Understanding A Brain-Centered Approach to Singing

For Popular Styles

I teach using NeuroVocal Method®, because I’ve found that it gets singers wonderful results, and with a relatively short timeline. It’s a little unusual, and also really effective. I’d like to make you aware of a couple of things about singing that you may not have thought of.

The first thing is that your brain sings before you do.

Singing is really natural, but it’s also really complex. There’s a lot of brain work that goes into singing. You’ve been practicing the way you sing since you were little, and your brain knows what your experience of singing is to you. When you want to sing, it “opens the file” for singing and you sing in the way you’ve always sung. That’s actually a kind of memory. It’s called a motor memory.

You have motor memories for all the ways you use your body. Have you ever had the experience of having to do something you’re accustomed to differently? It’s difficult, and feels strange, right? Try this little thing to see what I mean.

Pick up a pen or pencil and pretend to brush your teeth. Normal and easy, right? Now switch hands and pretend to brush your teeth. Not so easy, right? That’s because you have established a motor memory for brushing your teeth, it applies to only one hand, and your brain does it before you do.You also have one of these motor memories for singing, which is great. It’s been serving you well. Because you’re reading this, I’m going to assume there are things about your singing that you’d like to change. That means that we need to change the motor memory for singing. That’s what the NeuroVocal process does.

If you’d like to engage in this process, together we’re going to alter your motor memory for singing. We’ll make sure that you still sound like you, but any barriers you may have struggled with are gone.

The second thing is about how we change that motor memory.

Even though singing is something that comes from inside your body, you’ve probably learned how to sing from listening, which comes from outside your body. That’s normal. Nearly everyone learns about their singing by listening.

Through this training, I’ve learned that you can teach your brain to be more interested in how your singing feels than how it sounds. We can actually teach your brain to experience your singing in a new way. It’s a skill just like any skill. And when your singing feels good, it sounds good too! It may take a little bit of getting used to, but it’s really worth it.

©Money Notes/Meredith Colby

www.neurovocalmethod.com