As musicians, we often call it “finding our voice”.
Other people describe it as finding their calling.
Some say hitting their groove.
The phrase “self-actualization” has been appropriated as well.
I was fortunate. I found my first voice when I was in elementary school. I mean, I didn’t just find it. I nailed it.
I wasn’t looking for it. It found me.
As a musician, finding your voice is critical.
It transcends technique. It doesn’t require vocabulary, a degree, or a teacher. It relies on intuition and can be lost as easily as it can be found.
The day you find it is like another birthday.
As a musician standing in front of a room full of kids, if you haven't found your voice, it's really impossible for you to provide any guidance to help them find their voice.
As Harvey McKay once said, “Beware the naked man who offers you the shirt off his back.”
Oh, you’ll be able to teach a lot of music product. Interesting facts, complex theories, speed and dexterity.
But if you don’t find your voice, it’s all just so much aural posturing and posing.
Oscar Wilde said that people could be divided into two groups: charming and tedious.
I believe that it’s actually three groups: people who find their voice, people who find multiple voices, and people – for whatever reason – who do not find their voice.
I fall into the second category.
(For the record, I have heard many talented, photogenic, and efficacious musicians who have yet to find their voice. They can perform extremely complex and athletic music. Finding your voice is not a prerequisite for success. That said, I have heard many third graders who have found their voice.)
The first voice I found was my singing voice. As a little kid, I was singing all the time, usually by myself or with the radio, and especially in church.
I didn’t even realize that I had found my singing voice nor did anyone tell me that they heard it. I assumed that everyone was the same. You breath, you talk, you sing.
I thought everyone could do it.
I had great range, could match vibrato with any recoded singer, and could memorize long Paul Desmond alto sax solos and scat them perfectly.
The first voice I tried to find was my piano voice. I was basically trying to replicate the melodies that I was singing, only now using my fingers on the keyboard. I wasn't too worried about harmony, just melody. It was all linier.
Like I said, I tried. I was on the right path but far from where I wanted to be on piano.
And spare me the “it’s a journey, not a destination” platitudes. I didn’t give a damn about the journey, the cost, the shoe leather – at the age of ten, I would have bequeathed anything to understand the mysteries of the piano. I wanted to get there. I wanted to arrive.
By fourth grade I moved on to trying to find my voice on the trumpet.
The first few months on trumpet were exceptionally ugly given that I couldn't figure out the overtime system and that my buck teeth kept cutting into my lips and creating a cerise tide pouring out of my spit valves. I could hear my parents futile attempts at stifling their laughter downstairs when I practiced in my room.
But as I matured through junior high, I did find my voice on trumpet.
I was figuring out solos by Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Chet Baker, Snooky Young, Thad Jones, and Herb Alpert trumpet parts. Eight measures here, eight measures there.
It adds up.
I was able to copy on trumpet what I sang and visa versa.
When I wasn’t playing trumpet but was thinking about my trumpet tone, I heard it in darker shades rather than brighter ones, which didn't help with a lot of classical approaches in college.
High school was a turnaround time for me. It was a time of huge discovery in finding my voice.
The instrument where it all clicked was double bass.
Now, I was abysmal as far as a classical technique. But I put in the hours with bowing and started to hear the sound that morphed the sound in my head with a sound I had never experience before.
I was beyond the sound I heard in my head.
Pizzicato.
I didn’t know it at the time but what I had discovered was “the pocket”, that magical place where notes exist in time.
When I started playing jazz and pop stuff on upright, it was like a musical denouement . All the parts of the puzzle came together – including piece I had never known existed before - and I was putting the right notes in the exact right places for me.
While I had experience similar sensations singing, this had a more mature inevitability about it, as if I was meant to play these notes at these exact times and places. There was a momentum to my playing, a visualizing of the notes and lines when I wasn’t playing as much as when I was.
It was something I had never previously experienced.
That newly found confidence expanded like compounded interest. It affected my trumpet and piano playing. It influenced everything else I was trying for the first time in music at that point of my life.
Especially orchestrating and composing.
My vision was becoming vertical as well as linier.
I had started to study scores. String quartets, symphonies, jazz charts, Broadway orchestrations - by dissecting the printed pages of other composers and getting an idea of how they found their voices, I was able to start to find my own on manuscript paper. With each pathological autopsy, I was getting a better understanding of how the sum of the parts created the whole.
I didn’t play electric bass or guitar until I graduated from college.
I had my double bass background to keep me grounded on the electric. So many electric bassists are frustrated guitar players and have a tendency to treat the bass part as one big opportunity to solo or constantly embellish (the brits call it wanking off). I was grounded in jazz and knew how to stay in my lane and sonically on my shelf.
The last voice I found was on guitar. It took me fifteen years and thousands of hours of playing and practice time.
Don’t get me wrong. I was playing guitar all the time at school and on gigs. I had a sound in my head, though, that I wasn’t finding.
It took a lot of time and I sometimes thought it would never be like it was when I was playing double bass.
But I found that guitar voice and, in another post, I’ll tell the story of why that voice was so elusive for so long.
By now, you realize that my approach is that of a polymath in a specialist’s clothing. I put in Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hours at an early age but oddly realized that when I found my voice, it told me to continue looking for others. Without going all Siggy Freud on you, that could have been the subtle product of being an only child looking for someone to sing with.
In my small child’s world, one voice became a duet became a trio until I came to the realization that I didn’t have a single voice or several multiple voices: I had a chorus of voices, each with its own particular role and strength to support and amplify the sound I heard in my head before I ever made a sound outside of my body.
To this day, all the music I play, sing, or write is just an amplification of that sound in my head - that first voice.
In the end, your voice finds you.
More on finding your vice in future posts.
Other people describe it as finding their calling.
Some say hitting their groove.
The phrase “self-actualization” has been appropriated as well.
I was fortunate. I found my first voice when I was in elementary school. I mean, I didn’t just find it. I nailed it.
I wasn’t looking for it. It found me.
As a musician, finding your voice is critical.
It transcends technique. It doesn’t require vocabulary, a degree, or a teacher. It relies on intuition and can be lost as easily as it can be found.
The day you find it is like another birthday.
As a musician standing in front of a room full of kids, if you haven't found your voice, it's really impossible for you to provide any guidance to help them find their voice.
As Harvey McKay once said, “Beware the naked man who offers you the shirt off his back.”
Oh, you’ll be able to teach a lot of music product. Interesting facts, complex theories, speed and dexterity.
But if you don’t find your voice, it’s all just so much aural posturing and posing.
Oscar Wilde said that people could be divided into two groups: charming and tedious.
I believe that it’s actually three groups: people who find their voice, people who find multiple voices, and people – for whatever reason – who do not find their voice.
I fall into the second category.
(For the record, I have heard many talented, photogenic, and efficacious musicians who have yet to find their voice. They can perform extremely complex and athletic music. Finding your voice is not a prerequisite for success. That said, I have heard many third graders who have found their voice.)
The first voice I found was my singing voice. As a little kid, I was singing all the time, usually by myself or with the radio, and especially in church.
I didn’t even realize that I had found my singing voice nor did anyone tell me that they heard it. I assumed that everyone was the same. You breath, you talk, you sing.
I thought everyone could do it.
I had great range, could match vibrato with any recoded singer, and could memorize long Paul Desmond alto sax solos and scat them perfectly.
The first voice I tried to find was my piano voice. I was basically trying to replicate the melodies that I was singing, only now using my fingers on the keyboard. I wasn't too worried about harmony, just melody. It was all linier.
Like I said, I tried. I was on the right path but far from where I wanted to be on piano.
And spare me the “it’s a journey, not a destination” platitudes. I didn’t give a damn about the journey, the cost, the shoe leather – at the age of ten, I would have bequeathed anything to understand the mysteries of the piano. I wanted to get there. I wanted to arrive.
By fourth grade I moved on to trying to find my voice on the trumpet.
The first few months on trumpet were exceptionally ugly given that I couldn't figure out the overtime system and that my buck teeth kept cutting into my lips and creating a cerise tide pouring out of my spit valves. I could hear my parents futile attempts at stifling their laughter downstairs when I practiced in my room.
But as I matured through junior high, I did find my voice on trumpet.
I was figuring out solos by Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Chet Baker, Snooky Young, Thad Jones, and Herb Alpert trumpet parts. Eight measures here, eight measures there.
It adds up.
I was able to copy on trumpet what I sang and visa versa.
When I wasn’t playing trumpet but was thinking about my trumpet tone, I heard it in darker shades rather than brighter ones, which didn't help with a lot of classical approaches in college.
High school was a turnaround time for me. It was a time of huge discovery in finding my voice.
The instrument where it all clicked was double bass.
Now, I was abysmal as far as a classical technique. But I put in the hours with bowing and started to hear the sound that morphed the sound in my head with a sound I had never experience before.
I was beyond the sound I heard in my head.
Pizzicato.
I didn’t know it at the time but what I had discovered was “the pocket”, that magical place where notes exist in time.
When I started playing jazz and pop stuff on upright, it was like a musical denouement . All the parts of the puzzle came together – including piece I had never known existed before - and I was putting the right notes in the exact right places for me.
While I had experience similar sensations singing, this had a more mature inevitability about it, as if I was meant to play these notes at these exact times and places. There was a momentum to my playing, a visualizing of the notes and lines when I wasn’t playing as much as when I was.
It was something I had never previously experienced.
That newly found confidence expanded like compounded interest. It affected my trumpet and piano playing. It influenced everything else I was trying for the first time in music at that point of my life.
Especially orchestrating and composing.
My vision was becoming vertical as well as linier.
I had started to study scores. String quartets, symphonies, jazz charts, Broadway orchestrations - by dissecting the printed pages of other composers and getting an idea of how they found their voices, I was able to start to find my own on manuscript paper. With each pathological autopsy, I was getting a better understanding of how the sum of the parts created the whole.
I didn’t play electric bass or guitar until I graduated from college.
I had my double bass background to keep me grounded on the electric. So many electric bassists are frustrated guitar players and have a tendency to treat the bass part as one big opportunity to solo or constantly embellish (the brits call it wanking off). I was grounded in jazz and knew how to stay in my lane and sonically on my shelf.
The last voice I found was on guitar. It took me fifteen years and thousands of hours of playing and practice time.
Don’t get me wrong. I was playing guitar all the time at school and on gigs. I had a sound in my head, though, that I wasn’t finding.
It took a lot of time and I sometimes thought it would never be like it was when I was playing double bass.
But I found that guitar voice and, in another post, I’ll tell the story of why that voice was so elusive for so long.
By now, you realize that my approach is that of a polymath in a specialist’s clothing. I put in Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hours at an early age but oddly realized that when I found my voice, it told me to continue looking for others. Without going all Siggy Freud on you, that could have been the subtle product of being an only child looking for someone to sing with.
In my small child’s world, one voice became a duet became a trio until I came to the realization that I didn’t have a single voice or several multiple voices: I had a chorus of voices, each with its own particular role and strength to support and amplify the sound I heard in my head before I ever made a sound outside of my body.
To this day, all the music I play, sing, or write is just an amplification of that sound in my head - that first voice.
In the end, your voice finds you.
More on finding your vice in future posts.
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