by some miracle of genes or random chance. I would love to get into some ideas about why this seems to be the case, but that's another post for another day.

Here's the truth... you can sing. Like anything else, it may come a little more easily to some people than others, but you can sing! Singing well is more about learning how to use the instrument you've been given than being inherently good at it. Most people who think they are tone deaf actually aren't, they've just never been taught how to match pitch. Most people who "have weak voices" or "no range" just haven't been taught how to use their muscles and breath efficiently and healthfully to allow a stronger sound over more pitches. When I was in high school I had a really soft, breathy voice. It was when I started taking lessons, learning how to use my instrument, that I began to discover what my voice was actually capable of. I never would have guessed until I tried!

Tool: Be Vulnerable

If you want to sing but you've been told (or told yourself) that you can't or you shouldn't, do it anyway. Take lessons! In my experience, teachers understand that your voice isn't perfect, or that you don't know everything about it yet. That's the whole point, which makes lessons a safe place to start singing without any sort of expectation of perfection. A good teacher can help you learn to use your voice in a way that you can feel more confident about and enjoy. Joining a choir is a good way to start too! Singing in community is one of the best experiences I've had.

If you already sing, don't be afraid of making sounds you don't like. I ask my students to make some pretty ridiculous sounds on purpose all the time! One thing is certain: you can never find freedom in your voice if you are afraid of it. Getting better inevitably means doing things you're not good at (yet). But if you recognize that this is not a bad thing, there is a profound joy in fearlessly giving it your best shot. If you do this, a "bad" sound is more progress than failure.

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At the end of the day, these lessons have so much more to do with life than singing. That's one of the reasons I love making and teaching music! It's so much bigger than it seems at first glance. I hope this post has been helpful. Wherever you are in your journey (musical or otherwise), I encourage you to take the next step with joy!