Voice Journal #1

In this journal, I track not just my learning within TS2240, but also my singing lessons as well as my private practice. For the convenience of my readers (and possibly teachers), I will do my best to indicate where and how I had arrived at my position. However, because the topic ultimately boils down to the same set of pipes, the reflections will invariably overlap or intersect. In such cases, please feel free to approach me for clarification on Instagram (@jadeowofficial).

Today marks my second session at TS2240 Voice Studies and Production, as well as the first time since summer began where I am not taking any voice lessons for the week. As a result, I spent the morning focusing on voice and speech, while addressing some of the areas that I tend to lag behind in. One of my biggest struggles is the high frequency sounds which I continue to mangle. Voice lessons have been useful in teaching me that I need to place my tongue in contact behind my alveolar ridge in order to make the 's' sound, but it seems that I still have a diminished 's' and 'sh' sound which is deeply troubling, so that is one area that I would continue to work on.

During the lecture (which honestly feels more like a tutorial at times because of how interactive it is), I learned that much of our speech is influenced by who we listen to - parents, teachers, politicians, celebrities. What we hear in our daily lives form the cultural imprint behind how we speak as an individual - which I understood on some level, but when Noorlinah asked, "How many teachers in your entire schooling life spoke to you in a lyrical voice?" That's when I went. Oh. It's the Singaporean staccato. I was so used to listening to everyone speak in a particular way that I really never questioned our accent until I started musical theatre, and we had to be aware of the way we talked and sang on stage. Indeed, as our professor went on to say, it does not matter if we used a British accent or an American accent, what matters is that we are aware of and able to modulate our speech appropriately for various contexts.

Some of the factors which influence our speech, apart from cultural and social environments, include our ability to hear, our posture, and more surprisingly, our mindset. The voice is so intrinsically linked to how we feel about it and our selves that the slightest presence of self consciousness would introduce tension into our muscles. As a result, the voice is a fragile ecosystem that must be built up both physiologically and psychologically to create an ideal environment for vocal freedom. All this was somewhat worrying to me as I knew I have certain physical shortcomings which may not be resolved in this lifetime.

In fact, some of those said physical shortcomings have led to me feeling like an impostor among all those gifted performers sometimes - as if it is only a matter of time before everyone susses out the singing actor who cannot hear. I myself understand the irony of being here, and in an industry as unforgiving as this one, I am faced with the dilemma of concealing what I do not have, and embracing my identity as a disabled performer. I hate that it's not something where I can just say - "Anything they can do, I can do too" - because then I would be delusional. I know, obviously, that as an actor with congenital hearing loss, I am several degrees less perceptive than the average human being, let alone a trained performer who sees, hears and reacts on stage for a living. Nothing I say or do would change that fact. However, despite this, I believe that for what I cannot change, I can at least try.

That is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to the basics during singing practice. Having spent so many years picking up habits - like a lisp, or tongue retraction, and the shape of my teeth in the past did not help - I am effectively relearning speech while expecting myself to emerge as a professional in short order. Pragmatism in my case is to acknowledge that nothing I do is easy, and the results will take an agonizingly long period of time to manifest, but it is also steeling myself to stay on for the ride and to see it through to the end. In terms of my voice, that means constantly targeting the areas which I am weak at and confronting it no matter how uncomfortable and mortifying it can get. 

For today's independent practice, I adopted a slightly more diagnostic approach. I sang through one of my go-to songs (take a guess), and then I dissected it. What sounded good? What did not? Was I lacking in connecting my consonants? That was an early mistake that I made, and I did my best to correct it as quickly as I could. I realized that if I could not hear how I was speaking, I could rely on my sense of touch within my mouth to pinpoint if I am hitting the right sounds. Interestingly, when I was more sure of what sounds to make, I could set up the space in my vocal cavity more efficiently and that led to a more confident and stronger sound. In that way, I realized that this leads back to what Noorlinah said about the voice too - the combination of awareness, flow and confidence really does lead to incredible improvements in voice production.