How To Sing With Greater Confidence

Posted by Norman Bailey on Friday, April 18, 2014 Under: Voice Works


So you've set your mind on doing more singing.    But how's it going?
 
Have you set to it with full force and are you now singing the songs you want to sing where and when you want to sing them.  Or are you finding that your first few steps have been a little hesitant and faltering.  Well you'll be comforted by the fact that this is normal.

There are many reasons why you are not, as yet, totally in tune with your voice.  Some reasons are universal and others are more personal to you.   Let's take a look at what might be standing in your way.

1 Getting Started
The Root of the problem
 
We humans are creatures of habit, so change, even for the good, may cause some degree of anxiety or self-doubt. If not halted in your tracks your anxieties may in some way slow your progress. 
 
There are a host of reasons for your overcautious behaviour: 

• Preoccupation with negative past experiences 
 
• Fear of failure or success
 
• The inability to find time in your busy schedule 
 
• Misplaced feelings of self-preservation
 
• Negative feelings about your ability 
 
You may relate to one or more of these inhibiting patterns or perhaps there are other reasons for your lack of motivation. If all your reasons are not listed then stop for a moment, get a pen and paper and write them down. Now ask yourself; should these or any other reason get in the way of you enjoying the joys of singing for the rest of your life?

 First Refusal - Understanding why you hesitate 

There’s a story plotting technique that you may or maybe not be familiar with. It’s called The Hero’s Journey. It outliness the arc a character follows from the story’s opening through to its resolution. It’s been used all mannner of tale, from the legends of antiquity right up to the latest Bond movie.

 
This technique has also been used in the field of personal development.  The part I’d like to draw your attention to is in the early section. It’s called ‘Refusal to answer the call’. This is where, like you, the hero has received a call to adventure – in your case it’s the chance to improve  your life/career through using your voice with greater confidence. But instead of moving forward on to new horizons you find yourself in a kind of holding pattern unable to take the next step. 
 
You may not even realise that this is the case. You have answered the call, haven’t you?  You’ve made the decision but you’re too busy right now so can’t find the time to fully engage with it. Or, maybe you feel you’re fooling yourself and perhaps the best decision is not to do it after all. Who are you to think you’re a singer anyway?  And so the indecision drags on and before you know it days become weeks and weeks become months. 
 
The problem is that the longer you wait the greater the chances are that you will refuse to answer the call altogether. Thereby missing out on developing a highly beneficial skill that could change your life.

So what's the answer?

How do you make a positive start?

Maybe this will help

Try a change of perception

Take a look at how do you think about singing and ask yourself if it's helping you move forward?

The problem is that Western society's view of where singing belongs has become very narrow.  Singing has been put in the box marked 'Entertainment'.  Which then puts you one of two boxes.  
  1. Passive - Other sing - You listen
  2. Active: You sing - Others listen

However before the time when non-musical record excecs were able to exploit the other peoples talents we would gather together and sing for pleasure.But gone are the days when people gathered together for a spot of communal singing.   Now singer are special chosen people.  They perform on stages, sell millions of singles and get through to the live finals on TV talent shows.

A singing pupil of mine told me of a recent incident that shook his confidence.   It was about an encounter he had with a young lady he was obviously bring to impress.  On telling her that he was a singer she told him he couldn't be because she'd never heard of him.  And so it is, for her and many others like her, that singers are people in the charts.  They are not normal people who sing for pleasure and the sake of their are.  

I was having coffee with a songwriting friend of mine last week and he started talking, quite apologetically, about his singing.  He opened with, "I'm not a singer, Ella Fitzgerald is a singer".  Yes she is.  Can't argue with that.  But she is a legend and if that's the yardstick that you use to measure who is a singer and who isn't then you'd have to rule out most of the known singers in the world.

If this is your frame of reference and and you're always comparing yourself to others you will always comes up short.  Pretty much everyone can find someone they think is a better singer than they are.  Apparently even the great Ella Fitzgerald didn't have any confidence in her own singing.  Her last words were "it was the songs that they loved.

This isn't that surprising.  You'll often hear well respected actors saying that they can't stand watching themselves on screen.  And I'm sure that the first time you heard your speaking voice played back to you you were a bit taken aback by the sound of it.  It's natural.  But as people can often be their worst critics I'd warn against being too harsh, especially at the beginning.

I advise that when starting out on improving your voice and building a great love and understanding of your voice that you listen with an open heart.  This way you will hear what you are doing right as well as things that you can improve.

So A simple change in attitude, in which you see yourself as someone who has the full rights to sing out loud and proud will do wonders for you.


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Storybookers

7 Proven Ways To Get Boys To Love Reading

How many time have you thrown your hands up and said, “I give up”?    

For many people, those who care about positive child development, giving up isn’t an option.  

Think about how your life would be if you had no access to the written word.  This is a reality for many people. For some it’s a physiological issue, for others it’s psychological.  There are also those who by not understanding the importance of reading never bother to develop the skill sufficiently.

So what does it take to get a young man to put down his Playstaion and pick up a book?   There will be those who say that maybe it’s best not to buy one in the first place.  But that isn’t always as easy as it sounds.  Some parents bribe their kids with games times as a trade off against time spent reading books.  The danger of this is that reading then becomes the opposite of things that are fun, which, amongst other thing, will set the ‘Reading for Pleasure’ movement back a bit.

So what do you do?  I know teachers, parents and carers who have come up with some clever little ways of getting boys to see reading as a positive force in their lives.  Whether it’s as a pleasurable distraction or as a way to gather a wealth of useful information that they can use to enhance their lives.    These are some of the insights I’ve gathered.  I’ve also thrown in a few that have worked for me over the years.

So here they are, in no particular order.

7 Tips for getting boys into reading:

1.   Tell them a story

If it’s a short story, tell  it to them.  And I mean tell them rather than read.  There are a number of reasons why I say this, but I’ll expand on that another time.  Telling a child a  story might sound obvious to some but there are people who are little reluctant.  People often think that if you tell a child a story they won’t read it for themselves.  But you wouldn’t think that if you knew how much the book sales of the Hunger Games went up after movies came out. 

2. Tell them about a story

If it’s a long story, tell them about the story.  Be a kind of trailer and get them excited about finding out more.  Ok, this might take a bit of practice.  But watch TV and movies trailers and have some fun with it.

3. Let them see you reading books.  

You sitting and enjoying a good read will often entice a child into reading more than you reading a book to them.   It gets their curiosity going.  One parent told me that they liked to pretend that they were hiding the book.   If, like her, your son wants things they think they’re not allowed to have, this will work a treat.

4. Don’t lean too much on fiction. 

Boys get bored easily and often skip to the end of a book to see if the ending of the story is worth the journey. If they don’t think it is they won’t bother. (This behaviour isn’t limited to boys.)   That doesn’t work with reference books.   Every pages is packed with useful information.  So they will at least skim though the whole book to see what’s on offer.  


During school library visits, when I tell boys to go get a book to read, most of them come back with reference books of some kind.  Books that tell them about dinosaurs or their favourite sporting hero for instance.  Remember that boys like to show off.  So when they have a sweet piece of knowledge that they can share to impress others they love it.

5. Give them what they want

Leading on from that, a good tip is to find out what they’re into.  The son of a friend of mine is into cars so he’ll devour anything to do with that subject.   Sometimes we can get into thinking we need to steer kids in a certain direction and away from certain types of material.  This is fair enough but if you want your young man to master and enjoy reading it’s easier to do when he’s genuinely interested.  If a child is struggling with reading, coping with that and a subject he finds boring is a sure way to put him off reading for life. 

I know many parents aren’t keen on comics.   But let him indulge his passion.   It’ll will make it easier to tackle less interesting but potentially more beneficial subject matter later on.  Personally I think comics are beneficial and so does the British Library.  Their Comics Unmasked exhibition runs until 19 August 2014

6. Add a little magic. 

 I do a couple of magic tricks during my storytelling sessions.  I can only think of one instance where during the Q&A someone didn’t ask me how I do them.  I always say I get them from books and that they should get hold of one.  This goes back to the 'boys like showing off knowledge thing’.  I’m surprised that school libraries don’t stock more of them.  I know one of my local libraries does, and it’s hardly ever on the shelf.

7. Get them into telling stories.  

Storytelling is fun and it brings people together.  Back to tip 1.  When you tell a story get your young man to tell you one.  It could be the episode of Horrid Henry he saw earlier, the book you gave him last week or even the story you just told him.  That way you can gauge just how well he understood it.  Just get him into the habit of digesting and sharing stories.

If only one of these tips work for you then I’m happy.  If they all work, then I know you’ll be happy.   

Before I go.   Chances are it’s a young girl in your life that’s a reluctant reader.  If so I’m sure some, if not all, of these tips will work just as well on her.  Give it a go and let me know how you get on.

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