Loving YOUR Voice

Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.” - Miles Davis

Ok, so Miles Davis was a famous trumpeter and renowned jazz musician, but this spoke to my little vocalist soul! <insert praise hand emoji!> Sometimes you have to grow into your voice.That’s ok. Trust the process.

Confession: For the longest time, I didn’t like my own voice. I idolized certain singers and styles, and would get *so* frustrated that I didn’t sound like them. What am I doing wrong? Why is it so hard??? Why can’t I just sound more like [insert name here]?” I remember being told to record lessons early in my studies, and I’d do it to fulfill the requirement….but I rarely listened to them. Why? Because it was painful. Again, I didn’t like the way I sounded. (Shhh - don’t tell any of my former teachers….)

Sound familiar? Come on...be honest! Even now that I’m teaching myself, I’ll ask my students to record themselves practicing in order to assess their own progress, and almost every time, I’m met with eye rolls, and groans of “but Ms. Shanelle - I HATE listening to myself!”

My question for you, dear student….is why!?!?!?!? 7+ billion people on this planet, and only one YOU. When it comes to your voice, you are the original. Never duplicated, never imitated. Your instrument is the only one of its kind that ever has or ever will exist. It’s so special. And things that special take time. Great voices aren’t born over-night.

If you’ve never had a lesson with me, let me invite you into the room for a moment...one of my most preached sermons?  “Take everything about what you think a classical/musical theater/pop singer is supposed to sound like - every affect, every manipulation….and throw it away. Hashtag Cancelled. I don’t want you to strive for recreating someone else’s sound. My goal is to give you techniques to support your voice….I want you to sound like you.”

BUT (because there’s always a but) - that’s the important part. Did you catch it? The technique. It’s WORK. It can be beautiful and rewarding but also grueling and frustrating when it doesn’t come as easily as we would like. And that’s ok too. Maybe you’ve got some old singing habits that you need to shed in order to rise to your next level. I like to think that habits aren’t “broken” - we just replace them with new behaviors. Research show that it takes at least 2 months for a new behavior to become automatic - so please, allow yourself the time to grow. Trust. The. Process.

Confession #2: After years of institutional schooling, and a few years of self-schooling, I finally feel like I’m finding MY voice. I stopped caring about sounding different, and started enjoying it. I’m getting to a place where I can “trim the fat” (another Shanelle-ism. You’re welcome.) and get to the meat of my sound. The core of the voice that is uniquely mine and no one else’s. I guess that’s why this Miles Davis quote resonated with me so deeply:

Sometimes, it really does take you a long time to sound like you. But putting in the work, and settling into your own one of a kind sound is SO worth it in the end...even if the finish line does feel really far away.

Keep running. Be patient. Your time is coming, but in the meantime - keep singing. The world needs YOUR voice. :-)

Love and light,

Ms. Shanelle