Unlocking My Voice: My path to freedom & joy in expressing myself through song!
“You don’t have a solo type voice.” This is what my mother told me when I was 6 years old. My mother, who had a beautiful resonant “solo” type voice that rang through the house daily, with freedom. She sang songs of Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole, John Williams, Johnny Mathis. Mom was the “singer”, the professional who engaged us kids in singing around the campfire, teaching us harmonies and rounds. It was Mom who inspired me to join the church choir when I was 5. I wanted my voice to fly like hers. Imagine my shock and disappointment when she proclaimed that I didn’t have a “solo” type voice. I could feel something in me shut down, tighten up…doubt taking up residence in my being. This doubt affected my voice. Singing now had an efforting in it, a loss of ease. I experienced a self-consciousness that I didn’t have before, a holding back. At some point my brothers and sisters teased me for sounding “fakey”…resulting in more self-consciousness tension and doubt.
Later on I struggled with intonation issues, singing teachers, choir directors and boyfriends insisting that I 'tune it up” without offering any real guidance on how to, so I became paranoid and obsessed with “trying” to sing in tune. Trying and trying without consistent results leading to deep frustration and deciding to quit singing many times. Still, my deep love for singing, my longing to express freely, my feeling of passion and a sense that my own voice, my “solo” voice, had something unique and important to say. I had an urgency that wouldn’t leave me alone that kept me coming back to singing.
On my path of returning to freedom and joy in expressing myself through song I, thankfully, found some teachers that helped me to understand what was going on in my voice and gave me techniques for resolving my issues.
My response to the message that I didn’t have a “solo” type voice wasn’t only psychological and emotional, thoughts and feelings, that if I could just overcome with enough therapy and positive thinking, I would be fine. My reaction had a somatic effect, a physical tensing that was unconscious, wasn’t experienced as “tensing” and therefore went undetected for many years.
I discovered that the tightness I experienced in my voice and the issues with intonation were caused by an actual tensing or “locking” in my abdominal muscles when I sang. This in turn was triggering an “uncontrolled” constriction in my vocal tract which was restricting the free movement of my vocal cords.
The upper, middle and lower constrictor muscles at the back of the vocal tract are important muscles, necessary for singing. They are also the muscles that function for things like swallowing, protecting the vocal cords when picking up something heavy or when we get scared or emotional. It’s so hard to sing when we’re crying or frightened because of “uncontrolled” constriction in the vocal tract. Likewise when singing technique is incorrect “uncontrolled” constriction is triggered to protect the vocal cords, literally restricting the movement of the vocal cords…making it difficult to sing freely, with ease, reach the high notes and to “sing in tune”.
The discovery that the voice, meaning ANY voice, sings in tune when uncontrolled constriction is released is wildly liberating for a singer and for those who have pegged themselves as “non-singers”…those who were told that they were “tone deaf” growing up or to “mouth the words” in school chorus, etc.
When we comply with how our body is built to work…when we return to the energy flow and strength that this beautiful vessel was made for we are in harmony. So it follows that when we sing and use our voices in the way they were built to work there is freedom of expression just as a baby knows how to cry out to be heard to let the world know of his or her presence to be attended to, cared for and to matter. As we return to our voice, open it up and allow it to work the way it was built to, we regain a sense of confidence, power and effectiveness. We can sing “solo” or in a group and know that our voice matters