A singer's Achilles heel

 Oh no...#voicestrainalert
The moment of realization finally arrived for me. Last week, while I practiced one of my regular voice warm-up exercises, I felt that my voice sounded slightly cracky and strained. I told myself that maybe this slight strain was normal - a normal way to remove my vocal cord cobwebs! Keeping this mindset etched in my mind, I continued my warm-up exercises.

Another moment of truth arrived when I sang my rendition of George Micheal's Monkey. I noticed that while I was singing the song, I was beginning to lose my breath. But once again, I continued singing- as I told myself, what if this was a live performance? Would I stop singing in the middle of the song? If that was the case, all the other performance elements could have been affected (i.e the musicians, the back-up singers and dancers)

I'm sure you've imagined the result of my practice and warm-ups - I strained my voice. Despite this, I continued to sing a few notes and lines of some of my favourite songs - like I usually do. I eventually decided to take a self-imposed vocal rest - I just hummed and mumbled songs. That experience "re-taught" me the significance of listening.

Listen to your body
What I learned from my voice strain experience is that sometimes, we have to listen to our body. We should take a moment to stop a task that may veer us off the road that leads to our goal pursuit. I know, this is easier said than done. But nonethless, I think a pause is a worthwhile pursuit. Who knows, maybe you'll be surprised to savour the insights you gain from taking a 5 second or a 10 minute break. Perhaps during this break-time, you might discover a new angle to pursue along your path of pursuing your goals.

Vocal approach challenge finale

Alas, the last week is here
This is the final week of Christina Aguilera's Singing Masterclass Vocal Approach Challenge. For this week's challenge, we had to record the final version of the song that we were working on for the last three weeks.You can take a listen to the song that I decided to work with for the last week of the challenge here.

(Although we were required to choose one song to work with, I inadvertently worked with a different song). Here a recap of my song selections and renditions:

Week 1 - Funk version of Roberta Flak's Killing Me Softly
Week 2 - The Platters' The Great Pretender
Week 3 - Rock version of The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby

My excitement spilleth over
I'm filled with an unending sense of excitement as I've never participated in a vocal challenge quite like this. I'm grateful for the opportunity as I learned a lot more about the thought process and time involved in creating, modifying and re-conceptualizing a song.

The value of practice, rediscovery and time
As a result of participating in this challenge, I relearned about the significance of the popular saying that constantly reminds us about the importance of continuous practice. I was also reminded about the significance of furthering the development of our skills, passions and interests - especially if we desire to take ourselves to the next level.

I also relearned about the importance of setting aside enough time to try different versions, or a different option of whichever task or challenge we undertake.

I wish you all good luck with whichever task or goal you aspire to achieve. Thank you for taking the time to read about my vocal experience, as well as for listening to my singing voice.

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals" ~ Zig Ziglar