“To know and not do is to not know.” – Buddha
In fact, I’m not sure if Buddha can take the credit to this quote, or another philosopher. Perhaps it should be attributed to my voice teacher.
Every time I see my voice teacher I tell her she needs to write the book on life.
Some of the greatest gems of life wisdom that I have gained have been profoundly entrenched and ingrained through my body, specifically through my work studying and developing the voice. My voice.
Up and down we run through this nefarious nether region of the voice and connected web of energetic body parts. We trill, we hum, we sigh and squeak and smooth over through registers. We train it to open up higher, to support from the lower, and to co-exist harmoniously somewhere colliding from different angles in the middle. We push, we back off, we perfect it to blend into the ideal conditions of force, support and complete and total allowing.
It’s an amazing sensation to suddenly have the knowing within you of something of which you may have been trying to gain understanding through a book, a seminar, or a workshop.
It is instead understood – for me – through the portal of our voice.
It all makes sense as we – my voice teacher and I – endeavor to achieve and allow the most beautiful of sounds possible on any given day.
Yesterday, as I had my lesson, the deep thought presented itself to be soaked in on one of the Bflats in a phrase of “Bist du bei Mir” by J.S. Bach.
This Bflat presented itself to me amidst many other more interesting notes. It doesn’t sit in a particularly yowza section of my voice, and so it’s tempting for me to back off of it, close it off, squeeze it out, or otherwise not pay it attention.This creates sound problems and overall phrase problems. I don’t get to where I’m going with the resonance and effect I seek.
In an attempt to do the opposite of that, the Bflat received too much attention from me.
As Pam said,
“Don’t bottom out. Keep it tall. It is neither a destination or a stopping point along the way.”
In other words, don’t let its position detract from the point of the phrase, don’t give it too much or too little attention, and keep your focus and position right where it needs to be for the overall goal of the song.
This post was written by
Heather – who has written 72 posts on Heather Hightower.
You are way more musical than you believe.
