I have loved music ever since I can remember. When I was much younger I received a mini piano book where I could play the mini piano according to the notes that were inside the book – these notes were all colour coded along with the piano keys so that it made sense to little children. This, was my favourite toy.
I have sung ever since I can remember, even if there were no proper words coming out of my mouth, I sang none the less. There were no limitations to my voice, I sang whatever I wanted to, in whatever tone that I could make out and with as much power as I was able to. This progressed through the years and then I mostly started singing covers of other artist’s songs. I especially loved singing songs by Beth Hart and Christina Aguilera. After a while, I think my mom realized that this singing habit wasn’t just a habit but an actual passion. She then sent me to vocal training with Tina Schouw so that I could train my voice to become more structured and to increase my vocal range...
Through the years, Tina has really helped to better my voice in about every single way possible. She has helped to widely increase my range – before I had vocal training with her, I was terrified of even trying to hit a high note, but now I can do it with ease. She has helped me to maintain a note – before my voice was all over the place and I found it difficult to stay on one note. She has helped me to increase my confidence in my voice, to control my breathing, to build a relationship with music rather than being afraid of it. She is truly someone that I am so grateful for. She has given me so much that I could never thank her enough for.
Our lesson starts off with a few minutes of breathing exercises where you use a special technique to fill your body up with air and then release it in one go over a specific amount of time (20 seconds +). This helps to relax the body – relaxing the body is a very important factor when singing as being relaxed means comfort and you need comfort to be able to sing to your full capacity. After our breathing exercises she plays notes on the piano where I have to hit the notes perfectly, through this we go through my range and perhaps expand on it. Then we will do some humming exercises – humming is a great way to warm up the voice. When warming up the voice and going through singing exercises the vowels are very often used – I will sing certain vowels according to notes that she’s given me to sing along to. Then we might do an improvisation where I follow her lead and have to copy the sounds that come out of her mouth. This is not as easy as it seems because when singing, one is able to change notes and tones just with the shape of one’s mouth – I have to hit the right notes, tone and make the same shapes that she makes with her mouth. Normally with 20 minutes left, we work on a song.
