Voice Lesson With JC

Foreign. How are we doing today? I hope you're good. I really, really hope that you are doing swell. I'm glad that I'm here. I'm glad that you're here. I know what I know, and I care about you. That's my new greeting as of a few days ago. It's a. It's a mantra that I heard from a person named Mark who led a training that I did this past week in Chicago. So it really resonated with me because it feels very empowering and also feels very grounding, right. For me to be able to say, hey, I'm glad I'm here.

I'm glad you're here. Both those things are very true. Good morning, Jules. Good morning, Shannon. Luke, nice to see y'all today. So I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad you're here. I know what I know, and I care about you. I think that's the heart of contributors here at Cadre, right? We know what we know, and we care about you. Therefore, we take time to hold space, to offer idea, pathway to do the things that we do to create this atmosphere where you see that there's lots of ways to consider how you can feel better, as Shannon likes to say, or how we can be.

Well, you get to make the words. You get to go, huh? Here's how I pick up this thing that I love and care about. So I spend a lot of time teaching voice. And we live in a world where lots of people. I did an Instagram poll a few weeks ago where lots of people don't believe that they are singers. Now, let's define what that means. They're not saying that. That they don't like singing. They're not saying that they don't make. Make money singing. What they're saying is they literally do not have the capacity to sing.

And that may be you. You may go by, yep, I'm one of those people. I don't sing. Hey, Speak wonder. Nice to see you. And funny enough, there's lots of things that we tell ourselves that are not true, and that's one of them. Every single person on this planet can sing. May not like to sing. That can be true. We may not choose to sing. That may be true. But to say I am not capable of singing is not a true statement. Why do so many people say it? Because you grow up in a world being told that you shouldn't sing, that you don't sound good when you sing, or that you literally, literally do not have the capacity to Say we are told that lie, but it's not true.

They did a study on. Since it's not tangential, it's going to sound like it for a second. They did a study on young girls and their capacity to do math. They did another young study on young humans and their capacity to run. In both of these studies, they had this test group that lived the regular life. And then they had this other group that they were affirmed before the age of 10 that they were capable of doing math or capable of doing. Of running. And guess what? If you are affirmed, if you believe that there's capacity to do something by the age of 10, your susceptibility to do it is a lot higher.

For the first time in the history of the United States, when young people in elementary school are told to draw doctors and scientists for the first time, the majority of those photos are of female identifying humans. All of these things are linked together. Our ability to do something is rooted in are we affirmed? Are we. Are we given the curiosity and the playfulness to do this thing? So I wanted to give you a little voice lesson today. Whenever I teach voice, I love asking a lot of questions.

As you may already know, I love asking questions and I always tell my voice students, hey, if it sounds like a positive question, the answer is going to be breath 99% of the time. And if the question sounds negative, the answer 99% of the time is going to be tension, Breath, tension. The act of singing is adding more breath and removing more tension. 9% of the time, the answer is add more breath and remove more tension. And all of a sudden we do this thing better. Let's try it. Can you seal your lips?

Act like you're chewing a big piece of bubble gum and then hum. Keep going. How big can you make this chew? How small can you make it Squeeze your face Small. Keep going. Chew and hum. Raise your chin, Roll out your neck. Last. A really great way to add breath and to remove tension is to minimize a task, right? So you couldn't make words because your mouth was sealed. You couldn't even move your muscles that much because everything was small, was tight, right? The closed mouth and the hum was forcing you to isolate the work in that action.

If you added more breath, it's going to naturally create more space, more Sound, more resonation, more phonation. Phonation, the act of making sound. And if you move bigger, it's going to find areas. Just like if you're getting a massage, if you're stretching, it's going to find areas of tension to release. Now, yes, this was your 60 second voice lesson, but more so. This is applicable to everything. Think about things that you want to do, but you maybe tell yourself you can't. Don't do that. It's not true.

Now again, you may have to make sacrifices. You may have to give time, energy. You may need to wait, you may need to work hard. Yes, but it's not true that you can't do it. Number two, no matter what you're doing, adding more breath, adding more space, adding more fuel. Energy is always the right answer. Removing stress, tension, anxiety, confusion is always the right answer. I love how everything relates to everything else. If you are a person who's lived in a world where you have believed that you cannot sing and you love the idea of music and singing, how about you do yourself the favor today and sing?

Why not? Y'all, let's finish our one minute voice lesson with this exercise. I love to sing. Go. I love to sing. Go. I love to sing. I love to sing. More breath, less tension. I love to sing. Last one. I love to sing. Charge. Y'all have a great Saturday. I will see you from my Mazda bright and early tomorrow. I have rehearsal at 7 7am So I will be on right here at 6:30am Central Standard Time. So roll over in bed, pick up your phone and let's wake up together. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.