Can We Really Sing Without ANY Stress?
We all talk about “no stress” when we sing right?
There is really no such thing.
Yep you heard me right, there is really no such thing as “no stress” when we sing. I will reiterate what I said about Robert Lunte’s slogan: “We Are Vocal Athletes”.
This saying could not be more true especially for the rock singer. We manage stress, we don’t eliminate it. In fact; be build strong muscle structures to overcome inevitable stress so that we can manage stress and move beyond that allowing for technique to prevail.
This is true in any sport.
We train for the game (i.e.show) and when we enter the game, nerves alone bring on stress not to mention actually kicking the ball and taking on an opponent. (in the case the opponent could be a drummer who’s cymbals are bashing in your ear inhibiting your ability to hear yourself or bad monitors so if we are not careful we over-sing to compensate for this and blow out 3-4 songs in).
Another thing:
I happen to like to distort my voice. (I also come back and clean it up so that I don’t have to always sing with distortion.) But by nature, distorting the voice is technically “stressing out the chords” to get the desired distortion.
This one element alone is incredibly misunderstood and again if not handled properly will probably cost you your voice over time. Many a men (and women) have gone before you and died trying so I can’t stress the importance of this enough. (I especially love the know it all opera people who e-mail me with their pontificating “you are not singing correctly when you distort your voice like that”…while many are secretly wishing they could sing bluesy soul with some attitude… 🙂
I want to say no sh*t sherlock… It’s what we do…it’s called Rock & Roll! They have NO idea how hard it is to do what we do and still stay alive.
In the end as I said, we train like athletes to perform feats of singing that should be given its own special place in the olympics. We must take very good physical care of our bodies (eating right and working out) to give us the strength and stamina necessary to build the mechanisms required to sustain the kind of singing we like, with the least amount of pain and injury as possible. But again, like any sport, injuries happen because we take chances and push ourselves to our limits. But hopefully we learn from them and become better at what we do.
Therefore, this kind of singing is not the absence of pain, but the management thereof.
