How To Unearth The Gems In Your Voice
It’s a little counterintuitive but listening is a crucial part of your practice. As singers, songwriters, and sound explorers we can often become absorbed in making sounds without fully listening back (often because it can make people feel uncomfortable to hear themselves). But there are gems there for you to uncover. Those of you who regularly attend my monthly, vocal warm-up, Vocal Gym, know that I am a big advocate of doing your vocal exercises consistently to make singing whatever material you most enjoy easier. (Sidebar, I have a student at NYU who began practicing her vocal warm ups for seven days in a row and when she came in for her lesson practically all of the technical things we were working on the week prior had worked themselves out. That’s how effective consistency is and Somatic Voicework). But what about the parts that vocal warm ups don’t seem to fix, or fix right away? Things like vocal color, emotional interpretation or rhythmic phrasing.
Some of you might still be thinking “Wait, Pyeng I don’t have time to do vocal warm-ups seven days a week!” (Don’t worry we can get to that later. It’s literally the reason I started offering programs like my 3 month program). Well, that’s completely understandable, and exactly where your listening can serve you. When you’re commuting, doing household chores like folding laundry, washing dishes, or just going for a walk, this is a perfect time to review your voice lesson to hear the cues and feedback to understand what your voice is actually doing!
So much of the time if you’re singing along with yourself or a recording, you can’t hear all the results that you’re getting from an exercise. You might miss the explanation for why a certain exercise has been suggested or notice that you weren’t breathing or were straining to hit a note. This kind of insight is directly applicable to improve your vocal timbre, emotional conviction and phrasing. In addition, you ought to be spoiling yourself with the music of others for inspiration. If you’re wanting to uplevel your vocal routine so that you can sing the songs that you love and share them with all of your heart with your desired audience, then reach out to find out about my 3 month program , I would love to see you and hear you :-)