First, there is faith in the body. For the singer, the musical instrument is the body. Like other instruments, some sort of physical action leads to the production of pitch. Unlike a clarinet or piano, however, the mechanism of the singer is hidden. It becomes mysterious because we actuate the sound by thought rather than by hand or lip. We cannot see what we do to make middle C emerge, and that puts singing outside our comfortable zone of control.
Ask any student of voice how to sing, and you will hear a lot about visualization, and learn a lot about ways to train your body to do certain things, but no one will be able to show you something you can touch or a way in which you can blow to precisely duplicate a sound. Instead, singers intuit a body manipulation that somehow recreates sound. [see "mirror neurons" in my previous post, for further theories on how this happens]
That kind mysterious, non technical approach creates a kind of unease amongst new singers. We want to know how. We do not like to feel how. We don't like to try how. We do not like having to rely on something beyond our control, in order to discover what is there we can control. It is in just that way, singing requires faith. We have to trust and believe the body capable of producing sound from our thought. Then we get to try it out.
Second, singing requires faith in yourself. There is a mystery here, too. There is a trick. To sing a given note, I have to think the note and tell my body to reproduce a series of muscle contractions to breathe in a particular way so as to make a unique and particular sound. But that isn't how it works. No one thinks through all of the motions for an action. The body remembers and reacts on its own. The distinct trick for the singer is both thinking and releasing thought.
There is a sweet spot between intention and surrender that creates music. There is a place where you both have minute concentrative control over every nuance, and absolutely no control whatsoever of the sound as it leaves your body. That only works when you rely on yourself and believe yourself capable. As long you are a convinced that the composer wants something more from you, and as long as you imagine that every second of the music needs to be fully known to be fully sung, you will never find that sweet spot. Doubt will make you hold on to yourself and the sound won't come out. Doubt will make you lean on the music too much, and the sound won't transcend the page. Like a master falconer, there comes a time when the singer has to release the sound and trust that it will do what it was trained to do.
The last place to practice faith is believing and trusting in others. Singers rarely stand alone. Even an a cappella star heard the music somewhere else first. Even a composer has to rely on the audience to hear for music to happen. One of the places where the singing voice truly gets hung up, is in heroism. A singer imagines that his or her voice is all that holds a piece of music together.
Strong and weak singers alike get this complex. The one says, I cannot get laryngitis because they cannot hold the part together without me. The other says, Oh no, she got laryngitis, I cannot let the music be ruined because mine is the only voice they hear. Both singers are wrong. The strong singer amplifies a section. The weak singer fills up a section. There are followers and there are leaders, but if we believe that someone is leading, and if we believe that someone else is following, in the choir, we don't need to worry which one we are. Just by believing everyone around me is doing his or her part, I can trust the music is happening.
By believing in the body, I can trust the music is happening. By believing in myself, I can trust the music is happening. By believing in my neighbor, I can trust the music is happening. In practicing faith, I can trust I am doing what I am meant to do, and I can believe that song is being sung. Questions of quality and worth don't enter in.
At least, that is what I believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment