Be wary of vocal coaches who say they will show you your ‘natural’ voice!

Ask yourself why before you take those ‘voice training for the spoken word’ things to develop your voice. I recommend just learning to sing from a highly skilled coach, even if that makes you uncomfortable. Now, the idea of voice training for actors is a better marketing strategy than trying to convince actors and speakers that they should learn to sing- And I know firsthand, because it worked on me. As an actor, when I was looking at schools to train at, I didn’t want to go to a ‘musical theater’ school- I wanted ACTING training! And, hey, maybe it was the right choice, because then when I found Justin Stoney and New York Vocal Coaching, I had very little ‘bad voice training baggage’ coming in. Rather, I’d had great voice speaking training.

*Justin Stoney, the G.O.A.T. voice teacher, on the news, almost certainly making a fantastic point.*

There’s a huge industry of voice coaching that doesn’t involve singing. From a sales and marketing perspective this totally makes sense; we grow up in such a specialized culture, that if you don’t have any singing ‘talent’ then society doesn’t want you to sing. The industry leader, whos name I won’t mention, used to teach singing, and now primarily teaches non-singing voice technique. And I’ve had fantastic ‘voice for the actor’ type teachers, and everybody is different, and everybody responds to different training. But man, singing lessons do wonders for the speaking voice, and anybody who’s serious about using their voice at a professional level… Get a great singing teacher!

See, in our grandparent’s generation, the majority of people would still sing- in church, at weddings, etc.- just because there was no Netflix and it was something to do. Now it’s become this hyper-specialized thing where if you’re hearing somebody singing you’re probably hearing something super over-produced on the radio, and then perhaps with some form of autotune and pitch correcting software algorythms to top it all off.

SO, what percentage of people are comfortable identifying with themselves as ‘singers’ already? And how many of those folks might still be anxious about sounding good, projecting their voice so everybody hears them, becoming more persuasive, more resonant, more likable, and all of that good stuff, too?

Now what does a smart marketer do? They say “this will train your voice for SPEAKING— No singing necessary, this is for serious people who use their voice professionally”

Boy oh boy, that’s an easier sell!!

A lot of vocal coaches build up rosters of very high paying clients quickly like that.

Meanwhile your humble voice coach over here has got to convince you:

#1 voice training is, in fact, one of the most high-leverage activities you can possibly engage in, and

#2, I’m the best guy for you to learn from, annnnd,

#3 singing is cool and not weird and gonna get you the result you’re after faster and more effectively, and you’re going to avoid massive pain and gain massive pleasure!

So here I am looking for this subcategory of folks who understand the value of developing their voice, like me and want to work with me, and, are willing to do potentially awkward singer’s exercises to get there.

So why do I do it? Masochism? Perhaps- but really just because it works better. It just. Works. Better.

I can’t think of one performer I know who can sing really well in multiple styles whose voice isn’t just heavenly to listen to. Meanwhile… I know a lot of folks who have been in these ‘voice training for the dramatic actor’ classes who have this weird, inflexible, breathy chesty thing going on that ends up putting them on ‘vocal rest’ multiple days a year. They tend to work one register only, and ignore the other registers, so they have hypertrophy and atrophy in different parts of their vocal muscles.

Vocal fry is GREAT if you’ve trained your lower ‘rumble’ register as a singer. It’s WONDERFUL to employ, especially with a microphone.. You get to create drama, intensity, intimacy, and anticipation like the late great Don LaFontaine (aka the ‘In A World’ Guy from all those 90’s action trailers). Or sultry suspense like Marlene Dietrich. If you’re doin it like Kim Kardashian, though, you’re gonna find yourself on ‘vocal rest’ and possibly even dealing with surgery for nodes and polyps. Why? Cuz she’s always working the same damn note! See even in conversation we still speak in notes- in singing these notes tend to hang on one frequency and dance up or down to another note in relation to the first one- but when we talk, hopefully these frequencies of the vocal fold vibrations tend to fluctuate up and down. Lest someone is- literally- monotone.

Anybody who we think of as speaking with ‘vocal fry’ is always ending every sentence on the same damn note- the same frequency. And those vocal sphincter muscles that create that note become hypertrophied (too large) and the ones right around it become atrophied (too weak) to support its usage in a sustainable way over the course of their lifetime.

Imagine going to the gym and working your bicep doing curls up and down only 2 inches, and stacking up more and more weight on that every week. Imagine squatting and only dropping your butt 4 inches and then going back up, and packing on more weight each time. Would that be a good idea? Even if you looked ‘hot?’

Hell no! You’re gonna have a totally unrealistic sense of your strength; you’ll try to pick up a suitcase, get pulled a little out of your strength zone and wind up in the hospital. Your voice is exactly the same. This is not a metaphor; this is not a simile; this is exactly the same. 1:1. If you’re ‘freeing your natural voice’ on an A flat, and your teacher goes, “Wow, you really freed your natural voice there!” Then you’re gonna build this sense of strength and identity around this A-Flat thing, and you’re gonna use that in performance, or giving your big speech, or delivering your sales pitch, and those muscles in your larynx and pharynx and vocal folds are going to develop strength there, and remain weak right above and below it- and you’re gonna be the vocal equivalent of that weirdo at the gym who doesn’t work out with a full range of motion and has weak stabilizer muscles, who keeps getting injured and can’t figure out why.

What happens when you sing with a good voice teacher? EVERYTHING! You learn how to get the the same pitch in a myriad of different ways— Breathy, with twang, high larynx, low larynx, neutral larynx, sliding up, working with staccato down, with different accents and different microphone proximities. Now you’re not that dork taking the same foul shot over and over again, you’re that mobile player in the game who can take it to the net six ways from sunday- Jump shot, three pointer, layup, sky hook, etc.

I think it’s good to be skeptical of anyone who’s promising to help you find your ‘true voice’, your ‘natural voice’. And there’s a lot out there. What does that mean? There’s a term many people are familiar with called ‘falsetto’ which is an old italian opera word for ‘false voice’— Its basically a man’s head voice. What is false about head voice? What do you think of Thom Yorke? Is he faking it? What about Jeff Buckley, do you hear that and think, “wow that sure sounds false.” How bout Regina Spektor? This line of thinking gets into ‘registration’ which is a FASCINATING subject and one that I was wholly ignorant of before a couple of weeks ago— But this is one of those instances where the collective cultural superstition still dominates and the scientific reality suffocates. And your vocal health and quality right now is suffering as a direct result of that misunderstanding.

You might’ve had someone tell you that you’re an ‘alto’ or a ‘tenor’ or a ‘baritone’ or a ‘soprano’ and very likely had some sort of identity crisis about that. “I’m a tenor? That means I’m not very masculine?” “I’m an alto? That means I’m not as pretty and I’ll never be as adorable as Shirley?” And all that for literally no reason. These are terms to describe roles in shows, not to describe human beings, or even their “natural” proclivities. Before the invention of the microphone, yes, perhaps just for the sake of volume it was at one time important to be able to optimize your voice to safely fill an opera house without any assistance- and that meant choosing a narrow range to dominate and sticking with it. But those days are long gone baby! We’re all renaissance singers now- we can all do every style— and we SHOULD if we want to maximize our potential!

No more. We’re all cut from the same cloth!

You have 5 registers and you ought to train all of them if you want to be your best! Not just your breathy dramatic chest voice with a low larynx. Nothing makes that a truer or more natural voice than your highest head note. Nothing. And we’ll get into why you want to train your highest note even if you’re going to be giving the next presentation at tech crunch to a room full of investor bros in 3 piece suits (or whatever the heck artisanal hoodies they’re wearing these days). It’s because your voice has overtones, and if you can hit those high notes your voice will just ‘shimmer’ and cut through even when you’re speaking normally- but we’ll get into that later.

It’s all your natural voice, baby- train the top, train the bottom, train the middle- get comfortable with dynamics and captivate your audience like never before!

Want to become a ‘Voice 10'? First learn to sing.