What we see is what we hear!

What we see is what we hear, but how do we create the sound we want to be heard?

 It is important to see the voice as being like any other instrument,  but with one very important difference: it’s ‘alive’ and responds to both environmental conditions such as pollution and to emotional situations such as stress or anger.  If  the singer abuses the voice when singing by forcing the sound, shouting or screaming, it may cause physical damage, and like any other muscle require rest to repair itself.  To avoid the possibility of damage it is essential to learn techniques which get the maximum out of the voice with the minimum stress or effort.

As the voice is neither tangible nor visible like other instruments it is essential for the student singer to have a range of simple tools at hand to be able to influence how their sound develops.  These include the use of images describing the physical processes of singing, exercises (ideally recorded on a CD) and a mirror to watch what is happening.  These all help to avoid the personal hang-ups that so often bedevil the student singer.  Ninety percent of people want to sing, but generally they have a very negative attitude towards their voice. 

The problem for singing students is that all too often they are in possession of misleading ideas, and try to reproduce the sound they think they ought to, without sufficient knowledge as to how to achieve it.  With good teaching they will hopefully learn to submit, respond as a child does, copying demonstrations, practising exercises and absorbing intuitively; not so much thinking as focusing on the physical sensation of the sound.  Through simple exercises and repetitions the student can build muscular memory and an awareness which in turn builds a trust that the voice will do what they want, and this in turn gives greater personal confidence in singing.  With the knowledge of how to apply basic techniques they can then begin to explore musical  possibilities of vocal expression.

 All singers must remember that what they hear is not what others hear; a good way of testing this is simply to record yourself – the results can be surprising!  However, the physical sensations experienced when singing are a far better guide as to what the audience is hearing.  Very simply, if the singer is tense and it feels tight around the throat, then the audience will experience a sound which is strained and tense.  Most people when listening to singers are very sensitive to any tension in the sound, experiencing for themselves any discomfort and insecurity experienced by the singer. This response comes both from the sound itself and also from the singer’s visible application of their technique - what we see is what we hear!  And so the singing student must be aware of what and how they practice, because that is what they will give in performance.