Could not enoughness be driving our need to seek out more singing content?
I recently did a poll on my Instagram stories and asked if my followers watched “how to belt” videos on their feed. 67 percent said they do.
Then I got even more curious and asked, “When you’re going for a high note and you have to belt it out, what do you do?”
88 percent of my following take singing lessons and practice regularly (phew), and 12 percent said they learned their skill through social media (yikes).
Not going to lie, that 12 percent worries me a little.
My question is, what are we searching for? Why are we searching for more? Is it out of genuine curiosity, or is it coming from a place of lack?
If you’ve ever been down the rabbit hole of singing instruction videos, you’ll encounter some wild but possibly well-intended content. At times it can be very loud and misleading, and sometimes incorrect from a physiological, evidence-based standpoint. Does everything need to be evidence-based? No. But I’ll save that topic for another day.
Usually, what you’re seeing in short form content is a snapshot, not the big picture. There may be a trained singer with a teacher showing ‘what not to do’ vs ‘what to do,’ but in reality that kind of adjustment may take weeks or even months of consistent practice and training from an expert. Instead, it gets presented as a DIY quick fix.
Yes, sometimes quick adjustments happen and they can stick. But in reality, training for singing is a process and it’s sequential. It’s not one and done, boom your voice is fixed.
The truth is, most untrained singers, or singers still in training, don’t have as many choices to make their sound more “mixy” or more “belty” because they don’t yet have the groundwork to experiment with sound options. They need time and repetition to build that mix configuration that is going to be the framework for them to belt.
So if you’re wanting to improve your belt and are online shopping for more, a good technical question to ask yourself may be: “Is my foundation safe and consistent enough for me to lean into?”
And by the way, you can’t necessarily fix registration issues by excessively dropping your jaw, doing a squat, “sending the sound” out with your hand, and using excessive loudness. So careful what tips you apply.
When we rely on quick tips and DIY content, we move away from looking at the voice as a whole coordinated system and begin relying on fixing sound vs working with physiology. Remember, sound is subjective, sound is the outcome, not the set up.
And more tea…we don’t have as many sound options if we aren’t already trained. If the underlying mechanism isn’t coordinated and maintained as you sing from bottom to top and you’re not bridging, you’ll get very frustrated with sound experimentation.
Which leads me to this profound question:
How can you tell if not enoughness is driving you, and why should you be concerned?
If any of these show up: dissatisfaction, comparison, frustration.
If you are shopping for more instead of doing the work that is already in front of you, for example practicing your lesson recording or taking online singing lessons or in-person singing lessons.
When the foundation is strong, you don’t need more. You just keep building from that.
If anyone hasn’t told you today let me remind you: Your voice is already enough. You are already enough.
If you’d like to improve, you can and you will. But careful, rabbit holes can become distractions that move your goal posts.
