Vocal “Virginity”...? Vocally... so to speak... Breaking Through? Revolutionary Approach to Vocal Maturity!

"Italy's Singing Nun Channels Madonna, Releases 'Like a Virgin' Cover"

As I mentioned before, providing vocal services of all sorts for over four decades, I think I’ve seen it all and pretty much dealt with it all. However, the title (which speaks for itself) is even for me, still remains to be quite outrageous. 

First of all, you my reader, may ask: 'What I mean by vocal “virginity”'? 

To answer that question with more clarity, I will give you an example of a dancer who desperately wants to perform on stage, but has, so to speak, bad feet (flat feet with no arch), and also very tight hips, whereby the perfect turn out of the dancer’s body is very hard to achieve. 

The above two components are crucial to the dance profession, even on an amateur or semi-professional level, let alone on a professional level. Similarly, I am receiving potential students with, at the glance, a very small mouth opening, very tight throats and quite disproportional bodies. Those components for the singer, or singer to be, are also crucial. 

If you look to well known singers like Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger, the late Whitney Houston, even Jesse J, for that matter, due to their quite large mouth openings and, no doubts, throat openings, they have a much easier time to produce sound than even, I believe, Celine Dion. Luckily for her, though, she obviously has a quite sufficient inner opening, which compensates a lot for her not very 'well endowed' mouth. 

So, as you could probably already guess, if you have a big mouth (no pun intended) a quite wide opening in your throat, and proportionally fit body, you are already ahead of the game. Those components identify your, so to speak, vocal “instrument”. 

The student I recently received was a complete beginner, but desperately wanted to sing in her church. 

I said, “No problem. Let’s go.”

And our journey started quite successfully, but somewhere close to 7-8 hours of instruction, I understood that it’s not an ordinary case of just vocal training I should have offered in this case. By this wonderful female student of mine’s reciprocation, I understood that perhaps she has some kind of an obstacle on the outer and especially on the inner side of her vocal anatomy. 

She simply did not have a “throat”. Like the ballet dancers would use the term “bad feet” or “no feet” - meaning as far as dancing is concerned. 

Needless to say, my client’s speech was also very faint and the words that came out from her were very 'tight' and, so to speak, closed in. I kind of overlooked it at the beginning of our journey, as I got excited to attend to such a wonderful and Godly human being in my studio. 

Now, looking back, I should have suggested to start with the speech and speech development only and not to touch anything vocally until at least the next 10 or 20 hours. I also should have started with the natural herbs and remedies, which I know for a fact, would strengthen her vocal anatomy and thus, hopefully would open up the passage through which the voice would be traveling out of her mouth and body. In this case, it would be a perfect protocol to prepare, stretch and strengthen the vocal anatomy to the max, and make it strong and flexible enough, so it could withstand the proper sound. Then, as usual, I would lift that sound off of the vocal box and restructure it in the set of the facial muscles, which, by themselves, would strengthen the sound, minimum to say, quadruple times over, provided though, that the facial muscles would be working in full conjunction and coordination with the (strengthend by that time) abdominal muscles.

Due to the recession, every potential client gives me a “song and dance” about how poor they are and how they cannot afford anything and thus, respectively, if they go for it, they want everything to be done in the “nick of time”. 

Sometimes it is possible, but definitely not always. 

If I receive a talented and mentally sound student, with the perfect anatomy and physiology, I could do it in 10 or even less hours, and as an outcome, deliver the miracle. 

Those who do require either voice repair, vocal box repair, anatomy and physiology restructure and balance, have to understand that my offer in its nature is already a miracle, as I am actually ready to attempt, and no doubts to succeed, in a very hard and complicated case, such as described above. So they, in turn, have to be prepared to pay (stress pay) their dues, in a figurative and in a real understanding of that word. 

To the credit of my yet vocally inadequate client, she committed herself for 30 hours at once and not only gladly paid for it, but said thank you that I accepted it. 

It was me, being conditioned that everybody is busy counting their loonies, toonies or whichever currency they had been paying with, tried to speed up the process instead of looking at it in more detail and take it rather slower, as less sometimes is definitely more. 

So, our journey will continue when my client returns from her vacation. Now knowing what I know, the success of our mutual venture is inevitable. I caught myself, that I succumbed to the poverty mentality of my overall clients. Nevertheless, it will never prosper them, but in this case, it somehow caught up with me.

On this note, I should say that, in my opinion, instead of thinking of the money and not of their successful goal, they should persevere without doubts and with whichever reasonable cost they can afford.