...we all need a break sometimes

Apologies for my long absence. The reason for the break between my first blog and this is that I lost my voice just days after making the accompanying video. I was out Christmas shopping and on the way back it started to rain and my feet got wet, and that was it. If you have ever read a classic novel in which someone goes out in the rain and gets their feet wet and develops a terrible fever and nearly dies, you might have thought it was just a plot device, but it always happens to me! I'm a 19th century cliché.

BUT an interesting thing happened. I literally couldn't speak for two weeks, which was particularly annoying because I wanted to record my new blog and demonstrate the work I have been doing on my high notes. I had just discovered my whistle voice. Now, a whistle voice is a range of high notes that sopranos have. Some people can sing them naturally, for others it takes a long time to find them. They're so high and shrill they sound like a whistle, hence the name. I've never known how it was done, but some months ago I suddenly found them by mistake! I was pretending to be a kettle and then I realised I could pitch the sound. I was really excited and wanted to record it for the blog, but then I lost my voice and completely lost my whistle notes, and I still haven't got them back.

Now, the really weird thing was that there was a gap in my voice all of a sudden. I couldn't sing a B, a C, a C#, or a D. These four notes I couldn't get in my whistle voice or my normal (head) voice. And I couldn't join my head and whistle voices up. I could sometimes slide down from the whistle voice, but I couldn't slide up to it, and there was a big break every time I tried to come down a scale.

But last Monday (30th December) I tried to do some exercises again. I could just about talk by then, so I started humming, and then I started doing some scales, and I started taking the scales a bit higher and a bit higher and a bit higher and I thought, 'This is going a bit higher than I usually do in a warm-up.' I went right up to a C, no problem. All of a sudden I can sing up to a D, or even an Eb, and it's not my whistle register, because that has taken a holiday, but my voice has just extended itself, which is really exciting, because it's something I've wanted for years.

I think this seems to prove that sometimes, even though the only way you can really achieve something you want is through hard work, doing a little bit every day, sometimes we all need a bit of a rest, and your body knows that. I'd been doing a lot of singing just before I lost my voice and it was like my throat said, "You know what, take a couple of weeks off" and then it just sorted itself out on its own.

So the lesson learnt here is: We all need a bit of a break sometimes.

But don't just take it from me. As the great Manuel Garcia said: "After an enforced rest, when work is resumed, actual progress seems to have been made."