#TheSecretLife Part 20......Finding My Voice

Well I knew this challenge was in the box, but along with parkour, it is one I was dreading drawing out. What  can be as scary as trying to run along walls, with the fear of breaking your legs I hear you ask? A singing lesson! Does that surprise you? Surely Denise, you are musical, you play guitar? Yes, but that doesn't involve singing, in fact it is something I actively shy away from. It wasn't always like this, I used to be in AmDram as a teenager...though to be fair that was mainly because my friend Shirely was, and I loved a good musical party! Most of my time there involved trying to blend into the background singing chorus numbers such as Oklahoma in the safety of a crowd. There was that one time that a few of us reluctantly got pulled into the small group of 'The Melvin P Thorpe Singers' when we did the musical of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but even that descended into melodic chaos and hilarity when we were left to our own devices. My theatre interest then very much focussed on set design and other such behind the scenes activities. But here I was, 30 years (gulp) on from those nervous days and I was feeling even more anxious. My friend Google offered many courses, although a lot of them seemed to be geared towards people looking to improve their technique (err, no), or group classes (I was still sure that I'd get singled out to sing something). But then I found Matt Thompson, who offered every range from beginner, right through to professional. There's a lot to be said for a friendly website, with an equally welcoming face on it. I needed to strike whilst the iron was hot, lest I backed out. Although Matt was fully booked at the weekends, I had some time free on a Wednesday afternoon, and so I was booked in for the very next day. This is going to be a blog that is fairly light on visuals as you can imagine, so here is a shot from that very show mentioned above for amusement value. I am sure my friend Shirley won't mind me posting this, as thankfully the hats hide both of our very dodgy 80s perms!

When I arrived at Matt's flat in a lovely leafy part of Camden, I was greeted warmly with a "Hello Denise, I understand you might be a bit nervous". To which I replied " Well I was, but you have a lovely voice like Gary Barlow, so I feel more relaxed already!" It was true, there is a lot to be said for a regional accent to calm people. I personally always see through this ploy by service providers who transfer you onto a Scot or a Geordie if you start to sound a bit annoyed on a phone call. In fact over the years I have been asked to make difficult work calls for my colleagues for that reason ("Go on, they won't get annoyed at you with your lovely accent"). Anyway, I digress. Matt asked what my background was and what led me to the lesson. I explained that I would like to be able to sing sometimes when I played the guitar, and also that I thought it would improve my public speaking. And of course, I was truthful about my Secret Life mission. It seems that I spend a lot of my time thinking up back stories as to why I want to do things, so that it sounds like I am committed to doing something on an ongoing basis. But then, I knew, that this, like other pursuits would probably not just be a one off. Matt explained how the first lesson would work, how we would go through some scale exercises, and how he would sing along with me until I felt comfortable.I asked the question that apparently everyone asks..."What if I'm tone deaf?"  Apparently this is extremely rare though, only about 1 in 1000 people, he had never met anyone who was. (God, what if I was that person??) Within 5 minutes, we were away, "ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma,ma, ma". There, that wasn't so bad. And up the scale we went. In fact apparently I did quite well. He could already tell quit a lot about my voice - did I ever really belt out songs? No, I replied, well, except maybe for with a group of friends after some wine! We continued with "me, me me" and "mo, mo, mo" and then he asked me to shout "hey!" short and sharp to gauge the volume of my voice. Even though he prepared me before he demonstrated, I still jumped. He sorted that my breathing might be hampering my consistency of voice and so we did some diaphragm based exercises. This was explained really well, as I could draw comparisons with swimming and other exercise based breathing. Next we were going to go up to my 'breaking point' which he explained in a female was usually a high B. Yep, that sounded a bit uncomfortable, and reminded me of how I usually quieten down when I get near this range for fear of scaring people. Apparently though, this was not a bad thing, as I have a good 'chest' voice and a falsetto, but not much of a 'head' voice, which meant I could work to improve the middle section and strenghten my voice. He pointed out that there is a high A which he called 'The Laughing A' as it was usually where female beginners started laughing as it sounded like they were screeching. And yes, that's exactly what happened when I hit that note. As we stayed in the upper range of the scales Matt showed me some distraction techniques using my arm which increased the strength of that high note. Finally, and I can't believe we even got this far on the first lesson, we started to look at learning a song. I must admit I had been thinking of songs that morning in case I was put on the spot  and asked the kind of things that I liked to sing, but there was never any fear of that kind of pressure. Matt gave me a sheet of lyrics which had been written by Skin of Skunk Anansie, a good friend and mentor of his. I love Skunk Anansie and was now even more impressed. The song was called 'Don't Let Me Down' from her solo career. I had never heard it before, and so Matt sang through the first verse a couple of times and asked me to join in when I felt comfortable. Two rounds in and I was off. Another verse and a chorus later and we had learnt half a song. Now you know that at this stage I am NOT going to upload the sound file of me singing, so below is the You Tube link to the wonderful Skin singing the song. (Hmm, of course now I can never let anyone hear me singing it,as to compare to this would be criminal). The hour was very quickly over and yes, you guessed it, I have booked another lesson for next week! Denise has developed yet another hobby. I am just thankful that I am having a break from my shellfish cooking and graffiti painting career, to give me some time. This was such a great experience, leaving me on the same sort of high that paddle boarding did. It pushed me well out of my comfort zone and is very much in the spirit of what the Secret Life is all about!