Let’s say you have a really bad head cold or flu or you’ve strained your voice at a Sunday afternoon party while watching your favorite NFL team fall apart in spite of your heartfelt cheers to inspire them. So, you know you need to rest your voice, but you also need to practice.
There are a number of things you must do on a daily basis if you want to continue to grow as a singer. Warming up the voice is absolutely essential. It’s advised that you warm up the voice using Pro Singer’s Warm Up or engage tips and exercises available through any of a number of products available through SingingSuccess.TV, such as Singing Success, Mastering Mix, or through one of the Top 7 vocal programs.
But when your voice needs extra care or rest, you can also listen to segments from any one of these programs. You can then either take notes or literally transcribe a lesson.
It sounds tedious, annoying, and like a potential waste of time, but there may be greater insight gained or you may stumble upon a slight shift in nuance or approaching an exercise, that can be gleaned from simply listening as you write.
Listen To The Lessons
You can also listen to the lessons as you close your eyes, and then visualize your vocal response and participation. This not only rests your voice, but it reinforces every step, stretch, and breath of the exercise while it also heightens and stimulates your other senses. This approach becomes an exercise in listening. It becomes an exercise in seeing and even feeling or touching the vocal instrument engaged in its proper use.
When your voice needs extra rest, you can also feed your imagination, interpretive skills, and sharpen your communication tools by reading about other singers, voice teachers, vocal coaches, and music industry leaders such as agents, managers, and label executives.
Even if your voice doesn’t need extra rest, by stepping away from your voice you then will be able to pick it up and play with it, adding a little more enthusiasm, a fresh sense of adventure, or possibly a clearer direction for the unique journey to your Singing Success.
Listen Outside The Box
Listen to music that moves you and listen to singers that you respect and admire. But also listen to singers and music that falls outside of your comfort zone or realm of familiarity, especially those singers that seem to be creating a buzz. Listen to try to figure out what it is about their voice, their material, image, or even packaging that seems to appeal or fill a need or capture the imagination. This will help you as you think about shaping, framing, and focusing your image, style, sound, and the will to make your mark in the industry.
Take Your Voice For A Walk
With your recorded voice playing literally through headphones or figuratively in your mind, you go for a walk to some place unfamiliar. Let your vocals be what grounds you. Note how it makes you feel as far as getting comfortable with your environment. Also note how you react when you meet strangers on your walk. If you feel embarrassed it might be from a fear that they can hear you singing. If that feeling hits you, ask yourself if it’s your voice or the song you’re singing that has prompted the feeling of being embarrassed or self conscious.
The exact opposite may also happen when strangers smile or nod or when you look around and the strange or unfamiliar surroundings feel inviting, inspiring, or relaxing somehow. Take a moment to note anything about your voice or the song that is creating a sense of feeling, confidence, comfortable, and in the right place at the right time.
Comfort Zones
Any time you have questions about material you’re considering, songs you’ve recorded, or even voice lessons you wish to review from some of the SingingSuccess.TV products, take the material for a walk in an unfamiliar setting. Because you’re not quite sure where you are, your psyche and senses automatically engage in a search for home. So, on this walk, you begin to head home to your comfort zones, those places from which you draw strength, feel safe, and become bold enough to try new things.
The walk and listen approach is also a great way to shake off the craziness that sometimes comes from thinking too much or from indulging harsh criticism or relentless negative self-talk. In fact it forces you to move away from thinking, and pushes you toward more tactile and emotional methods for relating what’s going on inside of you with what’s going on outside and all around you.
Top 7 vocal
Visit the Products section of SingingSuccess.TV for one of our Top 7 programs to help you find more color, texture, and play space to fill as you continue to strengthen your voice on a daily basis. This is a great exercise for reinforcing tips presented in these focused product offerings.
Listening to an exercise from Brett Manning or from one of his certified associates is a great way for a singer, singer-songwriter, or performer to workout when the voice needs rest. But it’s also a valuable exercise for focus, listening, and engaging senses that all too often take a back seat to your singing.
This simple but powerfully effective approach offers another valuable way to use the products offered by Brett and SingingSuccess.TV. This approach also helps you to step outside of yourself so that the overly critical or sensitive part of you can get a healthy perspective on how to support the pursuit of the full potential for your Singing Success.