Vocal Epiphany!! :-D

Warning: 

This post is about singing technique and might not be interesting for people who don’t sing. But I might be wrong. So read it anyway. ;-P

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I just got back from a revolutionary (to me at least) singing lesson! Oh my god, I have been singing WRONG my whole life..!! I have always struggled to reach high notes. I pull my chest voice (the lower, powerful voice) up into my higher register using volume rather than trying to get into my head voice (the higher, lighter voice), basically because I think my head voice sounds shit… This means I force my voice and over-exhaust it. I have been aware that I do this for quite a while, I just haven’t quite worked out how to get around it. And then there’s this “bridge”, or “break” off course, feared and hated by singers everywhere, which is the point in your voice where you go from chest voice to head voice and your voice breaks and you feel stupid and useless and utter shit… We all know it… You force your head voice as high as you possibly can, until your voice breaks and goes into a tiny little head voice that sounds horrible and shrill… In my case, this way of “wrong” singing has made me soar throated very fast after a heavy session of singing, both in the studio, on stage and in a choir. I felt like the strength of my voice had decreased a lot, and that I couldn’t do as much as before. I was wondering what I did wrong. 

Well, it took the genius of my new singing teacher (more of a voice doctor if you ask me) to enlighten me; there is another voice in between, that allows you to smoothly move between chest and head voice, which I FINALLY located today, and it just made my life a heck of a lot easier! Waaa!!! It has been a myth and a mystery to me until today, but The Middle Voice is REAL, people…!!! It’s gonna take a lot of work to get it right, and to heal my voice from years and years of just learning to sing around this problem rather than fixing it, but at least I know what they are talking about now. Basically, I have gotten more out of three 30 minute singing lessons with this guy than I did the entire year of lessons last year. Oh Happy Day! :-D 

Also, 15 minutes in to my first singing lesson with Ian the Genius, he could inform me that I had some kind of a problem with indigestion, which has created a “bubble” on my voice and made it difficult to sing in the lower register, hard to kind of get a hold of the starting note down there. I still don’t quite understand exactly what he meant. However, for whatever it was, he made me go to the pharmacy and get something called Gavascon Advance; a gross, liquid, thick and white medicine thingy (not gonna tell you what it looks like…) that I take a tablespoon of every night before I go to sleep, and blimey, it has WORKED!! My voice feels stronger, and I can really control it, and it doesn’t hurt at all anymore!! It is probably (no, definitely) the combination of the “bubble” and the lack of middle voice that has held me back, restricted me, made me think I have a small register than I actually do and made my voice hurt... The man is a genius. 

I have to go now, we are having a flat party tonight, and we have told people to arrive from in about 4 minutes… I am just so PSYCHED about this whole singing epiphany, and wanted to share it with someone. This is definitely a cause for celebration, and I shall celebrate into the long hours of morning. Have a wonderful evening and night and weekend everyone, and I will see you on the other side!

I LOVE YOU!!!

Lots of luuuuve, 

Audrey in a super duper happy mood

PS.

I made cheese cake today. It looks lovely. Happy birthday to Alex!!! :-D