How do I OWN my voice? type/fach and other hangups! Part 3!

I have learned, and continue to learn so much about SOUND, VIBRATION and VOICE by listening to great horn players.

As we continue to discover "owning" the voice - part 3 - I offer two of my favorite quotes from two of my favorite horn players:


Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
Miles Davis

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
Dizzy Gillespie

How do you own your voice?  You take the time it takes to discover it.  

Singers often are so ready to make excuses,  want to be another "type" or another "fach".  Nothing like making life more difficult before you even know what is going on!

May I suggest, as radical as it may seem (insert sarcasm font here) that YOU define the voice type and vocal fach,  the type and fach do NOT define you?

If you are ready to fall for the company line of type and fach without really knowing your instrument - without spending a lifetime - figuratively or literally  -  with it;  without discovering what makes you sing the way you sing;  without claiming why you sing;  without making choices to then make new choices; then you simply have not owned anything.  You have fallen into the trap so many singers fall into: "tell me what I am".

Only YOU can determine who you are, what you are and how you respond to your voice.  Only YOU can claim it, own it, and make it work.  Only YOU can spend the time, the energy, develop the process, the craft, the dedication and the passion for the TRUTH of what you do not yet own. (see part 1)

The whiny "but I don't LIKE my voice type"  "I don't WANT to be an ingenue"  "I want somebody else's voice"  do not allow a nurturing atmosphere to find yourself.

If you don't want it - nobody is making you.  Do something else.

If you are not willing, able, or want to do the work,  then don't.  Then don't complain, bicker, whine or make excuses.

You will want and be passionate about your voice,  when you make a decision that no matter what your voice is YOURS.  It DEMANDS your respect.  The relationship you develop with it requires TIME.  It does not tolerate impatience.  It does not tolerate hissy fits.  It does not tolerate pretend.  It does not tolerate kinda sorta.  It puts up with nothing.  It embraces WORK, HONESTY, PASSION, COMMITMENT, and simply NOT giving up nor giving in.

Your commitment to revealing your voice,  allows you to claim it, and in claiming ALL of it - the good, the bad and the ugly - it allows you to truly SING with it, and in doing so, OWNING IT.

Revealing your voice to YOURSELF is sometimes the most difficult thing.  Relinquishing the type and fach in order to find YOU and YOUR TRUTH is often what singers fear the most.  They want to be told.  They want to follow.  They want it laid out for them.  They want something or someone to blame it on when it doesn't go as expected.

Guess what?  We survive or we don't.  We only can look internally.  We can only learn if we are willing to see, recognize and be taught.  We only begin to learn to sing like ourselves, when we simply refuse to allow something else to define us.  Another one's  definition can either illuminate or cripple us.  Ironically, the choice is OURS, not theirs.

"What if I don't like my voice type"?  Well, darling,  you haven't lived with it long enough.  You haven't discovered it truthfully.  You are singing from the outside in, and have yet to discover the inside out of your artistry and your craft.

And simply,  quit singing for your voice type.  Sing WITH your voice.  There's your power.  There's your ownership.  THAT is what you are here to claim.  And guess what? It might take awhile.