Dare to be daring, darling (part 1)

Something happened to me in the summer of 2013 in Finland.

In January 2013 after a masterclass with Evelyn Tubb, she suggested to apply for a summer course in Finland, so I applied, got accepted and went there, though every sane reason told me to do the opposite: I went financially broke by that time (even more than any student could be; couldn't pay my rent and the last months of tuition fee at school), and I should have worked through the whole summer including that life-changing week at Sastamala Gregoriana (which I actually did in the end, but for that week I tried to be a musician and not giving a single f*ck about my financial situation). But in the end, with the help of my family I got to Karkku (fortunately I could pay for the course from my master budget), and then - comparing to what I have done this year - I was running around like a poisoned rat: to workshops and from there to the masterclass session, from masterclass to practise and from practise to workshops, and I really tried to keep the meal schedule as well. Tried sauna but didn't really work out for me (this year I figured, I should have jumped in that lake next to the sauna) and got just as stressed out at school. I thought that the time for socializing is a waste of time and I was really thinking I would be able to learn everything there. Now I know I tried way too hard, I pushed myself too much towards knowledge and at the same time because of pushing myself too much I couldn't enjoy the surroundings and the company of the rest of the participants to the fullest. Of course I talked to them, but I couldn't give them the attention they deserved, because I had an unsolved problem with myself, I was restless and I put myself under the pressure of producing good results.

Still, miracolously, I did unexpectedly well on the concert. For the first time I felt that the stage is entirely mine, I have good contact with the instrumentalists performing with me, and they also inspired me very much during the performance (I was singing a solo cantate by Pepusch, When Love's soft passion). Afterwards I've got such compliments I have never even had imagined to get before (now I am getting more and more of them). On top of that Evelyn Tubb told me that even if I didn't do everything as we agreed on the general rehearsal, it was good what I was doing up there (and hearing such a compliment from her prickeled something up in me), but she also said that I will have to work on my technique to support my ideas on stage and that I have to find the singer inside me. The whole week slowly began to make sense and the surroundings cast a spell on me in the last few hours I spent in Karkku. I was crying like a little kid when I had to leave (I think I've scared the sh*t out of Hanna Graeffe, who gave me a lift to the train station). After this rush of emotions a day passed and I understood: I was reborn in Karkku at Sastamala Gregoriana. I had several singing lessons and Alexander technique sessions in Budapest after this summer course and many things just went a bit better. That was the time when I began to experiment and play around with my voice a bit more and truly trying to explore the limits of my vocal abilities. I don't know what exactly have changed, but I wasn't the same person anymore when I returned from Karkku.

I kept on searching for the singer inside me and also my real voice (not the one I imagined I have, but the way it would really sound), and this process started an avalanche of events and now I am here and writing this entry, encouraging all of you to dare to be daring. Of course I have skipped a whole series of things that happened to me, but if you'd ask "Gosh, just what happened to you in the past months?". Well, I would smile a little and my answer would be only this: "Life happened."

Breath yourself free - The Szamosi Approach to Freedom in Singing

In an earlier entry I mentioned Lajos Szamosi's name and I even quoted him about how important is the connection between a free mind and a free voice.
Freedom in singing (in my opinion and according to many) comes from the freedom in your breathing. If your breathing is not free, your voice just cannot be free, because singing is basically speaking in slow-motion on different heights in your vocal-range, with or without rhythm but certainly with some kind of pulse, it depends the style and genre of the piece/song in question. Also, without breathing out you cannot speak, you cannot even produce a sound. The fact that changing the "pitch" during this speaking in slow motion becomes a melody is mostly thanks to a composer's idea and/or the performer's musicality, but melodious phrases or not, singing is still breathing out and nothing more than that. Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Well, it's not, but as a matter of fact we are making it difficult for ourselves.

Before I would go on discussing this, here's this quite famous quote by F. M. Alexander:

"You translate everything - whether physical, mental, or spiritual into muscular tension."

But where does this muscular tension comes from? How does it appears in our body? In order to let the muscles in your body function well, they need oxygen, to which the most basic life support gives a helping hand, and this is breathing. You don't need to think about breathing, neither you need to think about let your heart beat, you just do it. Now... whenever something unexpected or even something expected happen to us - whether it's good or bad - our breathing naturally reacts to it, and mostly it stops for a split of a second. Do you remember when you were a kid and you played hide-and-seek? You might remember that you even held your breath a little while you were hiding in your hide-out. The same happens when you are afraid of something or fear starts to take control over your mind: your breathing changes and your body translates your fears into muscular tension.

On top of this, all of us have the urge and the wish to blend in the society, but this wish doesn't come from our nature, it is rather how our parents raised us. People behave in a certain way because they were told or taught (some even tamed) to behave that certain way. I bet everyone knows the mainstream psychology experiment with the monkeys and the ladder, for those who don't know see this link.

We would like to blend in the society because in the ancient times being alone and being seperated from the tribe meant that you're condemned to death. So the same survival instinct that keeps us breathing actually is also to be "blamed" for making us being afraid of standing alone and stick out from the crowd. I'm not saying that teamwork and society is bad, and I also would like to emphasize that nothing is black and white on this matter. Just as I mentioned in my previous entry: the "goodness" of a result (or in this case anything) depends on the current situation, therefore blending into the society in order to survive is a good attempt, but completely useless at obtaining personal freedom.
Also blending in the society demands you to say no to your yearning for freedom, and answer the expactations of the term "normal" and "usual". Why? Because you would like to belong to the tribe, you don't want to stand alone, you would like to survive. Of course as soon as you discover and taste a little bit of inner personal freedom you realize that these terms are just not applying on your life and those are just patterns you can push yourself to hold onto. The terms mentioned above bring a few other terms along like "beauty", "good", "bad", etc. Norms that shouldn't rule your daily life but give you a decent guideline instead.

The Szamosi Approach to Freedom in Singing aims for freeing yourself from these norms and from the urge to judge every single thing you do. According to Lajos Szamosi (see his biography here) there is no beautiful voice, neither an ugly sound: if the voice is free than it naturally delights the listener (I would say:  beauty in itself is boring, but beauty with content is more valuable than anything). Just like Friedrick Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique, Lajos Szamosi also strove to overcome his own vocal problems, and he actually also succeeded to correct these vocal problems (but in the end he got so passionate about teaching that his carreer didn't matter much anymore in the end). Fun fact: Alexander and Szamosi were each other's contemporaries, but they (as far as I know) never met, still they got to the exact same conclusion while working on their own very similar problems: you can solve your vocal problems by freeing your breath.

A free and smooth airflow brings the necessary amount of oxygen to the muscles, helps to keep your mind clear and as a result the muscles become relaxed, and remain in a relaxed and open state. There's a singing excercize I've learnt a while ago that makes you breath out more and more; as a result you feel dizzy at a certain point (because there's too much oxygen in your blood), and if you go on regardless the dizzyness, you will pass out a little. Recently I picked up this excercize at Heent Prins's lessons and at some point I got frustrated that I got dizzy after each round of this excercize, so I've asked her whether it is possible to get used to exhalate this much, to which her answer was accompanied by a huge nod (like it was so obvious, and it was obvious actually): "Can you get used to it? Yes!"
If you would like to get to know this approach, and you happen to live in The Netherlands, two licenenced teachers of the Szamosi Approach will come here and give a workshop on 6 December 2014 in The Hague. For more info, please click here.