American country singer Johnny Cash (1932 – 2003) sits with an acoustic guitar in a still from the film, ‘Road To Nashville,’ directed by Will Zenz, 1966. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
A Few
Minutes a Day with Johnny Cash
Just a few minutes a day with
your instrument can make the difference between becoming your best vocalist/musician
or not.
My voice students have
been coming along by leaps and bounds, and I sing every day – I’m always
warming up and demonstrating with my students. Right now, my students,
including piano students, are between the ages of 6 and 77. Korean, African
American, Caucasian, young girls, middle-aged men…I could not have imagined
this kind of diversity and joy when I left Corporate America and the cubicle
environment in 2014.
What a blessing!
And yet of course I have a
different set of struggles as a teacher and entrepreneur.
Perhaps you have personal
experience with the struggle I’ll discuss today. Even though I sing virtually every
day, I still suffer from performance anxiety when I sing solo in public. Not
when I teach or speak, but when I sing.
This isn’t an easy thing
for a voice teacher to admit.
I’m making steps to walk
through this fear and become a competent public solo singer…updates will be
coming!
In the meantime, I want to
acknowledge dearly departed Johnny Cash, one of my favorite country singers. I
learned to sing Folsom Prison Blues with my now-husband playing the guitar.
One of the first times we practiced the song, I felt Johnny in the room with
us. I mentioned it to George, and he did, too.
I have a two-pronged theory about why Folsom Prison Blues seems to be the only song I can sing well in public when I’m nervous and my body tenses. Here’s a clip of me singing the song last May at the Lake Music Recital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow6fAsgYzeI
One: This song is all in
my first and low, full second register – I’m belting the blues and my larynx
doesn’t tilt as it would if I went into light second register. So, I have
plenty of breath, resonance, and a relatively stable larynx that will operate fairly
well even when I have performance anxiety and tension in my body. That’s the
physical part.
Two: The emotional/spiritual
part, and connection with the composer on the other side. I call goosebumps angelbumps.
When I felt Johnny in the room with us during those early rehearsals, my arms
and legs were covered with angelbumps. Somehow, I feel I’m being supported by
Johnny Cash every time I sing this song.
You want to hear something
spooky? The very night after I wrote the above, I watched the movie The
Soloist on television. (I highly recommend it.) Jamie Foxx’s sensitive, riveting,
soul-stirring performance as mentally ill, homeless musical genus Nathaniel
Ayers knocked my socks off.
In one moving scene,
journalist Steve Lopez (played by the wonderful Robert Downey, Jr.) takes Ayers
to hear a symphony rehearse Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3.
As the music closes, Ayers
whispers, “He’s in the room.”
“Who is?” Lopez asks.
“Beethoven.”
I get angelbumps just remembering.
And I’ll remember this as I rehearse other songs in my first register by Carole
King, Stevie Nicks and Mary Chapin Carpenter – all of whom are alive and well
on planet Earth.
Please spread the love and pass this
along to a friend!
Love Your Voice and Voice Your Love,
Laura
Lake Oswego’s Transformational Voice® Teacher (Transformational
Voice® is a
registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute, LLC, and Linda Brice.)
Wishweavers Circle 2020: a Mastermind Experience is beginning! I’m excited for our first meeting with women who’ve recently accomplished such things as opening a new store and writing a one-woman-play.
There are many
ways to reach our dreams and define our goals. My friend and colleague, Lisa
Marie Platske, has found a unique way to help you take your bold and daring
vision for making a bigger difference in the world, and fully using your gifts,
talents and experiences into firm possibility this year.
No, it’s not
crazy. Lisa knows from experience, as do I, with the right vision and support,
anything is possible in 2020.
Lisa has extended
a generous special offer because of our
connection! How cool is that?
For just $297 a ticket, you can bring a friend for free; that’s
$1697 off the ticket price. If you’re near Manhattan Beach, California (or want
to be) the weekend of January 23rd-25th, jump on board to
Design Your Destiny with Lisa Marie Platske.
Please spread the love
and pass this along to a friend!
Love Your Voice and Voice
Your Love,
Laura
Lake Oswego’s Transformational
Voice® Teacher (Transformational
Voice® is a registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute,
LLC, and Linda Brice.)
Long before I became a Certified Transformational Voice® Teacher, I
learned how the Mastermind process (described by Napoleon Hill, author of the
classic Think and Grow Rich, as “The
coordination of knowledge and effort, of two or more people, who work toward a
definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony”) can transform lives. I call a Mastermind
group a Wishweavers Circle.
Anyone with a desire to move forward with their dreams and goals can
benefit from a Wishweavers Circle. Voice teachers like me who are dealing with
aging parents in another state, entrepreneurs, employees who are feeling
frustrated and would like to make a change. Retirees with wisdom to share and a
desire for community.
I’ve been invited to several Mastermind groups that charge a fee, and the
one I won a raffle for was awesome. All the same, in my experience, exchanging
of money isn’t necessary, or even necessarily helpful. The right people tend to
come together at the right time.
Are you interested in being part of a Wishweavers Circle in the new year?
Here’s how it would look:
*Meet twice a month via Zoom for possibly an hour, depending on number of
members and availability.
*Each member has an equal amount of time to share an update, successes,
challenges, and absorb feedback and resources from other members.
*Close with accountability commitments for forward movement.
*No fee, but weekly updates are expected.
*Facebook group optional.
If this sounds good to you, email info@laurahandke.com and say
YES to Wishweavers 2020. There are two of us now…six to eight more Wishweavers
are welcome.
Please spread the love and pass this
along to a friend!
Love Your Voice and Voice Your Love,
Laura
Lake Oswego’s Transformational Voice® Teacher (Transformational
Voice® is a
registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute, LLC, and Linda Brice.)
I celebrate Christmas, and
I celebrate my friends and people from all faith backgrounds who celebrate
other holidays.
Growing up on a farm in
South Dakota, I found each Christmas – with a huge extended family – magical. Now that my parents are both failing in
health, I appreciate those childhood Christmas memories, always at our home on
the farm, even more.
I wish you a beautiful holiday
season with dreams coming true, immense love, and voicing your dreams like
never before.
The world needs your
authentic truth spoken in your authentic voice.
Please spread the love and pass this
along to a friend!
Love Your Voice and Voice Your Love,
Laura
Lake Oswego’s Transformational Voice® Teacher (Transformational
Voice® is a
registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute, LLC, and Linda Brice.)
I’ve just returned from an unexpected trip after my father was hospitalized for congestive heart failure. He’s been dealing with this for a while, along with multiple other surgeries and health issues, but this time his heart went into AFib https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/atrial-fibrillation/what-is-atrial-fibrillation-afib-or-af while he was driving. My Dad’s a tough old bird. He braked in time. My mother, who is dealing with dementia symptoms and not doing all that well herself physically, managed to drive to the emergency room with Dad coaching her as best he could. She hadn’t driven in about four years. She got them there safely.
I canceled every voice and
piano lesson for just over a week and got on a plane.
Dad had his 85th
birthday in the hospital in Watertown, South Dakota, and two days later he, me
and Mom had Thanksgiving dinner there. It was surprisingly good, especially on
Dad’s low sodium diet.
Dad is out of the hospital
now with a heart functioning at around 35% capacity, perhaps less. After
medications to calm his racing heart didn’t work, an electric shock treatment
got his ticker ticking regularly again.
Yet it’s only a matter of
time, and we all know this. We all know this with our own lives, our voices. Mom
is no longer able to take care of herself, and Dad can no longer be her
caretaker. Even looking into the options is challenging. Painful. Difficult.
My parents have been
married for over 56 years.
I will write their love
story in an upcoming post.
For now, check out one of
my most-viewed videos to help you rock your next speech. Thank you for reading,
for being a friend, student, client.
Please spread the love and pass this
along to a friend!
Love Your Voice and Voice Your Love,
Laura
Lake Oswego’s Transformational Voice® Teacher (Transformational
Voice® is a
registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute, LLC, and Linda Brice.)
It happens every week. Often several times a week. I’ll have been working
with a voice student at Lake Music for half an hour. She’s singing on the
breath, with resonance, has good onsets, and we’ve worked out pitch and
enunciation issues. I mention a couple things to work on over the coming week,
open the door, and say “Great job; see you next week!”
The student’s mom, or dad, greets her warmly, saying, “Hi, Honey! Hope
you had a great lesson. Let’s get home and start dinner; how does spaghetti
sound?”, sounding just like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjdsJAIUf4, in vocal
fry.
It’s a little like what I imagine a healthy eating coach would go through
if she had to drop her clients off at the McDonalds drive-through after each
session.
So, I’ve started talking to the parents and inviting them in to take part
in lessons as often as I can. I describe what each student is working on and
what healthy and effective vocal technique means. I let them know I want to
take this training into public and private schools.
I explain what I’m telling you right now: Even if you rehearse the
breathing and other vocal techniques for at least a few minutes daily and regularly
attend lessons…then slip into vocal fry in your everyday conversations…the
technique won’t get into muscle memory.
Once healthy and effective vocal technique gets into muscle memory, it
becomes second nature and you don’t even have to think about it anymore.
My students who’ve gotten to that point consistently tell me they get
compliments on their voices. People hear them better. Sometimes it’s just a
simple question, like “What is different about you? You seem more confident or
something…”
I’m not sure when I went from being “just” a voice teacher to a champion
for the healthy, authentic voice of the American public, but somehow it’s happened.
Please let me know who I should contact in your favorite school or
organization.
Please spread the love and pass this along to a
friend!
Love Your Voice and Voice Your Love,
Laura
Lake Oswego’s Transformational Voice® Teacher (Transformational
Voice® is a
registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute, LLC, and Linda Brice.)
