Ep. 5: What on earth is an authentic voice? (part 1)

In this episode we're discussing what it means to have an "authentic voice."  Is it just your natural voice that you've developed over the years? Where does learning technique come into play?  These are all important things for you to consider on your vocal journey.

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Transcript

Nechama Leah 0:19

Hello, beautiful singer. How are you? I hope you are having a wonderful day and thank you so much for tuning into episode five of the Jewish singer podcast. I am so excited to be here with you. I have just been getting really so much enjoyment from hosting this podcast. I can't even tell you. Been getting wonderful feedback and it's been really important and beneficial for me to be able to speak about these topics. So I really, really appreciate you tuning in. Today's episode is a really fun one. I want to speak to you about what the heck it means to have an authentic voice. You may have heard this term floating around in the social media world by voice teachers, maybe myself included, you know, find your authentic voice. What on earth does it mean to have an authentic voice? I want to talk about it today. There are a couple layers to this, probably more than I'm even going to talk about today, but I just want to give us kind of an opening to this conversation. So that you can understand. What it is that you're what you're working toward. This conversation can feel a little different for everybody. And some people are really into working on technique. And sounding as technically proficient as possible. And then there will be others who feel like, why do I need to work on technique? Like what I'm doing so far is working for me and people appreciate what my voice can give. So we kind of have these like opposite ends of the spectrum. And. You know, if you know anything about me, like, want to find balanced between the two, right. So I am a voice teacher, as you probably know about me. And so my job is to help students along with their vocal technique. And that can get a little tricky for me sometimes because quite honestly, it can sometimes feel like we're working so much on the technical aspect of voice. That we sometimes miss out on. Who is this person as an artist? And what is it they're trying to say. So in my experience and in a lot of, thoughts and conversations I've had with myself lately and actually my, my own teachers. I've kind of come to this description of what an authentic voice is. So it really has two parts in my opinion. So firstly, we need a voice to feel free. We need your voice in order to be authentically representing you to be a balanced voice. And what I mean by that is that all parts of your range are developed and can function freely. And there's agility in the voice. And you can really sing in any part of your range in a sustainable way. And sustainable means you can do it over and over again. Uh, you're not doing it in a way that is causing strain or harm to your vocal cords. So that's what I would call vocal balance. the freedom and ease that comes with vocal balance is really integral to someone's authentic voice. So there's a distinction that I want to make here because I think there can be a tendency to say, well, whatever I'm doing naturally is my natural voice. So why wouldn't that be my authentic voice? And it could be, it could very well be some people actually managed to grow up with the singing voice that is quite balanced. And those people are the lucky ones, I will say. A lot of us do not end up coming into teen hood or adulthood without strain or without tension or without, for sure, some sort of mental input, that's causing some, some stress to the mind or the body. This is for some reason, just like a very common thing in singing. So, if you are someone that just happened upon a sort of easy way of expressing yourself vocally, that could very well be that you have a beautiful natural voice that sounds and feels authentic to you and that's wonderful. but there are, there are some cases. I'm going to say almost all of us. Where some type of either tension physically or emotional or psychological input there is causing some not great output vocally. And I'm thinking of someone that I knew in college, in fact, her speaking voice. I'm thinking of speaking voices in particular right now, too, you should know. Her speaking voice was very, um, childlike. And I don't know the whole story behind it, but I understood somehow that that could have been a result of trauma as a child. And there is such a thing where someone speaking voice doesn't really develop past a childhood type of voice I'm speaking in pitch and also just in quality because of some trauma that can occur in an age. Now, this is kind of an extreme example, but this woman, this girl that I knew, she spoke very childlike and her singing voice was also, it was very difficult for her to have any depth. Or really volume to her voice. And it really presented a barrier for her. Um, we were studying opera and so hello, you need to be able to project and you need to be able to have some like richness and depth to her voice. And, and I recall it was, it was difficult for her. And so, so I guess the question, so is that her, is that an authentic voice that she has because it's natural to her, meaning that's just what developed for her over time. So that's my point in that I would say no. And that obviously, especially if there is some type of trauma there. Figuring that out and dealing with that and coming into a voice that's a little bit more commanding and grounded and more in line with a, an adult level pitch. Um, that would be much, much more an authentic voice. Now, I'm not saying that if you have a high voice that something's wrong with you or that you have trauma, because there are so many different kinds of voices out there and soprano-y, voices are also a thing, but I'm saying this was, this was beyond that. So, yeah, that's just an example of a way in which like, just because we develop some way of using the voice doesn't mean that that's authentic to us and who we want to be as a person and or as a singer. Okay. I want to go back for a second to this idea of vocal balance, which I'm going to make another episode specifically talking about what vocal balance is, but, part of this freedom and ease in the voice is that, especially in the chest voice, that we get the vocal cords to be able to function with their right amount of depth. And closure. Okay. So a voice that's like this in speaking and in singing. Is not functioning efficiently. Okay. So. Cord closure. Uh, uh, like that, where the vocal cords are firmly coming together. And the depth of the vocal cords, meaning. For instance, I'm just speaking in my chest voice. So my pitch should be, you know, in a normal speaking range. I shouldn't be talking up there like this. That's not, that's not natural for me. Okay. And if it's breathy like that, then something something's not working right. Something's not working right. If I'm doing that. Okay. So we have a depthness of vocal chords, you know, down in the lower part of the chest voice. And, and closure of the vocal chords. Okay. I'm going to talk more about that in another episode, but that's just to give you a little taste of what do I mean by the voice being in balance and working efficiently? Okay. The other part that I feel cannot be separated in this conversation is emotional connection. So once we get a voice that's quote unquote in balance and functioning efficiently and sustainable and all of that good stuff. Well, you could be describing a voice that's like boring. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're just always perfect all the time and it's always in balance all the time, we run the risk of it just feeling like, well, they're just singing pretty. Okay. So you cannot separate emotional connection from authenticity of a voice. I'm thinking of one of my students was telling me how much she loves Barbara Streisand. And that she feels that every time she listens to Barbara Streisand sing, That she's just so connected to the words that she's saying. And there's just no separation between the, the character and the words and her voice that's coming out. Like you can't separate the two, you know, and to me that's like really, really huge. We should all be able to be like that when we're singing. So we need to be able to be technically proficient, meaning our voices working efficiently, our voices, agile. We can move about our range with ease and we're not easily affected by. Uh, vowel changes or were not easily affected by changes in volume or whatever the music is requiring, you know, pitch. Is there things like that? But then we also, through all of that need to be able to. Use that. Vocal power to express something. And. You can be kind of intellectual about that. Meaning you can just. Go. Okay. Well here, I'm going to raise the volume and I'm going to crescendo into this thing and it's going to be so amazing and I'm going to. Um, an express true longing or whatever it is. Or you could just really be feeling that longing, like really just live it in your body. And then it will naturally be expressed through your voice. So that's really what I, what I'm here to say is that, we have to be emotionally connected to the words that were singing or to the character that we're portraying. In order to fully live into this authenticity of the voice. Because whether we like it or not, Being in those feelings will change the vocal quality. It will come across in the vocal quality. It's really a wonderful, magical thing. In my opinion. I also want to say that I took this very question to one of my pedagogy teachers. I'm in I'm a voice teacher training program. I've been in a voice teacher training program for a few years now. And I asked her, I said, you know, Kind of what I said in the beginning that sometimes I feel like we can just run around in circles when it comes to technique, but How do we guide singers to finding their own voice and how they want to sound. Especially given that there's so many possibilities, I can feel like I have endless possibilities and how I want to make my voice sound. If you're, if you are learning technique, it. You walk out a very versatile singer, right? I could. I can be super like, um, weighty and chest voice, or I could say. Saying something a little bit more light and okay. I'm just being ridiculous, but you know, when you've learned technique enough, you have different sounds available to you at your disposal. And so sometimes it can feel like, well, which one's the right one. What am I, how am I supposed to sound? You know, And that's where your own. Interpretation and guiding voice has to come in because it's not about what anyone else says is the right thing to do. It's about how you want it to sound and your emotional connection to the piece of music that you're singing. Um, so my teacher, she said, you know, Vocal balance, a balanced voice is an authentic voice. She really drove that home and. And I agree, and I want to take it a step further to say that, like it can't come. Without this emotional connection, however, So it has to be coupled with this sincere connection to the music and to yourself. This means trusting your own voice. And trusting your own interpretation of the music. This is really, this is like such a big topic, but I'm going to try to keep this episode a little shorter than my last. So I'm going to end it here, but I want to know, do you have any questions? What are your thoughts about this topic? Do you ever struggle with this idea of singing technically well and also expressing yourself artistically. I want to know, so please feel free to DM me on Instagram. My handle is nechamaleahmusic. I would love to hear from you really. And please like, share, rate the podcast. I really appreciate you listening. And I hope that you're getting a lot from it. Have a wonderful day. Take care, happy singing.