"Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men, it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again....." Les Miserable.
Actually no, I don't hear the people sing, I don't hear collective voices raised in unity to change something - or even to keep something.
These days most of the community building of singing consists of watching and listening to other people sing on TV in some talent show like X-factor or American Idol, but singing used to be for everyone regardless of whether you had star quality or not - something I for one wish was still the case.
I grew up in a singing culture, in a family full of good singers none of whom where professionals, but where the term "every bird sings with its own beak" (granted the translation is not that great) was an accepted fact. Singing was/is not about being "good at it", but about being apart of something, about participating - not watching from the sidelines. You learn to sing from a young age to stimulate you learning to speak the difficult phonetic language that Danish is, and to stimulate creative structure and social behavior. In my school from the age of six every morning the whole school gathered to sing a song for community building and to keep traditional culture and history alive. These days people can only get into the spirit of this when they are drunk and sing along to some tune in a bar (which granted is also fun!) The culture of; singing because its good for you, stimulates you and and gives you the feeling of belonging to and participating in something, is long gone. It is all about being good at singing - and I am all for good singers, but really that is not what singing is about at all, if you ask me.
There has been many a study on the benefits of music on our general health and singing in particular, and all experts agree that it's good for you. It increases blood circulation, increase endorphins, increase oxygen in the blood, reduces stress, helps depression, exercises the brain in creative ways and generally spreads joy inside and out.
I love when I get students in my classroom saying they can't sing - "so what", I say, "lets change that!" It's not some permanent state, maybe you are not going to be the next superstar, but by God you should not be robed of the satisfaction and empowerment that knowing how to use your voice is. I had a singing teacher who said; we come into this world singing and we should just never stop. I agree with him. Life is too short to not be able to have the joy of singing in our lives. Bring singing back as a community sport and forget about X-factor....forget about being "good" at it - participate, and just - sing!
The Philosophy of Voice Training.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Why Voice #3 - 5 reasons why Practicing is hard...
Practicing is different to everyone, it's and individual pursuit and no matter what - it all comes back to you. There is no one to blame but you for not doing it, not getting any better or worse still - not getting IT at all.
1. Every time you start your practice, you're different and you have to adjust to where you are at today. It's not like brushing your teeth, you can't turn on the autopilot and expect to get better.
2. You have to be able to face defeat. When you practice you run into things you can't do as well as you would like, so you have to have the courage to face that in every practice. Also you might not be able to do today what you were able to do yesterday - and that just sucks!
3. Your going to be noisy and everyone will hate you for it - or maybe just ridicule you which, if you are like me is actually worse.
4. You have no one there (except maybe me on an old recording if you study with me:-) to cheer you on, you have to become your own best and worst critic, which is hard no matter what it is about - let alone something like your voice that is so closely connected to your identity and your feeling of self.
5. It's time consuming and we all know it is easier, more comfortable and requires less of you to turn on the TV and let 2-3 hours go by doing nothing - except maybe eat
So why do it at all when it's really so annoyingly hard? Because in the end when you have done your practice, overcome your fears, faced your defeat, pissed some people off, had the courage to stand up to yourself and ask yourself if maybe there is a better version of yourself in there - the answer is always YES and that is all the reward you need. Self worth funny enough do not come from other peoples opinion of us, but our opinion of our selves and you will only find that when you test what your worth and judge for your self. I practice voice, but really it could be anything that requires a complex set of circumstances to work in perfect harmony. Don't just take my word for it. Turn the TV off and try it!
1. Every time you start your practice, you're different and you have to adjust to where you are at today. It's not like brushing your teeth, you can't turn on the autopilot and expect to get better.
2. You have to be able to face defeat. When you practice you run into things you can't do as well as you would like, so you have to have the courage to face that in every practice. Also you might not be able to do today what you were able to do yesterday - and that just sucks!
3. Your going to be noisy and everyone will hate you for it - or maybe just ridicule you which, if you are like me is actually worse.
4. You have no one there (except maybe me on an old recording if you study with me:-) to cheer you on, you have to become your own best and worst critic, which is hard no matter what it is about - let alone something like your voice that is so closely connected to your identity and your feeling of self.
5. It's time consuming and we all know it is easier, more comfortable and requires less of you to turn on the TV and let 2-3 hours go by doing nothing - except maybe eat
So why do it at all when it's really so annoyingly hard? Because in the end when you have done your practice, overcome your fears, faced your defeat, pissed some people off, had the courage to stand up to yourself and ask yourself if maybe there is a better version of yourself in there - the answer is always YES and that is all the reward you need. Self worth funny enough do not come from other peoples opinion of us, but our opinion of our selves and you will only find that when you test what your worth and judge for your self. I practice voice, but really it could be anything that requires a complex set of circumstances to work in perfect harmony. Don't just take my word for it. Turn the TV off and try it!
Why Voice #2 - About Practice
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."- Aristotle
What does it mean to practice? I am asked this question often, or actually most of my students don't ask they just don't do it:-) at least not continuously, but I understand, it's not as easy as it might seem. In my experience (including my own perspective on the word until I somehow changed my mind while becoming an actor) we think practice means to do something over and over again until we somehow mysteriously get it right. What I call the myth of hard work. With that I am not trying to say that there isn't something great to be gained from hard work, but what you are probably mostly gaining is persistence. However, are you actually getting any better? Achieving any of the things you want? Happier, richer and better looking? I bet you the answer is probably, hell no! And you're probably miserable too, 'cause you just don't seem to be getting it right?! When you keep running your head against the same wall over and over do you eventually break the wall or does the wall break you?
Practice is in reality not about trying to perfect something or getting it right by doing the same thing over and over and over and over, just because I have told you some cool vocal exercise ....if you keep repeating an unwanted habit it is not going to change, all that happens is that you eventually give up. So then what do you do? The answer is maybe a little too simple to live with - you don't do the same thing over and over, you keep making mistakes, experiment, take risks, do something different, keep searching....and here is the point - with mindfulness and focus (or as you might say - on purpose), then when something DOES seem to work, you do it over and over until its effortless, and then you find another issue and you do the same again, and so you keep on perfecting your instrument until the day you die. To my own big surprise this unending practice was actually the best discovery of them all - you mean I will never finish or be perfect? Hell no - Thank God!
To practice is to courageously, and with persistence figuring out what is right and then repeating it until it is habit....to go back to Aristotle. We are the things we repeatedly do. So only repeat the things you know are right, if they don't feel right, try something else, until it does.....then start repeating and be happier, richer and better looking:)
Next week: Practicing is hard because...
What does it mean to practice? I am asked this question often, or actually most of my students don't ask they just don't do it:-) at least not continuously, but I understand, it's not as easy as it might seem. In my experience (including my own perspective on the word until I somehow changed my mind while becoming an actor) we think practice means to do something over and over again until we somehow mysteriously get it right. What I call the myth of hard work. With that I am not trying to say that there isn't something great to be gained from hard work, but what you are probably mostly gaining is persistence. However, are you actually getting any better? Achieving any of the things you want? Happier, richer and better looking? I bet you the answer is probably, hell no! And you're probably miserable too, 'cause you just don't seem to be getting it right?! When you keep running your head against the same wall over and over do you eventually break the wall or does the wall break you?
Practice is in reality not about trying to perfect something or getting it right by doing the same thing over and over and over and over, just because I have told you some cool vocal exercise ....if you keep repeating an unwanted habit it is not going to change, all that happens is that you eventually give up. So then what do you do? The answer is maybe a little too simple to live with - you don't do the same thing over and over, you keep making mistakes, experiment, take risks, do something different, keep searching....and here is the point - with mindfulness and focus (or as you might say - on purpose), then when something DOES seem to work, you do it over and over until its effortless, and then you find another issue and you do the same again, and so you keep on perfecting your instrument until the day you die. To my own big surprise this unending practice was actually the best discovery of them all - you mean I will never finish or be perfect? Hell no - Thank God!
To practice is to courageously, and with persistence figuring out what is right and then repeating it until it is habit....to go back to Aristotle. We are the things we repeatedly do. So only repeat the things you know are right, if they don't feel right, try something else, until it does.....then start repeating and be happier, richer and better looking:)
Next week: Practicing is hard because...
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Why Voice #1
- a blog about voice philosophy and other voice related issues...
To start of in a grandiose fashion; None other than president Obama inspired me to start this blog about the philosophy of voice, how so you might ask? Because he himself has great gifts for rhetoric? Because he speaks so eloquently directly from his heart?
No, because he always talks about how "we the people" are connected by the commen denominator of wanting to do good in this world (by the way the cynic in me says that is not always true:-)
Anyway, after I had spent my day teaching some folks how to sing and speak, I thought, how does that make the world a better place? And well, I actually ended up thinking about this in such a way that it can only be thought of as philosophy.
Imagine for a second that you couldn't speak, some of you might have tried it due to a doctor ordering you to vocal rest for a periode of a few days, or laryngitis or some other short term voice loss circumstance - I myself did it for 10 days following my voice surgery in 2005. If that is a stretch and a little too hard to imagine, try imagining being in a foreign country unable to speak the language, it's almost the same - though chances are you can still make noises and eventually you will learn how to communicate dispite the language barrier, hell, you might even just learn the language:)
It's harder than one might think, right? Communication is hard without a voice, even harder without a voice that actually portraits how we think and feel, and without help from music or language. We maybe think that our voice is only used to express our individual thoughts and feelings, but anyone who has ever sung in a choir or joined in on the national anthem with a large group of people, or sat in a pew at church also knows, that it isn't just an individual communication device, it is also a community builder, our voice also connects us to the collective in a stronger fashion than any other.
So we know being able to use our voice is important....however, most us don't know how to, and I think my task as a member of "we the people" is to change that:-)
My wish is that we will move away from the right and wrong of voice and simply start talking about using it - the "I can't sing" or "I'm tone death" or "I don't know how to tell them how I feel" followed by "they don't understand me", will in my world where "we the people" live - disappear (again my inner cynic is shaking her head:-)
Using our voice, communication in all forms, takes practice. So lets start practicing.......
next on Why Voice?....follow here every Friday:)
To start of in a grandiose fashion; None other than president Obama inspired me to start this blog about the philosophy of voice, how so you might ask? Because he himself has great gifts for rhetoric? Because he speaks so eloquently directly from his heart?
No, because he always talks about how "we the people" are connected by the commen denominator of wanting to do good in this world (by the way the cynic in me says that is not always true:-)
Anyway, after I had spent my day teaching some folks how to sing and speak, I thought, how does that make the world a better place? And well, I actually ended up thinking about this in such a way that it can only be thought of as philosophy.
Imagine for a second that you couldn't speak, some of you might have tried it due to a doctor ordering you to vocal rest for a periode of a few days, or laryngitis or some other short term voice loss circumstance - I myself did it for 10 days following my voice surgery in 2005. If that is a stretch and a little too hard to imagine, try imagining being in a foreign country unable to speak the language, it's almost the same - though chances are you can still make noises and eventually you will learn how to communicate dispite the language barrier, hell, you might even just learn the language:)
It's harder than one might think, right? Communication is hard without a voice, even harder without a voice that actually portraits how we think and feel, and without help from music or language. We maybe think that our voice is only used to express our individual thoughts and feelings, but anyone who has ever sung in a choir or joined in on the national anthem with a large group of people, or sat in a pew at church also knows, that it isn't just an individual communication device, it is also a community builder, our voice also connects us to the collective in a stronger fashion than any other.
So we know being able to use our voice is important....however, most us don't know how to, and I think my task as a member of "we the people" is to change that:-)
My wish is that we will move away from the right and wrong of voice and simply start talking about using it - the "I can't sing" or "I'm tone death" or "I don't know how to tell them how I feel" followed by "they don't understand me", will in my world where "we the people" live - disappear (again my inner cynic is shaking her head:-)
Using our voice, communication in all forms, takes practice. So lets start practicing.......
next on Why Voice?....follow here every Friday:)
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