5 Secrets To Unlocking Your Voice-Article featured in VisionQuest Sound
- Know Yourself –It’s important you become very comfortable with yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses. While it’s easy to focus most on your strengths, recognize areas where you are both strong as well as weak in. It’s when we are willing to identify our patterns both positive and negative that we take the necessary steps to change and grow. Creating healthier mindsets about yourself will help you to hear and understand yourself more clearly.
- Ask For Help –This could be anything from going to a therapist/counselor/coach for guidance & mentorship to contacting someone to help you produce your music. Maybe you need a vocal coach to work on your range or to iron out specific areas in your voice. Find people to help you in those arenas.You may think you’re super woman/man but you are still human and we all need help from time to time. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with people who genuinely care for you. As a creator in life, it always involves many people to help you along the way.
- Find Artists You Sound Like –This can be tricky at times to really hear the similarities your voice has in relationship to other singers. Ask your friends, your voice coach or even people that love hearing you sing who they think you sound similar to. Listen to those artists to see if they resonate with you in some way such as their vocal style, tone, message or even the way they look. Create a playlist of artists and songs your voice really resonates well with and start working on those songs. Study their voice inflections through and through until you can emulate them perfectly.
- Practice. Practice. Practice- While you may think Beyonce or Whitney Houston were born with their voices, they spent their whole lives day in and day out perfecting their crafts. They took advantage of getting vocal lessons, training with the very best. They also practiced until they couldn’t get it wrong. As a singer, it’s important to challenge yourself to sing styles that may stretch you out of your comfort zone. Our voices are muscles that need to be stretched in order to grow. If you only use one set of muscles, your voice will stay the same and it won’t evolve the way you truly desire.
- Share Your Voice With Others-Start singing at open mics, getting comfortable sharing your voice with others. You will most definitely find this to be like open heart surgery, where you’re completely exposed and vulnerable. It’s in these exact moments where you find the walls you have built up around you and you either have to push through those and let er’ rip or stay in your box of confinement. When you perform in front of a live audience, it forces you to confront areas you need to work on as a singer. It’s like the laboratory for music where you identify what needs to be worked on and also what is working.
Article by Briana Lyn
