Using Your Imagination

One of the fundamentals of singing is to understand that using our imagination is vital to singing, as well as being dependent upon the functionality of the voice.  

Our imagination of sound – of tonal colors and feelings and rhythm and breathing and volume and range – all of these ingredients make up the sound that we can imagine so as to express what is in the heart and on the mind.  However, our imagination and function are interdependent. If the function is impaired and we cannot make certain sounds, then it is certainly hard to imagine those sounds, and expressiveness is lessened.

Let us say that we can only sing in our “chest voice.”  Maybe we can sing up the scale a bit as we increase the volume and push the voice. Yet, there are sounds that are made by the “falsetto” muscle being active that we just would not feel or hear, and thus would be unimaginable for us. Maybe though we have heard others make a certain “falsetto” sound, and so it is intellectually real but not real for us inside our body.  

So, in vocal training, the main goal is for function to improve. As it improves, then we can physically make more sounds. Sounds that maybe we have heard before but have never been able to do. As we make those sounds, then our imagination soars. As our imagination soars, then we are able to express much more of our heart song!