Many people ask me about the psychology of singing…
…in particular they ask about the psychology of singing by way of posing the question: ‘do you think your emotions affect your ability to sing?’
The answer is obviously yes, and there’s virtually no-one who’d disagree with this. There’s also lots of content out there on the internet that discusses the nature of the emotional battle. But in true Mark Graham fashion, I want more than just a discussion out of it. I want to know what the ‘take-home message’ is from all this discussion about the psychology of singing… and I rarely see a discussion about it that I feel gives a single useable conclusion for singers to take home and use in an effective way to help them with their voices.
This blog post is not intended to be definitive on this topic, but to share a little bit about my own views on this and to hopefully give some helpful pointers for those who perhaps feel their emotions are to blame for their voices not doing what they want them to do.
Q: Are our voices affected by our emotions? A: yes!
Why? Simple.
Wait. No. Ridiculously complicated.
To the point that I think it is fruitless to answer the ‘why’ – because you can’t. And you can spend more time arsing about over the why, than actually fixing the issue in the first place. What I’m going to address is why this question is a colossal waste of time and asking it and trying to ‘solve it’ is not the best use of your time or energy.
The Two Camps
There are often two ‘camps’ that singers, musicians, and singing teachers fall into:
1) The Emotionally Over-sensitive
We all know these sorts of singers or this teacher. They are the ones who say you’ve just got to ‘feel’ everything. It’s not your fault you can’t sing at the moment – it’s because your boyfriend/girlfriend left you, it’s because things are tough at work, it’s because it’s raining and you feel down – emotions affect your voice and that’s why you can’t sing at the moment.’ I also encounter students who are having a particularly tough time at the moment and they feel this is affecting their singing ability.
Regardless of the how or why, those in this camp pseudo-psycho-analyse EVERYTHING to pin why their voice isn’t behaving just so on something (something I’ve been guilty of in the past). While I’ve already acknowledged I think that emotions affect our voices and how we sing, I think that this polarised view is way too extreme.
The issue as I see it with the over-sensitive camp, is that stuff never ACTUALLY gets done.
There’s always another excuse hiding under the duvet waiting to take us down when we deal with the last big issue. I’m not disputing that sometimes some of us are in some really rubbish situations (believe me I’ve been in some bad situations myself, suffering from prolonged severe clinical depression on more than one occasion) and that this can affect your voice.
However, at it’s core, the underlying mentality of this camp is (in my opinion) fundamentally broken and unuseable for singers – why?
Because it’s core mantra is ‘you can’t do anything about it, you can’t help it’ – it takes responsibility for own voices out of our hands and says it’s all down to just chance and how you’re feeling. The mantra of this group is practically leads to the conclusion that you need a perfect life to be able to sing unhindered.
This is not only wrong, but I believe it’s a lie.
The Emotionally In-sensitive
There are fewer of these ones about, but they still exist. They are the ones who get cross with other singers for missing notes or forgetting lyrics, because, after all the voice is an instrument like any other – they should just be able to do these things on demand. Typically, these sorts of people are either not dedicated singers themselves, or are teachers so focused on technique for the sake of technique they cannot (or fail to) empathise with the struggles of singers (something I’ve been guilty of in the past as well).
Now, as a singing teacher (and – dare I say it! – a bloke!) I would say I fall ever so slightly on the side of being emotionally insensitive. However this extreme is also wrong and totally disrespectful of how much more the vocal instrument is affected by emotions.
The issue as I see it with this camp, is that it is not respectful of how the emotions affect the voice
Like the first camp, I think that this second camp is also a fundamentally broken mentality to have. By being bullish and harsh with singers who are perhaps struggling, even ourselves, we are ignorant of the obvious fact that how a singer is feeling will affect their voice. Shout at a singer and get them worked up (this can even be yourself), and I can guarantee the resultant anger or sadness will manifest in their voice.
Try and drill that emotional response out of a singer and you end up with a flat performance. While emotions can wreak havoc on our voices, it is the simultaneously the biggest benefit to a singer – our emotions and use of that in our voice allows us to connect with our voices on a far more instinctual level when singing a song than playing any other instrument. On top of this, our emotions allow us to connect far more powerfully with listeners than any other instrument.
To neuter the emotional element of singing by repeatedly instructing someone/yourself to ‘get over it, leave your emotional baggage at the door’ over and over will either break a singer, or leave them devoid of emotion in their singing. Both bad scenarios!
OK, we’ve got two extremes – so where’s the balance?
Let us send you part two so you can find out for yourself. Rest assured your email is secure, and we will never give your email to anyone.