hey chris liepe here with how to find your own voice how to capitalize on the voice that you have
and not get caught in the imitation game or the comparison game now if you've been following my
channel for any length of time you know that i spend a lot of time studying other singers and
experimenting with what they do and putting it in my own voice this is one of the greatest ways to
find your own voice is by taking what someone else does and seeing what happens with your own voice
another huge way to find your own voice is to let those influences that you have ooze out of you
as you cover a song or work with material that is way outside your normal sphere of influence
if i
i just fly i can fly down nothing
please like and subscribe to the channel and turn those notifications on and if you'd like
more help going deeper with your own voice you'd like me to be your vocal coach click the
link below and join my free voice course that's the best place to start and then there's lots
of ways that we can work together from there all right so we have these two camps we have studying
other singers put in putting inspiration into our own voices and experimenting and and then we have
going way out in left field and experimenting with material that we really have no business
singing and this is supposed to help me discover my own voice
yes because these two approaches balance each other out in a huge way we can't possibly
use the same part of our brain or set of ways of thinking when we're covering an r kelly song as we
are covering a sound garden song or working with something that we're normally really familiar with
and so we're forced to take inspirations from one area and apply them in an uncomfortable way
in another area just doing this just choosing something okay i got my influences i got what
i'm comfortable with and i'm going to make myself uncomfortable in a different genre and
go for it it is amazing what happens with your voice because through the discipline of studying
other singers and gathering inspiration from them you have done something in your mind that
you may not be fully aware of you have created the ability to instantly assimilate and as long
as you're not comparing yourself to other singers when you put yourself in that uncomfortable space
you're going to feel a bit more comfortable than you think you would
because you've got your influences you've got your inspirations those become
a security blanket or a comfort to you as you tread out into uncharted waters with your voice
then what happens is all the ways that this track or this genre if you've listened to the original
song at uh for any length of time you leave the window or door open for these other influences
to creep in and fuse with your comfortable influences i can't stress how magical this feels
when it happens it's like you have found something you didn't even know you were looking for you knew
you were looking for your voice but you found it in a way that you didn't really know was possible
i remember back when i was taking a lot of guitar lessons one of my guitar teachers told me
the best way to find your own style is by trying to learn licks from other guitar players and
messing up and then just kind of stopping don't try to copy exactly what they do but in
the mess-ups in the screw-ups you actually develop musically in a way that you wouldn't if you were
trying too hard to do exactly what that guitar player was doing i have definitely found that
with my voice in studying my influences but this idea of going to a genre that you're not familiar
with and not comfortable with in that context you take you take these licks that you've already
screwed up and then you put them in a context where you're free to screw them up even more
and see what happens so here's your assignment if you choose to accept it make a list of your
primary influences and how they have helped you develop your singing or maybe even how you'd like
them to help develop your singing what aspects of your influences you really appreciate about
their voices and what you'd like to see in your own voice then in a separate column
list songs or artists that you don't maybe don't care for you don't even think you could touch
that uh maybe you like but is just so not you experience the magic
experience what happens when your voice the product of your influences
interprets this other song in a new and magical way it's not going to sound like anybody else it
might still sound like some of your influences but it's going to sound like uniquely you now a
big part of finding your own voice is overcoming the fear and judgment of yourself and of others
if you're so afraid of not sounding a certain way because you're stuck in the comparison or
imitation game that you are not free to experiment in ways like i'm suggesting here or in other ways
you will never find your own voice in fact you'll be too afraid to do anything that is unique
because you're afraid of failing or not sounding good or you're afraid of being judged this is a
problem and it's not enough for me to just say or for anybody just say well stop being afraid
so i can offer you a better solution here go way more on the other end
and make a fool out of yourself intentionally as you're experimenting with your
voice as you're experimenting with your influences and as you're choosing to meld with another style
put yourself out there and publicly declare in your extremes in your going all the way crazy that
you don't care what other people think and you are on a quest to create something unique something
your own it is only by going through this process of going i don't care i'm gonna do
whatever and see what happens that you will find your voice if you are stuck in self-consciousness
nothing i'm suggesting here is going to work i remember when i was in college and i had a
songwriting class and i had voice lessons and i lived in a very not private dorm situation didn't
even have my own bathroom and people were hearing me do things that didn't sound quite right i had
to go around to all the people that were living on my floor and the floor above me and down below and
say look this is what i'm doing i am experimenting with singing i am writing songs and i'm doing some
crazy stuff because i want to find out what my voice can really do yes i actually did this the
the dorm i stayed at was called takio laredo heights it was this old gothic gothic looking
building um but this time when i got the courage to not only declare what i was doing and then
go make a bunch of noises and really experiment with things that sounded horrible was the time
that i found my voice it was the time that i was doing exactly what i'm talking about in this video
studying and pulling from my influences working with material that was very uncomfortable for me
bringing them together with an attitude of i just don't care i'm gonna see what happens
i hope this is helpful i hope it's inspirational to you
and encouraging and i hope you try it i hope you try all of these things we'll see you for more