How do you perservere when you feel discouraged by your progress?
Hi, Reddit. I'm not really a Reddit user to be honest so please forgive any faux pas, I promise it's ignorance and not deliberate rule flouting! I'm looking for a bit of encouragement.
For background, I've sung since I was a kid, but I had a massive break from any sort of tuition since I left home at 17, I'm now 33. It's always been my safe place. I sing when I'm happy, I sing when I feel hard emotions and I need to let them out, it brings me back to centre and makes me feel safe.
Since going back into casual singing lessons I've realised how bad my actual technical education was. I'm from a tiny town in Scotland so even though I studied music up to Advanced Higher level (A Level in England, not sure of the equivalency across the globe!) I actually didn't get a lot of education in technique because people from where I'm from don't end up as "proper singers" so it "didn't matter". I was the only singer in a small class, my teacher used to literally put me in a supply cupboard with a CD player to practice alone while she wrangled all the boys who wanted be rockstars but not do coursework. I digress.
Basically, I've mostly sung in head voice probably always but definitely in this 15ish year tuition gap. My head voice comes down quite low in my range and that's where I feel most comfortable, and it's just become habitual. My voice damages pretty easily though, and I really want to develop more power and confidence and this is why I went back to lessons. I knew about diaphragmatic breathing but outside of that I was never really taught things like moving between different registers, sound placement, good breath control, hell I was never even really taught to warm up. Because I wasn't doing "proper singing".
My current teacher is doing her level best to help my access my chest voice and develop some power there and there's definitely something *starting* to happen... but honestly I feel really discouraged. I'm sick of hearing my voice break like a 14 year old boy anywhere above a G4. I don't sound like me. Every slip back into head voice feels like a failure, and I can't even find that place of comfort and habit in that register anymore because now I notice how weak and thin my head voice sounds. I feel like I can't get through a whole piece because I lose the stamina in my breathing to keep the chest voice coming through (woo, asthma!). Every time I try to sing, I get max a line or two before I feel so disappointed by how "wrong" I'm getting it. Worst of all, I feel like I've lost that safe place where the music and emotion met and melted and flowed through me and I could feel it in my body. Even when I try to let go of the pressure and just sing something I know from memory for the joy of doing it I feel like there's this wall of judgement keeping me from accessing the way that used to feel.
I know it's all a matter of practice, of keeping working at exercises and breathing and core strength and once that becomes natural and I'm not trying to think about all these techniques at once in a brain that doesn't really work that way (woo, ADHD!), there's room for all the emotional stuff to come into play again. But right now, I want to stop and never sing again because I feel like I'm doing so badly at it that I'm just never going to make it to where I want to be. How do you all keep going if/when you feel like this?