Dear singers,

I've had some really amazing voice lessons this week, some in the teacher position and some as the student.

There have been lots of breakthroughs, often more than one in a single lesson!

And with breakthroughs, there have almost always been frustrations.

Why?

Because it is hard to apply a new idea all the time, even if it is simple.

And it's even harder to apply more than one new idea all the time.

This is really frustrating to all my brainy, successful students.

(And to me.)

Today's first lesson was a great example - during our warm-ups, the singer I was working with breathed into her back for the first time AND stopped craning her chin forward.

She did each of these things in a separate warm-up, very successfully.

She was thrilled, and so was I.

Then we tried to apply them in a song, and it was a MESS.

She took a great back breath on the first phrase and her chin came forward. Then she adjusted her chin and took a shallow gasping breath. Then she took a beautiful breath and missed her next entrance.

And so on.

She was furious!

So I asked her if she had ever changed a tire on a car.

She hadn't.

Have you?

Here's how it works: When tightening lug nuts, you can't tighten one all the way and then move to the next - your tire will end up crookedy.

So you go around, tightening each one a weensy bit each time, til they're all tight and your tire is on.

But until that tire is all the way on, ALL the lug nuts are a little loose.

It's the same with assembling IKEA furniture!

You have to put all the bolts in place and then move around this teetering, constantly collapsing proto-bookcase, tightening each bolt a little at a time, til it starts to stand on its own and then, voilà, it's a standing piece of furniture.

But until it's all the way together, every tightened bolt seems to misalign all the others.

This is what it feels like to improve your singing!

It is not a linear process in which skills accumulate one on another, but rather a wonderful infuriating tangle in which every thread pulls all the others.

So if you try something new, and it's hard to get it to work all the time, OR if your new thing seems to destabilize all the things you thought you were doing right, please, please, please don't give up on it.

Just know that your bookcase might fall down a few times as you try to tighten that new bolt and re-do the old ones.

Keep going around that tire!

Big wobbly hugs,

Laura