Singing is humming with your mouth open

SINGING IS JUST HUMMING WITH YOUR MOUTH OPEN 

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had an experience of singing in front of people that didn’t feel exposing. Whether in a school choir or a church pew. You know what it’s like.  You open your mouth hoping to add to the chorus and a sound that is definitely not your inner Beyonce squawks out.  It is shocking to hear, it feels as if everyone is listening.  It is the opposite of the masked singer.  We are unmasked, humiliated, shamed.  In the worst cases, the choir conductor tells us to ‘just mouth the words.’

I have been a professional singer for 25 years. I have stood in front of audiences of over a thousand, often singing alone without a band.  Recently, I have stood in front of rooms of people and made up songs with them on the spot.  “You are so brave” I am often told “I could never do that”.  

What I realised recently is that I do it because it is the most scary thing. And I, like everyone else am scared, terrified - of being exposed, of not sounding good or worse sounding awful or being out of my comfort zone. But doing it again and again has shown me that if I dive into that fear, even though sometimes it feels like madness, I release something.

The writer Cathy Rentzenbrink and I worked together on a project called “Out of Our Comfort Zones”.  In front of a live audience, she encouraged me to put my words onto the page and I encouraged her to sing.  The audience watched with empathy as she went from a nervous, shaking mess to singing a song from her childhood, “The Bonnie Shoals of Herring” to an energised Jersey Opera House. We realised that we were both facing similar demons.  Her with singing and me with writing. We also realised that the act of doing it was very liberating not just for us but for everyone around us. Showing our vulnerability.

In Cathy’s new book “Write it out”, she talks about how you have to let out all the mess (‘the vomit draft’!) before you can shape it into something. And that mostly, it is the fear of that that blocks people from putting pen to paper. It is the same with anyone learning to sing. I have an excercise called “ugly noises” where I literally invite people to make noises that sound awful. It is very liberating and a way of warming up this instrument (ourselves) that we are all born with - without making exactly the same sound we always make. Secretly, we all want something perfectly formed to emerge immediately. Whether writing, making music, dancing. And yet anyone who has done if for a while will tell you that it is the very act of allowing yourself to ‘makes mistakes’ that moves you forwards, allows you to change.

Whenever I start singing and encourage others to sing with me, I will begin with a hum - a gentle hum. Because anyone can hum. And it’s a nice feeling - humming to yourself, getting the vibration going. It’s good for you, it warms up the soul. And then, quietly, when no-one is looking, I invite you to open your mouth. Hmmm Ahhhh..Hmmmm…ahhhh.

There you go, the sound comes out - you are singing. Sound is just vibration - opening your mouth lets it out. Try it. Listen to yourself. And most importantly don’t judge.

We can’t ‘improve’ the sounds we make unless we are prepared to make horrible ones.  This is the conundrum that every creative person understands.  To play at something, you have to be prepared to not like what comes out, to be exposed - and to move forwards.