Evaluate, adjust, try again.
Three thoughts for the new year, though not specifically related to new year activities!
January is nearly done, but the year has just begun. According to self-reported statistics, most new year resolutions have by this point failed, but I reiterate, the year has only just begun. Evaluate, adjust, and try again. If your intentions aren’t sticking, ask yourself why that might be? What caused the intention to go amiss? Rather than change intention, adjust the way that you approach it. If you made an intention to practice everyday, and you didn’t set a time of day specifically for the practice, try setting a time, and start again. We all fail, that’s not the issue. The issue is adjusting our approach and starting again.
I’m currently traveling, and was reminded of two concepts, one of which I frequently talk about, and the other, I hadn’t given much practice or thought to in some time.
The first of these is sleep. Traveling, I crossed eight time zones, and took this as an opportunity to adjust my wake-up time to 5am so that I would reliably be able to exercise and practice without interruption each day. To get eight hours of sleep, that means lights out at 9pm. I have been failing miserably at my bedtime, but still wondered why my voice wasn’t performing as I thought it should. Having given some thought (I got there in the end!) to getting by on only six hours of sleep each night, I’m adjusting. Consider carefully how much sleep you get, and if it is serving you and your voice.
The second thought that I was reminded of was the idea of working with what you have. I am fond of a podcast by Bandrew Scott called the BSP. For the last couple of episodes he’s been using a Behringer XM8500 mic. I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up, this mic will cost you about $25 USD. In the realm of microphones, this is extremely inexpensive. Yet, his podcast still sounds good, and he’s indicated that he’s only using stock plug-ins (read: free) and a Behringer UM2 interface (again, very inexpensive, about $40). It isn’t what you have, it’s how you use it. There are dozens of anecdotes about this that I’ve heard over the years, and despite that, it’s easy to fall prey to the latest shiny new plug-in or piece of gear.
On my travels, I purposefully chose to leave behind a lot of gear that I would normally never consider making a video without. This led to some initial low level freaking out, but ultimately resulted in some innovative new additions to my filming. The next set of videos that start coming out on Jan. 24 will have a keyboard at the bottom of the screen that will display the notes and note names as I play them in real time, something that has been requested of me for years. I would never have figured that out had I not imposed some limitations on myself. Limitations foster creativity.
Thank you all for being here!
Do your new year’s plans include support for your singing voice? Consider my course, Breathing for Singing:
https://www.jeffrolka.com/breathing-for-singing
Perhaps you want to expand your range and tackle the ‘break’? I made High Note Bootcamp specifically for that practice. It’s the same technique that I use to teach my private students, and has worked for dozens of vocalists around the world:
https://www.jeffrolka.com/high-note-bootcamp
Each course comes with a free year in my private community, where vocalists post audio and video and get help from me and the community. You don’t have to buy a course to join, however, and get the very same help:
https://www.jeffrolka.com/join_the_community
