NOT YOUR NORMAL EVERYDAY SINGING LESSONS

Most people are fairly uptight about themselves singing.  This fact pains me b/c we all have a voice which we can use to sing, so when I see people fearing to do so, I just see lost potential. 

The human voice is our most fundamental, universal, and relatable musical instrument. We all possess it. We can all learn to use it in song. 

 

Sydney Goldstein Theater, San Francisco, California. View from the stage. photo by J Blackman, 2019

IT IS NOT ABOUT THIS.

Chances are if you have any impressions about vocal lessons, it's that they are for becoming a star . . . or some other such bull. That's not necessary, or even desirable. I just want you to utilize the voice you were born with, to make up songs or sing your favorite songs or croon to a baby, or a lover, or just to rock Happy Birthday around the dining room table.

  • The Science of singing is a physiological fact of humanness
  • The Sport of singing is super simple b/c you use your mechanism every day
  • The Language of singing you know by heart - from the perspective of hearing. 
  • The Doing of all of these is what I'll teach you.

 

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You were born to sing

Each newborn immediately finds their own voice and uses it to communicate.

After months of constant alert attention to the adult examples around them, and also of their own vigorous practice, they begin to learn both vocal control and verbal language; thereby they become able to express themselves more clearly, more fully, more satisfyingly. 

 

 

 

All of this is simply to share with you a fact which I consider to be incontrovertible: You have the ability to learn to sing. 

 

Consider your own voice, as it is used daily:

  • You modulate your volume, your speed and rhythm, your vowels and consonants, the inflection of your pitch, your timbre.
  • You make use of an exceedingly complex verbal language with skill and nuance which is frankly astounding.
  • You have mastered a highly developed written representation of this language, which has many weird quirks of spelling, grammar, idiomatic phrases, and more.
                  . . . . . yet you and I and all of us soldier on just fine, using our language.

 

Bet you've never thought about how skilled you are using your voice

Bet you didn't know that these skills are precisely the skills you use to sing

     

HOW TO SING!

 

Alright Jay, you've got my attention. How exactly will you teach me to sing??

 

Glad you asked. Like a personal trainer, I must craft a plan of study for each individual. Everyone's unique in terms of their experience, skill sets, body awareness, and such. But the three primary tools we will use are here below.

black & white sketch of a human ear, by acrylgiessen

LISTEN! Sound is the medium of music.

We move music from your background to your foreground, and listen with intent and without distraction, to:

*Recorded music

*Notes played by you on an instrument, computer, phone

*Your own beautiful precious voice as you begin to utter art

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human-diaphragm-3d-model

Speak Up! Your current vocal abilities are more than enough.

We can't see our vocal mechanism, so it's not like - your finger aims for the "Q" key and hits the "A" key instead. But you'll get it. WTF is this thing anyway?

*A Klingon warship?

*Freddy Krueger's second hat?

*A fashion umbrella by Alexander McQueen?

*Nope, it's the thing that makes you breathe. It's a muscle called the diaphragm and you're using it right now.

Not creepy at all

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weird al yankovic in a green Hawaiian shirt at his movie premier, 2022

Weird. That's how it will feel at first learning to control your pitch, rhythm, volume in the service of music

No worries, it's just like a balance beam, a new cooking technique, a new gaming system. You'll get it.

What will we do when what you attempt to sing yields . . . . something unexpected, shall we say? It's simple problem solving. Logic. Trial and error, just like in a hundred other tasks you do. And this is my favorite aspect of the whole thing. I love helping turn on people's lights!

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Ready to begin your journey with YOUR OWN PERSONAL VOICE?

signup is easy, and we will immediately begin helping you plot your own course

from speaking to singing

using a meme?

TRY IT!!

So, here's a singing experiment for you to try.

Below is a meme I always find amusing:

I want you to think about the quote in the center of the Venn diagram and how one would say those two words differently for each of the meanings in the outer ring. Actually, I don't want you to think about it at all. 

I want you to say it.

Out loud.

Right now.

  1. Choose one of the three meanings and inflect the phrase as one might to convey that.
  2. Pause, a moment, to reflect.
  3. Now choose another one of the meanings, and inflect the phrase accordingly.
  4. Pause. (Yes, I say this a lot.)
  5. And, choose the last meaning, and inflect that sucker again.
  6. Pau. . . . 

 

This demonstrates how we modulate our voices daily. Now here's your chance to get creative:

 

  1. Choose one of the three meanings.
  2. Say the phrase that way.
  3. “Hey buddy” contains three syllables. Say it again, but this time choose any one syllable and draw it out way too long. Hold that one syllable for - idk - a bit. As long as you feel like. 
  4. Pause.

 

What do we hear when we do this? We hear the PITCH of that syllable. Oh it was there before, we just don't normally emphasize it or focus our attention on it. But when I had you say the phrase three different ways, you instinctively changed your use of pitch accordingly. And just now when you chose a syllable to extend, you probably adjusted your pitch there; but for sure you noticed it more. When we hold on to a syllable, the thing we are holding on to is its pitch (and the vowel of course, that plays into it as well).

 

Come to think of it, when you held it out, you also changed the RHYTHM of the phrase. Heh! I did that. Showed ya. Didn't even try.

 

 

Singing, like all music making, is not mysterious. It is not the result of some genetic lottery. It's human nature. There are facts and concepts which help us learn it. There are techniques that enable us to do it. And your whole life you've been attuned to the language of music (and English, in my present example), the language through which we express ourselves with it.

 

IF/THEN

IF that exercise intrigued you.

THEN try the same experiment with any other syllable. Then you can do the whole thing over with one of the other meanings. Then you can do all of that with the third meaning. PS, BTW, you are now a creative musical artist.

        *  *  *  * 

IF this whole thing gets you excited to learn to sing.

THEN go click somewhere above, I got a lot of frickin' buttons on this page.