Ep.70: Lack Confidence Singing? Experience May Hurt You!
How can you lack confidence singing even though you have sung and performed for years?
How can experience actually be hurting your confidence? Watch and find out!
Lack Confidence Singing? Experience Hurt Me!
I sang as a child in my home. I sang in grade school, junior high and high school. I was in madrigals and concert choir 3 and 4 years respectively.
Our high school madrigals went to Europe and performed everywhere.
We recorded an album!
I had the lead and supporting lead roles in two high school musicals. I was in a university oratorio choir 4 years.
I took voice lessons 2-3 years in high school and a year in college with teachers who had their masters in vocal performance. I loved to sing and perform.
In spite of all this experience my confidence in my voice, as a soloist, grew worse and worse. By the time I was 21 years old I decided to change my major at the university from music to communications, primarily because I felt I could not sing like other good singers.
All this experience did nothing to improve my singing and that hurt my confidence even more!
I could not sing higher than E above Middle C. I was pitchy. I had no vibrato. I didn’t understand my voice and how it worked or was suppose to work.
As a result, I lost confidence because lessons and experience and performing weren’t making me better.
This actually made my confidence worse. It was worse because I thought all the lessons, and singing and performing would make me better.
I felt that I didn’t have the ability to learn how to do it. I believed that I wasn’t physically capable. If I was truly able to learn, wouldn’t my teacher’s be able to help me?
Yes, I became a better musician and performer, but my voice wasn’t getting better. And after 4 teachers, it reinforced the belief that I was the problem. That I was not capable. That I wasn’t born with the natural ability like the others.
Can you relate to how self-defeating it is to experience this? And it’s even worse if this is your first love!
Lack Confidence Singing? It All Changed for Me!
On the other hand, once I learned how to sing through the bridge into my head voice I realized there was nothing wrong with me. It felt like an absolute miracle when I was able to sing one note higher…even if I was pulling chest voice a little bit at first.
Now I can vocalize an octave or more higher, even though I don’t sing that high in a song. Now the high notes in songs don’t seem high at all. They are fun to sing!
My high note as a young man was the E above middle C. Now, it wasn’t necessarily a great E. I could do it about like this. [Demo] Maybe not even that good. But to go to the F was just unheard of. I wouldn’t even try it. So when I was able to sing the F it was just like a miracle.
Now let me show you what I can do. [Demo] Well, that’s the high E above high C! I would have never thought that I could do it. That’s not falsetto by the way, that’s head voice…. connected! [Demo]
The solution to this loss of confidence you may experience even though you have performed a lot is the same as I always recommend.
Please, please, please don’t be discouraged. You can do it!
A great place to start is to learn about your own voice and what you tend to do when you sing.
Go to PowerToSing.com and take the vocal test which I call the PowerTest. Take the quiz and discover your vocal type. Your vocal type is what you tend to do when you sing.
Go to the Knowledge Center and watch the videos about your vocal type.
Download the free exercises and start improving your voice immediately. These exercises are designed to help you get into your head voice with connected vocal cords with ease and confidence.
I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing. You can sing higher with beauty, confidence and power.
I’ll see you inside the next video.
