Why Voice #12 - Grit

Today I watched a TED talk that confirmed what I have known for years and which is proven to me every day with my students and clients in the process of getting the voice they want.

 

Basically all research on who becomes successful show that the one thing that is most important to have to become successful is....GRIT, meaning as Angela Lee Duckworth put it in the TED Talk; looking at life as a marathon not a sprit by having stamina and perseverance. It is actually not about IQ, talent, social intelligence or income, but about whether you keep at it. 

Unfortunately there is very little knowledge on how you get this grit, or how you motivate someone to have it and she does acknowledge that as a great issue, one route that her research has shown though is, that when you show a kid pictures of the brain and how it is used during different tasks, and that you can learn and change one little step at a time, their chances of getting grit is higher. That when we believe in change and perseverance and not that IQ or other factors decide our fate we CAN succeed, if we work at it.

From where I sit with my instrument and what playing it has taught me about life, I will dare to say that one way of teaching and motivating kids and adults to have grit, is to teach them how to play an instument - anyone will do. Knowing that practice will make you better at something IS grit. And the cool thing is that it might even be fun and maybe even spead a little joy:-)

Why Voice #11 - Balance

It seems to me that one of the great issues of how to get the voice you want rather than the one you think you were given, has a lot to do with balance.

Most of my clients come to me wanting to sound like Adele, Alicia Keys, Pink and other big names from the current popular music scene, and I enjoy teaching them that so we end up having a lot if fun imitating some if the great artists out there - time spent trying to figure out how the stars make different sounds is really fun! 

Clients will however usually already have a strategy in place for making the sound which may be close or not, but none the less EVERYONE that comes in already think that they have done all they can to sound like whomever they like, and that their particular voice just can't do any more.

This is where I come into the picture. I don't know why this is, but usually the client will have picked one or two aspects of the voice to copy and imitate (usually the one that comes easy), and will have neglected the "other" aspects. For example; in singing Alicia Keys the bottom notes and the darker quality of her sound is well developed, and the higher more cry like sounds completely neglected. Either this happens because the singer doesn't hear that in the sound, or there is some kind of resistance toward that part of the sound (more often than not from the idea that the sound is "ugly") So the balance is off from the get go because the client is only imitating parts of the sound, and neglecting other parts that they usually subconsciously find ugly, or have other reasons to block out.  

As I start picking apart the voice, as the voice mechanic that I am, to work on the different aspects of the voice separately, a different awareness of the sound quality is established and the balance between the different parts is restored, or obtained. After all parts are picked apart, polished and perfected and we put it back together again, something amazing happens.

It's a fantastic thing to witness when a client after many a struggle finally gets the balance right and sounds so much more like themselves, the BEST version that is. Without even knowing it - in an attempt to sound like someone else - they end up finding their OWN best voice and it is always an amazing discovery for them - and for me.

My challenge to all the singers out there who are having fun figuring out how to sound like their favorite artist. Listen to them again and try to see if you can hear a new different aspect of their voice - a different side that you didn't notice before - then try to imitate them again and you might have learned something new...about the artist and about your self.