Do You Wish You Could Sing?

So you really do wish you could sing? How sad. Because you are wishing for something that is already yours. Really. It’s part of the package—your package, that is.

Leonard Sweet enlightened me on this point. I think of Dr. Sweet as this spiritual guru. He’s deep, biblically deep, great to listen to, great to read. Anyway, he shows how scientists who revel in the human body and all it is, will tell you that we are all a mass of vibrating particles. This means that each of us has a sound, our own sound, that we emit as long as we are alive. So, you have a song you sing—or hum—and you have since you were born.

Dr. Music enlightened me on this point. I think of Dr. Music as the man who first taught my heart how to sing. I had quit my job as a pastor, taken up writing and music, and found myself knocking on his door asking for lessons. I call him Dr. Music because he was about the whole package, not just technique. It was his person. Maybe it’s because he was in his 70s when I studied under him. At that age, the truth just oozes out everywhere.

From Tone Deaf to In Tune

One day Dr. Music’s told me his story. He was in fifth grade and wanted to take voices lessons. His grandma hauled him down to the voice teacher in town. The teacher said, “Don’t waste your money, or my time; he is stone cold tone deaf.” Well, providence intervened and lucky for him, a friend gave his grandma on old upright piano. All summer he practiced listening to tones. He’d play “C” and then sing it, play it, sing it, play it, sing it. He’d do this for hours on end.

To make a long story short, by his senior year in high school, Dr. Music won state championships singing as soloist with his school choir. Eventually he played piano and sang in New York, and was subsequently discovered by a rich family who sent him—with full scholarship and all—to Julliard. And amazingly, he ultimately landed on Broadway, singing in front of thousands for a career that spanned 30 years!

Finally, my vocal cords enlightened me on this point. I am hard-wired with muscles, little ones and big ones. Nobody sits in their recliner, sipping a soda and watching re-runs of Happy Days, and then laments that they sure wish they could jog, run, play tennis or get on a soccer team (ok, maybe some do, but we’d all agree they’ve got big denial issues). Why is this? Anyone CAN do all those things if he simply works and develops their muscles.

Train Your Vocal Cords

My little vocal cords, possibly the smallest of all the muscles in my body, are just that, muscles. They can be trained, toned, built up, and even stretched. Just as doing squats gets my thighs taut for a game of soccer, vocal exercise conditions my voice so I can sing.

I have known many people who “cannot” sing—not true. They “cannot” hold a tune—sorry, that can be learned. They “cannot” control the sound that comes out—well, actually vocal mastery is just a boatload of practice—repetition being the mother of brilliance and all. And finally, maybe most of all, I’ve heard the “I don’t sound good” complaint—which, of course, is true if they’ve never ever trained, and begun utilizing their amazing vocal cord muscles.

So why try and enlighten you on this point? At most, so that you will get out there and believe the truth about singing and quit wishing—and sing out your talent to all of us. And finally, I’m sharing this so you will quit perpetuating the lie that some people can’t sing.

If you don’t want to sing, that’s fine. You can now at least admit to yourself that you don’t want to do the work and that it doesn’t matter that much to you. This will do wonders for you, mostly because you will no longer be posturing like that helpless victim of voicelessness that you’re not.

If you enjoyed this, you may like, Harsh Feedback | Can Anyone Learn to Sing?

Clarissa Worley Sproul write from the Pacific Northwest. 

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