Three days ago, I found myself in Brooklyn having a chat with a friend – I’ll call her Felicia. She is someone I respect immensely due to her decades-long career touring with major artists as a backing musician, as well as her own career as a singer-songwriter(she writes exquisite songs), producer, arranger and performance coach.
I can’t recall how the conversation got round to the topic of destruction – or deconstruction – but it seems that once you get into bad vocal habits, the best way to remedy them is to shut you up, break it down, and rebuild.
I told Felicia how I met my hometown vocal coach on a 3 hour choral recording session. That day, several years ago, I was placed in the soprano section and at the end of the session, after singing countless takes of high A’s, her voice was still clear as a bell while mine was so fatigued I could hardly speak. When I overheard her say she was a vocal coach I asked for her number. She nursed me through a later bout with laryngitis by commanding me to be silent for a time, then gave me a cassette of speech therapy exercises. “Speech therapy?” I said. Apparently my vocal habits needed remedying all the way down to how I placed vowels and initialized consonants in my everyday conversation.
When I got to Los Angeles a friend recommended a voice coach and she started our lesson with the usual: some scales and exercises so she could get familiar with my voice. She stopped me immediately and said, “Do you realize that before you take a breath you swallow?” Hm, no I did not! Now why would I want to constrict my throat right before trying to fill my lungs with air? This was a totally unconscious yet voluntary action that diminished my ability to sing my best.
I was a creature of bad habit, apparently!
After sharing these tales with Felicia, she related several stories comparing students who made significant progress with coaching. The key components in their success was their willingness to set aside their ego in order to find the root of the issue(s) holding them back, then following through with consistent practice of newly learned, proper habits. This can be scary, she said, because if you decide to fundamentally change the way you sing, there will be a period of practice where you won’t sound very good. To some, this does not feel like moving towards improvement. But it is a sign of a new beginning. We all wobble when we start to walk as babies, right?
“Foundations,” she said. “Sometimes you have to tear everything down to the foundation and start over. Even Pavarotti took time off to rebuild his voice.”
Looking at my end of year blog from last year, I had to laugh at myself. I found Felicia’s comments metaphorically relevant to that woeful post. So much fear and sadness in my words! Was this the echo of my collapse to some foundation?
In hindsight, the rainbow has been brilliant this year, colored by last year’s storms.
If 2010 was the breakdown of my paradigm, 2011 was a re-centering, re-grounding and preparation for launch. Life has been as bicoastal as it ever was in the years I still had keys to an apartment in New York. Funny how sometimes it’s really about access to, not ownership of, the things and places we love. Enjoyed many firsts – played new venues, sang with new artists, sang in and produced a rock opera, co-produced a music video, started my percussion studies and can’t wait to get back to continue! – all in Los Angeles. Met new friends across the globe just by being open and saying yes to opportunity. I was craving a mentor and found…more than one, under my nose.
From here, 2012 looks pretty promising, I must say!
Cheers to you, and may you go fearlessly forward from your own foundations with passion, grace, and joy into the new year.
Bottoms up!!
