The Cluetrain insight that "markets are conversations" and the new Stephen Covey book describing "finding your voice" as the 8th Habit started me thinking about the voice.
I grew up a streetcorner singer in The Bronx. A friend in those days, a guy named Joey Fogliano was a terrific musician (taught by his jazz guitar playin', cigar stub chewin' father, Artie). Joey taught several of us the rudimentary principles of melody and harmony and we stood on the corner, and in the stairwells and locker rooms of PS 119 and PS 125, and practiced day and night. We loved it. And we weren't bad.
The thing was that before we could perform, we needed to learn how to sing. And we needed to practice.
Although I haven't read it yet, reviews of Covey's book seem to point to him telling readers they need to learn how to speak authentically as themselves.
My experience: and how.
Most of our voices have been stifled since we were kids. I don't mean the voices we've taken on that we used to impress our parents and our teachers. I don't mean the voices we learned to use to defeat others in arguments. I mean the authentic voice we use when we're expressing something important, something we believe deeply, something we care about.
Mike Manuel gives some voice lessons to bloggers in this post. He calls what he's written a "code of ethics," and I see it as a good example of the simple, effective ways that we all can focus on expressing ourselves in this medium.
What are the principles of effectively using our authentic voices in the various places in which we "sing" in our lives? Some of the things Joey taught us back in The Bronx might be relevant. Let's look at a few:
- Sing the song - This looks simpler than it is. Songs have different messages, and Joey taught us to use our voices to convey that message. The closer our voices came to conveying the song's message, the "better" we sounded.
- You're in a singing group - Another tricky lesson. Not only did we each have to learn to sing individually, but we needed to learn to sing together. So, we needed to learn to listen to one another, to adust to one another's pace, emotion, variations...to "harmonize." Everybody's individual voice played a part in how we sounded. Every once in a while, each of us got to sing lead, to set the tone and express ourselves a little more uniquely. I didn't have much of a "lead voice," so I didn't sing too many leads, but I was a great harmonizer, which was OK with me. After all, we were a singing group.
- Know when to come in - Timing was crucial. Everybody else had to rely on you coming in with the right note at the right time, or you threw the whole group off.
- Learn the song - Wow, did we learn the songs. Basics: "ooo," "oooo," "ooooo"; time after time after time. We practiced 'til our throats hurt, and learned everything about our own voices and everybody else's. Because we were so well-practiced, we could improvise together really well.
- Don't look at the girls when you're singing - Why else sing? Point was, we were singing for attention, but we learned that to sing well, we couldn't pay attention to getting attention...we had to pay attention to singing.
I'd never thought about these things in this way before, but I think I'll think about them this way some more.
I had Joey. Where are you going to get your voice lessons?
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