NATURAL VOICE - THE DIVINE VOICE - THE VOICE OF SINGING IN MY PERSPECTIVE - sudhanshu

GOOD DAY TO YOU ALL !!

MY PUNCH LINE –

THERE SHOULD BE

A VOICE TEACHER

OR

THE VOICE CRAFTER –

FOR EVERY HUMAN VOICE ON EARTH !!

VOICE IS THE SOUL OF HUMAN LIFE !!

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Becoming and being a singer is an incredibly humongous and arduous task. Though a good voice is a simple voice. But simplicity is often the most complex endeavor since it requires suppressing and forfeiting all other options in the sole pursuit of just being.

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Listeners may not be able to articulate the particular reasons why, they like a particular voice but they commonly have emotional experiences that are alike when a vocalist “sings ” for them.

I believe having a strong, genetically granted voice in no way guarantees that one can sing convincingly and beautifully. In the end, the thorax is just another piece of gear. What matters is how it is used. And the lungs are nothing if not the original “wind instrument.”

Even the most reserved among us speak daily, but often we practice and/or are encouraged to not express our true feelings—to keep a stiff upper lip or put a smile on our face—especially in business environments. And this is tragic.

All language speakers must act as composers and poetry is the bridge from their words to song.

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Emotions and meaning are carried on our breath, literally on what sustains our life. And almost all musical phrases fall within and are limited by the parameters of the lungs’ capacity (i.e., ranging from two to twenty-plus seconds in most cases). Words represent only the surface of the voice, which comes from somewhere deeper and gives rise to greater dimension than mere text in black-and-white.

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Yesterday I was thinking that air travels around the room at about the same velocity as bullets do (approximately 720 mph). And sound travels even more quickly through solids (i.e., us) than air. You cannot outrun a drum.

Today I was reflecting when hearing Pandit Jasraj – Raag Bharvi – that though we are made of matter—and so are our brains—our soul and mind exist only through process, in action. They literally cannot be contained physically.

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With the coming of technology not only technology but CNC ( computerised numerical controlled) musical instruments, we the people as listeners for the first time began to be exposed to voices that were uncoupled from time and place. Previously, one could only ever witness a small bank of voices and never ones that were not somewhere within our immediate presence, within “shouting distance,” as it were. Somewhat paradoxically, the voices during that time often were more greatly varied versus the creeping homogenization we find today. And the extent of one’s vocal reach was limited almost entirely by the powers of the human voice, contained in real time.

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But today, we can choose our own ghosts, and with music we rarely hear original sounds emanating instead by things that are replayed.

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In discussion with a American Vocalist I stated that - It is an increasing rarity that someone is able to speak with their own voice, outside the echoing maze of their influences. More and more people have lost their – what I call - acoustic identity. Human speech—which was once signatory and as individualized as fingerprints—liquifies into a generalized male/female mush (and, even that gets muddier with the popularization of androgyny).

We have lost the sweet spontaneity of the singer and the musician – not only this in fact, in many TV shows today – to me it seems ( when I look at the body language of the speakers ) interactions play out as scripted conversational exchanges, very much like replays of television reruns. Far too many seem as if they are providing a voice-over to their own life, as if they aren’t even actually there.

Magic is in simple spontaneous singing - Over-singing is a plight known almost exclusively to cultures where performance is artificially divided from audience, a schism which is enforced for economic reasons. This power structure puts the majority in the passive position where they cannot possess magic intrinsically, but only rent it vicariously and temporarily from another more active and societally identified superior being. There are voices within voices – artificial covering the natural. And in these covered voices the beauty of the natural voice is lost.

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Structured performance leads to competition: the drive to be “good,” correct, or better than. An artificially rigid system provides contest as the primary path to gaining those precious few coveted slots, the rare places where one literally has a voice and is heard. This competitiveness then leads to cementing in place things that were initially arbitrary measurements, as is exemplified by adolescent-male music culture, where being heaviest, faster, and loudest are key. (And, showing weakness of any kind is the ultimate offense.)

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Ethical behavior has been defined by virtually every philosopher throughout time as doing the same thing regardless of whether or not there is an audience, no matter what the punishments or rewards. To not be wavered by environmental factors, but instead, remain consistent. Art, at its most realized, should do the same.

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GREAT SINGERS RATHER THAN “MAKING” A SOUND, LIBERATE IT AND THEN PLAY WITH IT. THE SOUND COMES FROM WITHIN, NOT OUTSIDE THEM.

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A famous music director NAUSHAD sahib told me 25 yrs ago when he came to Lucknow ( my home towm) when he came for concert - that a good musician allows the tone to occur, rather than endeavoring to manipulate it. It is something similar to what a sculptor does whose goal is to free a preexisting image by removing only what shouldn’t have been there in the first place amid the form—the excess, surrounding and obscuring it—so all that remains is the finished piece that was previously trapped inside each particular block of stone.

Rather than trying to “sound natural,” stellar vocalists are natural.

WHY CAN’T THE ART SIMPLY BE – INSTEAD OF BECOMING SOMETHING.

BECOMING HAS RUINED THE WORLD IN ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE.

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Do you know why ??? BECOMING EMANATES FROM EGO – EGO MALIGNS THE NATURE OR THE NATURAL IN YOU.

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Instead of trying to be something, it is better to simply be. This is why untrained but gifted actors (often children or animals) sometimes give more believable performances on film, outshining their multimillion-dollar costars.

Today - Subjectivity is found in the suppression of emotion, not its true expression, which is instead universal—a genuine smile or tears are understood unequivocally. But caution is required, since revelation is a world apart from the needy exhibitionism it is often confused with.

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Revealing is about having the courage to drop our facade(s).

Vocal basics are to relax your body, open your throat (more necessarily than your mouth) so that there is a clear channel from the lungs upward, and then breathe.

Consequently, it is mystifying and ironic how a paradigm that restricts and interrupts expression and stimulates bodily tension has become dominant.

I have seen the most powerful singers aspire for their entire skeleton to act as a resonator, and to feel themselves not just grounded, but drawing energy from the ground (or even far beneath the ground, by being rooted to the earth). Instead, the dead giveaway of immature singing is when people force their voice into the nose, up high, in an effort to fake tone by using their sinuses like a distortion-pedal. Not coincidentally, I have seen and observed that less authentic tones of laughter are more nasal—whereas our involuntary belly-laughs never come through the nose, at all.

Paradoxically, often artists are at their most true when they speak with their other voice. A singer who doesn’t consider himself a “good” guitar player or the drummer who is not a singer, may actually find greater expression on those instruments due to the deliverance from their own ego and practiced patterns, whereby the new instrument acts as some sort of prosthesis. Similarly, when people sing phonetically in a language that they aren’t fluent in, they often give their most spot-on interpretations.

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Greats masters of every field or ART feel that their intuition becomes correct and strong by getting freed from logic.

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The contrast of the two styles – THE MODERN and THE TRADITIONAL NATURAL I noticed in a 83 year old jazz legend, Roy Haynes, appearing with an overly reverent, undercooked band. with more than an hour of languidness, he suddenly let loose a solo, using only the parts of the drum-kit that you are not supposed to play. And it was as if a wrongly accused man had come uncuffed. And the contrast was in one of the most tortuous vocals imaginable was sung by Eddie Harris through his saxophone on “I Don’t Want Nobody.”

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I philosophize a lot – the philosopher in me fails to die as a powerful witness of my every experience. And that philosopher observed that we are better at what we disown and are most disinterested in. We maybe “can’t help it” and sometimes simply are good at something—instead of wanting to be (i.e., literally “wannabes”)—and are unable to stop not being able. The rash of famous and skilled actors who try to hustle their own subpar bands—the projects that they claim are their true passion—exemplify a form of this.

Technique often insulates us from the heart and takes over from the soul, when instead “remembering to forget” is what is more often needed.

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MUCH LOVE

sudhanshu