Food for the voice teacher’s soul
If you teach, coach, or conduct singers, you probably inspire people to greater achievement and dedication to their art. What do you do to get inspiration and rejuvenation for yourself?
Attending workshops, classes, concerts, and shows may be part of your refueling plan. Taking voice lessons and getting coaching on your own repertoire can keep you singing and close to the reasons that you chose music. Or maybe you need breaks from the profession more than anything. Reserving certain times of the day, month, and year for rejuvenation can keep you more balanced and happy, whichever combination of activities and rest that you choose.
Working long hours without giving yourself some refreshment is contrary to the needs of the artist’s soul. Try making a list of some things you can do to get inspired. I’ll give a sample brainstorm list here:
- Watch video clips of great performances.
- Go to the beach and play with the sand.
- Have sex.
- Get out an instrument you haven’t played for a while and do something fun with it.
- Take a voice lesson with a great teacher.
- Go for a coaching on songs you have always wanted to sing, but never got around to before.
- Attend an educational event with other singers and/or teachers who are eager to learn.
- Invite a colleague to coffee.
- Take a hike and sing to the birds and trees.
- Write down your thoughts about teaching into a manifesto.
- Get out of town and see something unusual.
- Complete this statement: “My favorite thing to do related to singing is_______.” Then do it.
- Organize a salon with some other musician friends. Share the music you love, and things you might never get to perform anywhere else.
Do ANYTHING but stay in your voice studio bunker and isolate yourself from the world. Your judgement of yourself as horrible, lacking, wonderful, masterful, jaded, bitter, satisfied, content, effective, failed, or successful is almost always incomplete, if not incorrect, and needs to be contested/ remedied/ confirmed/ modified by actual interaction with the world outside of your studio. Side effects include wisdom, inspiration, happiness, love, and satisfaction.