Once upon a time, there was a young girl who loved to sing. She sang all her life growing up. In church, in school choirs, in musicals, and when she was old enough, in voice lessons. Her teachers proved to her that she was a high soprano and this young girl loved working her range higher and higher and singing lovely loftly melodies that were beautiful and high. She was a soprano, and though she knew how to sing harmonies, the girl was taught that she should focus on her upper-register, because her passagio was in the belting area. So focus on singing high she did.
Then the young girl moved to Florida with her family. She began attending a performing arts high school and sang in the choir there, as well as continuing to sing in shows and anytime she could. She would take voice lessons here and there, jumping from teacher to teacher, but keeping her vocal chords in tip top condition. The girl realized her dream of performing professionally, singing and acting as a high soprano on the big Broadway stage, and so she worked and worked at keeping her voice in shape.
But, time went on, and the girl grew older, and moved away to college. She discovered the joys of drunken, over-sung karaoke, and the buzz of cigarettes, and the aesthetic of smoking shisha tabacco from a Hookah, and highly-caffeinated beverages. She found one show to perform in, but amidst the crazy, fun (bad) habits she had formed, and her hectic school schedule, and the lack of voice teacher availability, her voice deteriorated. Her range dropped, and the notes in the rafters that had once been accesable to her were no longer reachable. Her passagio dropped, making her feel as though she was stuck with this voice that was just a bit crippled and sore.
Her dream, however, was still to perform on the big Broad-Way. The girl moved back to Utah, and in preparation for auditioning for the Musical Theatre program at the local university, began attending voice lessons again. It had been years since the girl had taken her vocal chords to the gym, and voice lessons really stretched her and pushed her to try new things. Once she was attending school, her teacher changed a few times, and though she was actively singing again, many of her bad lifestyle habits remained. Her voice began regaining it's strength in small degrees, but the high and ringing range she had once enjoyed was diminished slightly, and she began to wonder if her abilities would always be limited to chorus singing. Because she had never learned to belt, the girl believed her role options would always be limited. She wasn't a belt-singer. And, while not giving up on her dream, she resigned herself to a smaller version of the dream.
Then one September day, in a voice lesson with the head of her Musical Theatre department, the girl was exploring her voice. She realized her lack of breath support, and how to fix it. She realized her mouth wasn't opening as widely as it could to send her sound to her audience. AND, she realized, that even with a rough passagio that sits precisely where the high-belt range sits, she could belt! And she could belt well. She was a singer with both a high and low register, and a register in the middle. One that could carry and travel and fill a room with sound. One that wasnt as limited as she thought it was.
And she felt invincible. And the pins that she had stuck in her dream to alter it a bit started slipping out, just a bit. She began to realize that the only reason she couldnt sing was because she had told herself so. That if she just accepted herself, and used her body and voice the way it wanted to be used, she could sing whatever she felt like singing, and sing it well.
I can't even begin to tell you how good that made the girl feel....
