I am reminded today of how learning to sing is as much of a mental & emotional journey as it is a physical one. Sam came in today, only 12 and his voice still adjusting to its new baritone/bass range. We identified his head voice sound and his chest voice sound today; important for him because, if he's in the incorrect "voice sound," he can't find the notes.
When he started, several weeks ago only, he was very self-judging during his lesson, and made grimaces and sighs for every mistake he thought he made. This slowed down our progress a lot, so finally I asked if he would be OK not reacting negatively to his mistakes, because he was going to be making a lot of them while he learned, that the studio was definitely the place to make all of them and we would make faster progress if he didn't react. Right away, he stopped and hasn't done it since.
I had to chuckle inwardly today: we tagged his head voice and chest voice with colors as references. This is something I do with many of my students and I always let them choose the colors, partly because I'm curious as to what they will come up with. Usually, they choose purple, maroon or dark blue for chest voice, red, light blue, green or orange for mid-range and pink, yellow or some other pastel for head voice. Sam chose white (head) and black (chest), and I thought back to his initial right/wrong mental judging during his beginning lesson. I've only had one other student choose black & white...
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