Is Your Mind Hurting Your Free Voice?
Have you ever experienced this: you're in your vocal practice and you receive upsetting news and suddenly it's so much harder to sing and even worse, you feel like you can't sing at all?
Or you're singing and can't quite seem to get a passage, you start to beat yourself up, frustration arises and the negative self talk begins 'I'll never get it', 'my voice is just not good enough', 'why is this so hard for me', 'I'm not made to sing'. Usually this leads to even more mistakes, frustration and more mistakes.
One of the big differences between the voice and other instruments is that the voice is an internal instrument and therefore way more connected to our souls, mind and heart. We take comments about our voice way more personal than if someone would comment on our playing skills with an instrument. If someone says 'your guitar sounds a bit metallic' or 'you totally messed up that riff' we might thank them for their feedback and move on, try a different guitar or practice that riff more but when someone tells you 'I don't like your voice', 'your voice is so annoying', 'your voice has nothing special', 'you really can't sing', it has a totally different effect on us. What can you do about it? Is there something you can do or does your voice sound the way it does?
Authenticity Over Approval
First of all, you don't have to be everyone's darling. One person might love your voice while someone else gets annoyed by it and that's ok. More important than impressing everyone is being authentic and having a free voice because otherwise you will definitely not be unique. When singers sing in an unnatural voice, either by raising or lowering the position of their larynx excessively or by using an unnatural enunciation, they think they make their voice sound more interesting but it's actually quite the opposite. Whether it's conscious or not your listeners know when you want to sound like someone else or when you sound like yourself.
Decoding Negative Feedback
Second, even when it seems like a negative comment is directed towards in general it usually is addressed more towards a technical aspect of our voice. Comments like 'your voice is so annoying' might actually translate to 'you're not belting but yelling' or 'you're straining a voice too much' or 'try using more dynamics and not just one volume throughout your range'. Or 'You really can't sing' might translate to 'you don't know how to play your instrument YET', or 'you haven't learned how to control your voice YET'.
The main word is 'YET" meaning you can still learn it and it is something that will make your voice sound more natural and more authentic and therefore give you the ability to connect more to others in an honest way.
Ultimately, it's not about what people say to us but how we deal with it.
Overcoming Frustration in Practice
Let's go back to practice time and frustrations that might come up. Frustration is so hindering in improvement.
I know how hard it can be to avoid frustration but it's literally wasting time. It won't solve the problem, it won't improve our singing, it won't help us nail a song quicker so when you do notice yourself getting frustrated during practice time, remind yourself that it's actually hurting you more than helping you. Take a breath, shake it off and try it again or take a break and come back to it later. You'll get there way 10 times faster without frustration and you'll have more fun.
Dealing with Upsetting News Onstage
What about dealing with upsetting news during practice or worse, on stage?
It is not surprising that bad news have an effect on our voice and usually it's not the positive kind. We tend to tense up, hold our breath, squeeze, push and force things a bit more or let go and surrender to not having the energy to do it. When this happens during practice time you can take break and deal with what you have to deal first. If you can't take a break, set the problem aside in your mind to deal with it later, take a couple of breath, relax your shoulders, stretch your neck, smile and see if you can finish your practice or show. And on stage, yes the show must go on, but be gentle to yourself. Dive into the moment, be fully present, whatever happened will still be waiting for you afterward so you might as well do the best out of it in the moment.