Singing Is Just Making Weird Noises: The Power of Removing Emotional Attachment From Your Voice

By Jenna Pastuszek

Imagine this: an alien lands on Earth and asks you to explain singing. It asks you how to decide  when something is good/pretty/beautiful/stylistically correct. Where would you even start? 

It’s a can of worms, right? I mean, think about it, the way we’d describe beautiful or optimal  sound making would involve a lot of personal bias and taste! 

What if, instead of panicking about whether or not every single sound that we produced was  “pretty”, we eliminated our emotional attachment and decided that singing is just making  weird noises on pitch? 

We all have an individual vocal bag of tricks. Instead of worrying that we’ve made a “BAD” or  “WRONG” sound (aside from if it’s painful- if it’s painful, stop and see a teacher or an ENT),  consider that singing might just be like home improvement. Sometimes, you’re trying to  decipher the wordless IKEA manual, and you pull out a wrench when really you need a hammer.  It’s the same for singing. Sometimes we hit a note with a full throttle belt when a round head  dominant mix might give us more of the stylistic bang for our buck that we’re seeking. 

Our throat is also our emotional chakra. If we’re worried about all of the sounds we’re making,  our chakra is closed, our throat is tight, and our anxiety is through the roof. And on the  physiology side of things, if we’re experiencing anxiety, our false vocal folds are constricted, the  strap muscles in our neck are turned on, and our jaw is tight and tense. None of this makes for  easy singing! 

Let’s remove the emotional attachment from our singing and instead seek to simply pull out the  necessary tools as we construct our vocal furniture.  

It will not only free up your instrument, your mind, and your auditions, but it will also save your  relationship with your roommate.