Quality or Quantity

Last week I finished an hour-long voice lesson with a singer and she seemed slightly befuddled. Her brow was furrowed and she said, "well, we didn't get that much done, but it felt really productive."

I thought that was such an interesting perception of her lesson. My assessment was we had dropped deep in to the issue of breathing and body awareness and spent valuable time letting her body learn. As a beginner she has some long held breath and vocal patterns that aren't serving her singing. While I know her goals are not to become a professional singer, she is training to be a lawyer. She will be a professional voice user and be more effective in her profession when she is connected to her breath and able to use her voice efficiently.

Over the first 10 minutes of the lesson she sat and worked with a guided body scan to find a breath that was deep and free. I then asked her to stay with the breath to get a sense of how the body feels when she is breathing that way. We then vocalized in that position exploring how the tuning of the voice and placement are affected by the breath. About halfway into the lesson she stood and it took more time to re-find the breath connection from a standing position. We continued to vocalize and I asked her to identify what it felt like when the breath was free as it was when she was sitting. We used the mirror to provide a visual of the engagement of her neck when the breath was not working efficiently.

The work was slow, but it was clear she was in the zone the whole time. Her work was mindful. The voice was consistently in tune and pleasant in quality; two triumphs for someone who previously struggled to match pitch. We ended the lesson by talking about how she can find the breath that way again and identifying places in her life where she can explore it outside of singing.

My observation of people who are new to voice lessons is that most of them aren't used to actually living in their body. They have little sense of how their body feels and often little understanding or even ability to perceive the body in space, let alone understand what their breath is doing or how they are using their voice. If you are 25 years into life and have never explored that, the change doesn't happen overnight!

So often I tell students that I'd rather they spend 10 minutes practicing in a focused manner rather than singing through something 100 times in an hour. Learning simply doesn't happen when you mindlessly repeat something.

I will always take quality over quantity when working with the voice and the body!