The 9 Biggest Lies About Singing
- By Brett Manning
- Published 02/28/2007
- The Music
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Brett Manning
He teaches voice in his Nashville studio to singers of all genres, both the undiscovered...
and "the best of the best." He regularly addresses seminars and workshops nationwide.
His client list contains winners of the world’s most prestigious vocal awards, including the Doves, the CMA Awards, and yes, the Grammy's. Despite having an incredible five octave range himself, Brett continues to claim "my students eventually out-sing me!"Check out his recommended DVD course
Big Lie #1 - People start out singing all wrong, so they must be taught (or re-taught) EVERYTHING, in order to sing "properly."
Truth - You MAY be doing SOME things wrong, but if you can speak, you are NOT doing everything wrong. When you speak, you are using the very same tools you need to sing--no more, no less.
Most singers' difficulties come from getting away from their natural speaking technique when they sing.
If you are less than satisfied with your singing, then it is very likely you're doing something less effectively than it can be done. But stop and think a moment. HOW do you get rid of the difficulty?
There are several possibilities:
1) You are just no good at singing (many people suspect this about themselves, but it's totally untrue as you will learn);
2) You are not trying hard enough (many people assume this too, but you will find out that trying "harder" only ADDS to your difficulty);
3) Singing is a special skill that you have no useful knowledge about, so you must be prepared to spend lots of time and money learning this totally foreign skill.
All these possibilities are common thoughts, but all wrong.
Here's the possibility that you must accept to make satisfactory progress improving your singing:
4) You have been using your "singing tools" all your life, but you may have been "holding them wrong" while singing. It will be as easy as speaking, once you have someone show you how to simply hold the "tools" correctly.
You use the same exact body parts and capabilities to sing as you do when you speak! The problem often comes in when someone tries to tell us how to sing and they get us twisted up so that we STOP singing like we speak.
It's like you've been using a hammer to flatten bottle caps all your life. Then one day you need to drive some nails. You have doubts about trying it. Then someone walks up and sees you trying to drive nails. He tells you "That's really noisy. Here, hold it like this" and he turns it around so that you're striking the nails with the handle instead of the hammer's head.
It doesn\'t make so much noise now, so you think he may be right. You keep trying but you make very little progress.
Then a carpenter comes along and says "hey, buddy, you've got to hold it by the handle if you want to drive the nail." You turn it back around and discover that you can drive nails pretty fast now.
That's what singing should be like. When you learn how the voice was designed to work (and you will learn a lot about it, over these next 9 pages), you should make amazing progress and singing should get much easier at the same time.
Truth - You MAY be doing SOME things wrong, but if you can speak, you are NOT doing everything wrong. When you speak, you are using the very same tools you need to sing--no more, no less.
Most singers' difficulties come from getting away from their natural speaking technique when they sing.
If you are less than satisfied with your singing, then it is very likely you're doing something less effectively than it can be done. But stop and think a moment. HOW do you get rid of the difficulty?
There are several possibilities:
1) You are just no good at singing (many people suspect this about themselves, but it's totally untrue as you will learn);
2) You are not trying hard enough (many people assume this too, but you will find out that trying "harder" only ADDS to your difficulty);
3) Singing is a special skill that you have no useful knowledge about, so you must be prepared to spend lots of time and money learning this totally foreign skill.
All these possibilities are common thoughts, but all wrong.
Here's the possibility that you must accept to make satisfactory progress improving your singing:
4) You have been using your "singing tools" all your life, but you may have been "holding them wrong" while singing. It will be as easy as speaking, once you have someone show you how to simply hold the "tools" correctly.
You use the same exact body parts and capabilities to sing as you do when you speak! The problem often comes in when someone tries to tell us how to sing and they get us twisted up so that we STOP singing like we speak.
It's like you've been using a hammer to flatten bottle caps all your life. Then one day you need to drive some nails. You have doubts about trying it. Then someone walks up and sees you trying to drive nails. He tells you "That's really noisy. Here, hold it like this" and he turns it around so that you're striking the nails with the handle instead of the hammer's head.
It doesn\'t make so much noise now, so you think he may be right. You keep trying but you make very little progress.
Then a carpenter comes along and says "hey, buddy, you've got to hold it by the handle if you want to drive the nail." You turn it back around and discover that you can drive nails pretty fast now.
That's what singing should be like. When you learn how the voice was designed to work (and you will learn a lot about it, over these next 9 pages), you should make amazing progress and singing should get much easier at the same time.
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Wow, just happened upon this article. I am a voice teacher and find his suggestions are pretty much eye-to-eye with how I teach. I am disappointed at the regards to the "classicaly trained" musicians, however. Bella voce(or beautiful singing) technique is the most common technique taught in schools of music, and this technique teaches exactly what Brett is suggesting he teaches.
Please do not be turned off if you are in a school of music as a vocal performance major. Every teacher has different ways of explaining how to allow your sound to project and have full potential. Focus less on their "opinions of sound" and more on what doors they are trying to help you open.
