Meet Your Voice
Meet Your Voice is a package of five lessons I’m offering to introduce people to an aspect of themselves waiting to be released. Your singing self! I know when I started singing back in high school (or should I say, waaaaay back in high school) I didn’t know what I had inside me. I didn’t even identify with it - when I discovered it, it was kind of a goof. I’d thought the kids who sang were somehow more wholesome than I considered myself to be. I think many people have stories they tell themselves about who sings,and who doesn’t. In my case, I was imitating a friend who had a classical sounding soprano and she said “you should join the chorus”… I’m glad something inside took her seriously enough to say “really?”. I did join the chorus. Fast forward to today, after a life time of singing and working with people privately on their voice for nine years, I’ve seen how vocalism transforms peoples lives, their idea of what they are capable of, and how it makes music a focus in their lives. That is what happened for me when I started singing so I recognize it when I see it. And now introducing people to this aspect of themselves has become one of my life’s passions.
As a veteran NYC subway rider (I’ve logged so many hours on the trains here, it might add up to ten years) I have often looked across from my seat and wondered about the the voice of the person I saw facing me. Just looking at their face, I’d try to guess what would they sound like. It’s likely that many people have no idea of the beautiful ringing sound they possess in their bodies. The only person who can make that particular sound is them.
Some people might say to this “oh not me — you won’t hear any beautiful ringing sounds from me”… or “I’m tone deaf”. In the nine years I’ve been working with people on their singing and voice, I haven’t heard one ugly voice, or met one tone deaf person. Hearing pitches and repeating them back is a habitual thing - when we start in with this work, you learn to relax the inner judge and allow yourself to truly hear a pitch. The inner judge thinks it’s helping, but it’s actually the thing getting in the way of hearing! Likewise for the inner judge that says “I sound bad”. When people learn to love their own individual sound, they release it freely and what sounded hard, or constrained, even pained, transforms into something truly beautiful. You’ve learned a part of yourself you never realized you had. This can be surprising to the person who has lived say, 68 years in a body and never knew their own sound. You think you know everything about yourself by then. That’s what the “Meet Your Voice” package is about here.
What to expect:
You will learn what the actual physics of making sound entails in an experiential way. We will do this while learning some very simple exercises I have culled from many voice teachers I have had throughout my career. Although they are simple, they still might seem challenging at first - until it becomes clear that the challenge is actually allowing things to be easy! We will also work with the early exercises from the Vaccai Method, in order to introduce you to some simple classical concepts, that are fun to play with and discover. Around the third lesson we will integrate a simple song that you’d enjoy singing and we apply the concepts we are learning to that. After five lessons, I know you will have a better idea of the singer inside you and how to let it out. Meeting your own singing voice demystifies the world of music to the musical outsider. From there, many students either choose to continue their vocal studies, and/or take up other instruments where they can accompany themselves. Their life becomes so much larger with music.
So, that’s the story - if you are curious about meeting your voice, send an email to debkarpel@gmail.com and we can arrange a time to speak on the phone!