I’ve worked with well over a thousand singers over the years. I’ve also watched a lot of singers live. Over this time, I’ve noticed that there tends to be different mindsets behind people who work on their voice. I thought I’d discuss both of these today, and perhaps you can recognise yourself in one of these camps.
Two camps
There tend to be two camps, or at least two ends to the spectrum.
1. The Camp of Perfection
There are those that think that things should be absolutely, 100% perfect every time they open their mouth. That whether they have a cold, didn’t get enough sleep, unable to hear themselves clearly, that everything should be identical every time they go to sing.
Now, we should absolutely practice to iron out inconsistencies in our singing, and to be as good as we can. But we need to acknowledge that zero mistakes or variations is not achievable. Any singer who has sung for long enough, at home, live, in different environments, will tell you there’s always little slips here and there… sometimes bigger slips too. Sometimes, no matter how well you’ve prepared, there are moments that completely bomb.
Our voice is an organic instrument, which means it is variable day to day even without loads of training.
Similarly, every performance context is different. Variations in the setups can lead to variations in outcomes. Yes, we should practice as if we can achieve perfection, but we also have to cut ourselves some slack when perfection doesn’t arrive.
My own struggle
Goodness knows I am incredibly guilty of judging my own voice ridiculously harshly. At the end of every teaching and singing day I can remember almost every note that felt off to me. The more aware you are of your voice and music generally, the more you can hear EVERYTHING that bothers you.
This is great for self-improvement, but it requires one to put things in perspective when errors occur.
With that in mind, let’s visit camp two.
2. The Camp of Ignorance (of their mistakes)
Where perfectionists tend to give mistakes too much weight and sway in their own mind, those at the other end of the spectrum tend not to assign sufficient weight to those mistakes. This can be for many reasons, but the two chief ones are that they either:
a) don’t hear the mistakes, or
b) the mistakes don’t seem important to them.
Don’t hear mistakes
At the beginning our singing journey, it is inevitable that we cannot hear the mistakes we are making. It’s my job to help teach them, to highlight where they are going astray, help them recognise the issues, self-monitor them, and help them to work on their voices.
Nevertheless, sometimes people still cannot hear their mistakes, either all mistakes or those of a particular nature. This makes it very hard to self-monitor and improve. Someone must first be able to observe what they are doing wrong before they can endeavour to fix the issues.
It’s not enough that someone else tell them “this is wrong“, they must be able to see the thing themselves and recognise the error for themselves. If they cannot see this, then there is little motivation to correct it, and no measure by which they can tell when it has been improved/corrected.
Don’t care about mistakes
There are also those who CAN hear their mistakes, but they don’t seem phased by making them, no matter the circumstance. These are typically younger singers, but can affect older singers. These singers tend to get lost in the emotionality of their singing, the performance-ship of their live event, or other.
Per my partial conclusion at the end of part one above, I am absolutely advocating for singers to be able to bear with their mistakes when they happen. We practice hard so that when we perform live, or sing for our own pleasure, the errors are few and minimal… but when they happen we shrug and accept that’s a sign that more practice is required.
The singers I’m referencing do not do that. They make and accept the same mistakes again and again, and do not seek to remedy them.
Conclusion
We practice to become as good as we can be. Every time we practice effectively, we get a little better. True perfection is unattainable, but we get closer every time.
The goal is to give mistakes an appropriate weight in our minds. To recognise our errors, to work on them in practice, and to accept they are an inescapable part of singing and making music… and then go and work on them in practice.
We don’t want to overweight the mistakes, such that we self-flagellate every time we make a mistake. We also don’t want to underweight them, such that we shrug off egregious errors or worse, barely realise we’ve made them.
If this extremes are something you’re struggling with and would like to work on these, please do book yourself in for a session via my booking form right here.