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This Voice Thing

I have written at length about voice on my other blog. Sometimes I ask myself why I'm doing this. It's so dispiriting to listen to recordings of myself, now a year or so into voice lessons, and still find my own voice ... less than pleasing. I feel kind of bad for my voice teacher -- I love my voice teacher, but each week he sees a student who feels frustrated and uninspired by her lack of progress.

Part of the problem is that I never do well in lessons. This is an age-old problem, of course. I never play piano as well in lessons as I do at home. There's always that nervousness that comes with playing for a teacher, even though I know I shouldn't feel it. When I'm home, I listen to opera all day long and sing "Libiamo" (from La Traviata) and "Voi che sapete" (from The Marriage of Figaro) with as much gusto as the most confident opera singer. At my lesson? My throat feels like a pinhole and I can barely choke out "Caro mio ben."

My voice teacher tells me that I just need to relax. I agree. (Though knowing how to relax is my problem.) Tension is a voice-killer. And I know that I carry my tension in my throat and jaw, so that doesn't help. I told him that I just wish there were some kind of magic formula--something that can transform my voice from its slightly off-key, hoot-owl sound into something beautiful, or at least pretty.

There is no formula. I need to relax. I need to be a not-stressed, not-tense person.

I don't know how to be that!

However, he did say (or I should say, he repeated) that there are some "magic-formula" type things I can do:
  • Stop swaying. I sway when I sing. That forces the body to constantly adjust for balance, which isn't great for the voice.
  • Open my mouth. Almost make it like I have a double chin.
  • Open my throat. Like I'm yawning.
  • Breathe from my diaphragm. Not from my neck, which is how I've breathed all my life.
  • Sing from my diaphragm. Not from my neck, which is how I've sung all my life.
  • Don't shrug my shoulders when I get to the high notes. Contrary to intuition, shrugging the shoulders (or stretching the neck, or standing on the toes) doesn't help with the high notes. Instead, I need to think down. As the notes get higher, the sound should come from a lower place, somewhere in my stomach.
  • Memorize my songs. (This has been a big challenge for me. I don't know why.)
He also suggested that I get a mirror so I can watch myself sing. So today I went to Walmart and bought a cheap full-length mirror. And tonight I watched myself sing, and cringed at all of the neck-stretching and shoulder-shrugging that was going on. But it was good, because it made me stop doing that.

Tonight I worked on "If Music Be The Food of Love." (Here's a nice recording of someone singing it on YouTube.) While I focused specifically on singing the entire song by memory, I also worked on the high notes. The highest note in this song is a high G, which I am perfectly capable of reaching. (I'm a soprano. Who knew?) But when I get to F, my voice goes hoarse. This happened a few times, and then I focused really hard on opening my mouth and on singing from my diaphragm.

Like magic, the high notes stopped sounding hoarse.

So maybe this is the magic formula. I recorded myself a few times, and I definitely don't sound terrible. Where I was singing off-key 50% of the time a year ago, I rarely fail to hit the notes now, even the high ones. So I've gotten better.

It would make perfect sense for me to quit voice and use my voice-practice time (and voice-lesson money) to focus on piano. But I'm not going to do that. I've come too far. Maybe I've just gone from "bad" to "mediocre," but still, I've come a long way. And I'm looking forward to my next lesson, where we'll take a break from the Italian songs (which I love) and focus on the English songs (which I love less and have therefore neglected for the past few weeks).

I'm also enjoying choir and feeling more confident in my ability to not distract everyone else with my off-key-ness. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.
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