A few years ago, I was asked to sing in a co-workers wedding. I was shocked that she asked me and excited at the opportunity to sing. I have sung in church choirs and choruses in my adult years, but never had any formal training. The bride had heard me sing with my guitar a few times, but never what I view as wedding songs. Oh, and by the way, she wanted me to either sing Schubert's Ave Maria or The Lord's Prayer-not easy songs to start with.
So, I told her that I wanted to hire a voice coach and practice those songs and that I would get back to her about how comfortable I was singing in her wedding.
The first session with the voice coach was all about my breathing. She had me look in the mirror and observe my face and mouth and breathe differently. We only sang a little bit.
The second session, we got into Ave Maria. At times she would sing with me to keep me on tempo. At one point, I was in the middle of the song and heard a different voice. I assumed that she was singing with me again, so I stopped to hear what I needed to correct.
When I stopped she said, "Why did you stop? That was sounding beautiful." I said, "Weren't you singing along with me?" It turns out that she was not singing along at all and that other voice I thought I heard was actually my own. I was shocked! Was that really me?! I never knew I had that voice.
Needless to say, I sang in that wedding and three other weddings after that. I am still on the journey of finding my voice. With practice, I have discovered other tones and brilliant sounds.
How have you found your "voice?"
1 comment:
My work requires me to wade into some pretty murky waters around hot-button topics like race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Not only do I need to talk about these things, but I need to role model my own comfort around discussing these issues.
Luckily, I've had a lot of experience at diversity retreats, etc. -- where I've really messed up, said the absolute WRONG thing, was called on the carpet for it, felt about as small as I've ever felt in my life, but did so in a safe learning environment where I was invited to learn from my mistakes and not run away from them.
Prior to that, I'd always been so afraid to do or say the wrong thing, to be seen as anything less than the guy who totally gets it. So I'm grateful for that.
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