Voice Lesson 4

The trouble I’m finding with studying voice is two fold. First I’m as lazy and unimaginative as the next guy, so when the novelty of something begins to fade I default to the least of efforts.

Somehow I have had the wherewithal to get myself a voice teacher and to set up sessions, I think, so now I simply need to show up once every one or two weeks to become a phenomenal singer of Rachmaninoff and Giuseppe Giordani…

The second problem, and the actual truth is, I’m twice as lazy and unimaginative as the next guy. I’m also extremely self-conscious, which any armchair psychiatrist will tell you, to be self-conscious is to be indulgently self-critical. In my case usually to the point of constantly “shorting out” like a piece of electronics someone spilt their beer on.

At moments of intensity and challenge I find myself tripping all over myself, forgetting everything, with thoughts much like an animal with a disposition for flight over fight, but ultimately too dumb to do either. A possum freezes under the oncoming lights of a family automobile, and so do I under the daunting threat of things unknown. I freeze from stem to stern. Shoulders bunched around my ears, my hands twist up, breathing short and unsteady.

My teacher, apparently aware of this possum-like posture, has a few tricks to untame the whimpy beast. Tonight after my vaguely rigamortus run through an Italian aria something needed to be done.

“Ok, vibrate your lips through this first verse, like this.” She then produced a sound like the putt-putt of a motorboat, cutting through the light and lovely waves of “Caro mio ben”.

She played the first note and I mimicked her putt-putt, rolling my head back and forth as spittle rained across the black lacquer piano. As I reached the end of the first verse she said, “Now sing it. Don’t think.”

And so I did, very naturally employing the imagery she had outlined these past weeks. The umbrella in the back of my throat that creates open, full notes. The pockets of resonance in the sinuses, which suddenly rung and traveled along my jaw and cheekbones till I felt the sound coming out my ears. My posture erect and stomach taught, hands still twisted but twisted with arms encircling a barrel of imagined air and infinite resource. Even if my chin was still lifted just a bit too high, my brain, so hell-bent on getting in the way, was numbed by a body suddenly ringing like a tuning fork.