Simultaneously Finding Your Voice... and Peace!

There are a few common traits I find among song writers. I find that most do not like their own voice. I also find, especially among my adult students, a reluctance to experiment, to just "go for it" and try new things as they search for new ways to express their inner feelings, their inner soul. But there is an easily accessible, traditional form of music that you can use to both gain confidence with your voice, and also to help you work on you ability to express your inner feelings using your voice. How do you do this? By chanting.

What is chanting? It is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, usually only a handful of words or syllables. In addition to a small number of words or syllables, chants are also typically characterized by the fact that they only use a few notes, sometimes only one or two notes. Chants also rely heavily on repetition. The words or syllables in the chant are usually repeated over, and over, and over again (for minutes or even hours!). But the importance of chants, for the purposes of working on your voice and your expression, is the focus on simplicity.

First of all, the fact that chants can be spoken or sung, gives you a lot of freedom to work with your voice. And if you are not comfortable with your singing voice at all, you can still make a lot of progress with your speaking voice, gaining a ton of confidence in that aspect of your voice before you try much singing. In particular, even if just speaking, you can still work on rhythm, groove, dynamics, tone, volume, inflection, and many other aspects of your voice. It's just that you don't have to worry about pitch at the moment. And this is great practice for those just trying to learn how to control and manipulate this musical instrument that resides inside your body. And working with chants and your speaking voice should give you the confidence, eventually, to try singing the chants.

The focus on repetition is also important here. Because you are repeating the same phrase over and over again you will become very familiar with breathing patterns that support your voice, volume levels that you are comfortable with and how breathing and volume levels change over time. You can also experiment with subtle changes in your voice. On each repetition, you can change something, to see how it sounds. You can increase your volume, or decrease it. You can change your pitches, depending upon how you feel. You can also change the tempo of the chant, how fast or slow, again, based on how you feel and what best matches your mood at the moment.

But one of the most important aspects of a chant, for the purposes of exploring your voice, is how it allows you to work on your vocal expression. Because chants are typically just a few syllables and are extremely repetitious you cannot rely on a long progression of words to express your emotion. Neither can you rely on any underlying music, because a chant is just you and your voice. The only tools available to manipulate and change the feeling of what you are singing, is by changing certain aspects of your voice: the volume, pitch, dynamics, tempo, etc.

Over the course of just a few minutes of chanting, you will discover interesting things about your voice. As you try various things, new pitches, new volumes, new tempos, you will find areas of comfort and discomfort for your voice. You will hear things you like, and probably things you don't like. But the repetitive nature of chants will allow you to focus more and more on those things that DO work, and avoiding those things that do NOT work for your voice.

Even in the context of "real" songs that I'm in the midst of writing or recording, sometimes I'll struggle with a certain phrase. Maybe the melody doesn't sound right, or the feeling isn't right. To work on this phrase, I'll treat it like a chant, and sing it over and over again. This allows me to concentrate on this one piece of the music, trying different vocal approaches until I find one that fits the current mood and feel. So chants are not just a "beginner" song writing technique. They can benefit the old pro, too.

At this point, you're probably wondering where you can find some chants to work on, what words and notes to sing. You can search the Internet for some, and you will find them. However, what you'll find is that it really doesn't matter for the purposes of improving your song writing craft by working on your voice. To begin working with chants, simply pick a phrase that's meaningful to you, maybe something like "true love never fails". Then simply sing that over and over and over again, with whatever notes seem natural to you. As you chant this, with each repetition, try new things with your voice (as outlined above). Change notes, hold those notes for different lengths of time, try it loud and soft, just keep changing various aspects of it as you carefully listen and evaluate your voice. Chanting is truly this simple.

Before I set you free, to go off and try your own chants, you should know that chants have deep roots in various spiritual and religious disciplines around the world. I mention this because you can likely find some chants that are EXTREMELY meaningful to you from the perspective of your own spirituality. So one of the most beneficial side effects of working with chants, is that you can likely find words or syllables to work with that will tap into your spirituality at the same time you work on your voice. And what a great concept...to work on your voice and simultaneously find some spiritual peace.

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