Author: Mark JW Graham

How do we learn to sing? Well, it comes down to Muscle Memory

Before we get to how to learn to sing, Here is a fab clip from one of my favourite movies, Inception… I’ve set it to start at the relevant bit of the clip:

Remember that explanation of the circular dream creation doodle that Leonardo DiCaprio does, as we’ll come back to it later…

Back to learning to sing

How we learn to sing is an extremely important question. Can anyone learn to sing is also one of THE most asked questions I ever deal with.

Today I want to focus on a certain aspect of that question.

I was teaching a lesson recently with a lovely singer from the local area, and the topic of conversation came around to how quickly they should expect the sound to change. They recognise that when they are in lessons the sound DRAMATICALLY changes, but when they get on stage, they felt like they had slipped back a few places – what is up with that?!

IMPORTANT NOTE:
This is a very valid question and one that needs to get asked – if you don’t feel comfortable asking your teacher why you are where you are, then there’s a problem!

In this singer’s case, he is employed to sing for approximately 8-10 hours a week, if not more. He has also been singing this much every week in the way he always has done for a couple of years at least. What this results in is a level of ingrained muscle memory that we need to strip out and overwrite with new and more *correct* muscle memory. It’s the development of new muscle memory that enables us to depart from the old ways of doing things and become consistent in the new ways of doing things – it’s how we learn.

However, when I am asked this kind of question, it shows (to me) that they need a glimpse of a DRAMATICALLY different “experience” of singing. I don’t mean that in ‘how much experience do they have of singing’, but I mean that in terms of ‘what do they physically experience whilst they are singing’… they really need to experience singing in a way that fundamentally takes them away from what they are used to feeling and hearing, and help them to witness it in a new light. I.e. not just ‘that feels different’, but to recognise how MUCH the feeling differs to their normal experience.

Now this IS what we do with every exercise with the intention of promoting new muscle memory (the only true way of ingraining new behaviour), but sometimes we need a different angle of attack.

Instead of the idea:

Develop new muscle memory –> leads to new experience of singing

We can adopt the approach of:

Give them a new experience of singing –> leads to faster development of muscle memory

It’s circular. Exactly like the analogy in Inception. One side feeds the other, which feeds the other, ad infinitum….

And THAT allows a good voice coach to get RIGHT in the middle of the process and guide it.

I don’t believe you can skip straight to that second approach without a solid level of the first approach, as the tools are far less forgiving on a completely inexperienced or untrained voice, but sometimes what would otherwise be a “quick fix” for a song/difficult passage can provide them with a remarkably different snippet of what the future will hold when they stick at the exercises. that are creating the muscle memory.

The two synergise together in a way that is only fractionally as effective when approached separately.

OK Mark, so what are you trying to say?

I guess what I’m trying to show here is a glimpse into how we have to approach training voices. That it’s not just doing one thing over and over, and it’s not purely about the student receiving from the teacher… it’s about having a dialogue, a two-way street. About having one experience feed another, and to be able to get right into the middle of that to guide the process.

In the above case, by the student raising his concerns and questions, we were able to give him a HUGE shot in the arm for developing his voice.

On top of that, I also wish to point out that even with training it’s normal to see some disparity between what you see in lessons and what you see on stage. It takes time for that muscle memory that is oh-so-controlled in lessons, to manifest in the way you want on stage. It requires both new muscle memory, AND for your body to adopt a new experience of singing to make that the norm.