Hi Amy and Leslie -
I can so relate to what you are saying about fear of high notes, and also
about being able to vocalize up there, but then when it comes time to sing a
song with words, forget about it! I have just come out of a period where I
got myself terrified of singing actual songs - I just vocalized at home, and
in my lesson, because it felt so horrible to try to sing a song and I just
couldn't do it as soon as it goes above an E !! I have been struggling with
this problem for months, and have just started to make strides in fixing it.
I had made a self-discovery recently of how much self-consciousness and
self-criticism I really carry around with me, all day, every day. After I
realized this, and I started to drop that self-criticism in the rest of my
life, it really stood out to me that this fearfulness was rampant in my
singing.
I came to isolate the problem as self-doubt and fear, and overthinking as
well. I realized that I constantly berated and belittled myself as a
singer, to myself and to others, and some big part of me felt that I
couldn't really do it. Somehow I had the idea that others could do it, but
it was some impossible mystery for me to actually do it!
So, there were a couple things I did. First, I stopped berating myself when
I did something that probably sounded off or bad. In fact, I stopped
berating myself at all as a singer, and started taking myself seriously as a
singer instead of thinking of myself as some dumb pretender who couldn't
really do it right. I used to kind of laugh embarassedly and clear my
throat when I did something wrong, and I would feel kind of dumb and wonder
if anyone heard me. When my boyfriend pointed out to me that I was doing
that, I just stopped that behavior cold! That kind of thinking and feeling
is lethal!
Second, I started to sing by feel instead of by hearing and thinking. I
used to listen to what my teacher told me, and kind of shuffle it around in
my brain, and try to get my brain to tell my body what to do (if that makes
any sense), then listen to my voice to see if it was working. Well, all
that did was succeed in keeping me "in my head", and not connected to my
body. So, I started just singing by feel, and not listening. Surprise! I
can finally do the thing that felt so impossible to me 2 weeks ago, which is
to *open my throat*! And amazingly, I am singing easily through spots that
would make me tighten up and cough before (i.e. the break). Last night I
sang right through my break without it even feeling any different than the
rest of the notes! WOW!
The high notes are not fully free yet, but it is a huge difference from what
I had going on before. Now I am actually *singing* them, as opposed to
squeaking, choking, and mangling them! I will be auditioning for the music
department at San Francisco State on May 11, and I think I will be finally
ready! I think a lot of this is just believing that I could actually do
it - the rest flows out from there!
Hope this was of some help!
Singingly,
Karena Aslanian
San Francisco, CA
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