Sing15 is an opportunity for you to leave the panel of singing judges at the door and go on a daily vocal exploration.

Sing15 arises from a mix of practices and passions that have made a big difference in my life. It’s both ridiculously simple and unendingly potent, drawing from worlds of singing, creative expression, improvisation, meditation and more. The great thing is that Sing15 can benefit anyone from the self-proclaimed “non-singer” to the most accomplished virtuoso. You just show up and start making sounds with your that miraculous voice of yours.

In the Try This Today chapter you will find a growing series of suggestions to help you enter your Sing 15 practice on a given day. You may find them helpful ways to get in the door of a day’s practice. Then let it go from there.

I’m doing the Sing15 practice for a whole year and sharing my daily experiences. I hope you’ll join me, come back to this site and share how your practice is going.

Your fellow vocal explorer,

Will

Now, if you have a concern that you aren’t a singer, let’s put this one to rest right here. You are most definitely a singer.

If you are someone who has never thought of yourself as such, rather than go through some multi-step program to someday start to imagine that this might be true, just accept it right now. It will make things a lot easier.

You are a singer because you have a voice with miraculous capabilities. Whether you know it or not, you can make all kinds of sounds with that voice of yours. Quiet and loud sounds. Nasally and throaty sounds. Airy and heavy sounds. You can make sounds separated by silence and you can make sounds that string together. You can move straight from one kind of sound to another without pause. Without ever having met you, I know this is true.

Nearly every human being and most animals share the ability to vocalize, to make sound built in the body and emanating from the mouth. In animal species this capacity is put to use for very practical reasons: finding a mate, defending one’s territory, warning of attack, playing. We humans use our voices for these same purposes and many more. And we have a greater capacity—if we choose to use it—to use our voices in a thousand other subtle ways. In fact most of us use our voices every waking hour of our day, every day of our lives.

Yet we have somehow decided that it is only “singers” or “public speakers” who should spend time learning about their voices. The rest of us, who depend on our voices just as much, proceed with what we have.

This website is about giving you, whether you are an accomplished opera star or an accomplished plumber, a unique way to access to greater vocal freedom and capacity. And it’s as easy as singing for 15 minutes a day.

1. Choose an amount of time and a number of times per week to practice.

Make sure to choose a duration and frequency that can work in your life. Fifteen minutes has both a doable and sufficient ring to it. Often we think we can’t spare 15 minutes a day, only to find that we not only have that time, but that committing to using it for something near and dear to us adds more energy to our busy lives. Commit to this for three weeks and then review what’s working and what you’d like to change.

2. Sing for the whole time, without stopping.

This is about going fully in. This is not the time to clean the room, check your messages, move furniture. This is a sweet refuge from all that other stuff and it’s sweetness and refuge-ness is directly dependent on your choosing to let other things drop away.

3. Enjoy the journey and watch what happens.

Check out the Frequently Asked Questions chapter and use the many posts in the Try This Today chapter to get you started, to give you pathways into the your practice for a given day. And make sure you let us know how it’s going, and what questions and insights arise for you.

This is a great question and points to how we are accustomed to singing something that is pre-existing. We sing songs that we know. Songs from sheet music. Musical scales. We sing vocal exercises from a teacher or a book.

Those approaches are useful of course, and the Sing 15 practice is something different.

This is an emergent experience, one where you are more in discovery mode than replication mode. Once you are experienced in this practice, you’ll open your mouth and be surprised by what comes out. Then you’ll follow that impetus to the next thing, and on and on.

The potency of this practice comes from you stepping each day into an experience that is unpredictable. The one thing you do know is that you will be vocalizing for 15 minutes, and that’ all you need to know.

You might be thinking, “But I don’t know how to make things up with my voice.” I need something to get me started. This website is here to support you. You’ll find a wide variety of tips in the Try This Today chapter on how to get started with your practice on a given day. You can think of these as doorways into your practice room. Use them as you’re getting started as a Sing 15 practitioner (it sounds so official) and whenever you want a little nudge or fresh way in.

Find a private space, or as private as you can. This practice is about unfolding the many facets of your voice, and for many of us, that can be a tender process. Most of us feel freer to explore if we aren’t conscious of others hearing us (especially those whom we are closest to).

Your space may take the form of simply closing a door in your home, using a garage, an empty office, or even a path in the woods. Ideally it’s a space where you can get loud and make all manner of noises.

At the same time, don’t be concerned if you don’t have the ideal spot. The most important thing is to choose a spot and start. After a while of doing this practice in your space, you will infuse it with the spirit of your adventure. Over time, you will also likely get more more comfortable with the possibility of being heard and maybe even enjoy that.

I travel a lot for work and end up doing this practice in interesting “spaces.” I’ve done it under the cover of my blanket on an international flight, in a garden in South Africa and walking along a busy running trail in Austin (it’s fun to see people’s faces when they pass and hear me singing). I’ve found that getting resourceful and playful about where I sing is part of the fun of the practice. Making the commitment to do the practice every single day is the structure that forces (in a good way) this resourcefulness.

• A physical phenomenon, the sounds produced when our vocal folds vibrate the air passing through the cavities between those vocal folds to our mouths.
• Something we are born with, that magic combination of our unique physical shapes and sizes and our individuality from day zero of our lives.
• Something that is conditioned by our experiences, our parents and teachers, our culture and interactions with people from other cultures.
• Something that is internal and only heard by each of us.
• Something connected to the very essence of who we are.
• Something whose capacity we can become conscious of and learn to expand

For the purposes of this practice, when we talk about voice, we are talking about this whole mixture of elements. When you hear a person speak for the first time, embedded in his or her words, tone, physical posture, pitch, body language, emotional state is a road map of a unique life, far too complex for anybody to draw.

All of these aspects make up their “voice.”

With such complexity, if we want to become freer and more adept in using our voices in the world, where do we start? We could enter through any of the doorways above. For example, we could learn about the technical structure of the voice and work on using that structure more efficiently and more intentionally. Or we could go to therapy and “unpack” all the conditioning influences that have affected our voices.

The Sing 15 approach is an experiential one, to repeatedly give our whole selves the experience of greater vocal capacity, to begin embedding in our bodies, minds, spirits, emotional lives, the experience of greater freedom. In the same way that practicing a new tennis swing over and over teaches our bodies a “new normal,” when we do this regularly, a new normal starts to emerge in the way we use our voices, whether it be in a jazz improvisation or a company meeting. Our “muscle memory” is renewed, giving us the foundation for greater freedom and mastery.

We all have things that we do every day. You awaken, drink coffee, get dressed, eat food, ride the bus, train or drive your car, arrive at work or school, leave, buy stuff. Just think that in just twenty years, you do each of these things thousands and thousands of times.

You’ve probably heard the saying that if you want to know a person’s true priorities, look at his or her check book. Another way is to look at how they are spending their time today.

Most of these activities narrow over time, meaning that the way we engage in them becomes repetitive and similar. We do them without thinking about how or why we are doing them, and without trying different ways to do them.

A video camera on the wall would likely show us getting out of bed with the same physical motion every day, walking the same route to the bus, eating the same core set of foods.

And over time, these daily activities make their marks on our bodies and our consciousness. They create grooves or patterns in our lives, ones of which we become unconscious. They come to define our perception of what life is really like.

Here’s the thing, if you want to change your life, to become more awake, more skillful (insert your own adjectives here), one powerful, proven way is to insert activities/practices in your day that are in service of what you want to bring forth in your life. It’s not rocket science and yet most of us are waiting for some big bang to happen to create the lives we want. If you choose to do a new thing, even if it’s for five minutes a day, it shapes who you are becoming. The key is to commit to it and do it every single day.

This is the principle behind the Sing 15 practice. Simply sing for 15 minutes a day and you will behave your way into greater vocal freedom, range, creativity and confidence.

How can a singer who doesn’t have much control of pitch and a gravelly voice open your heart with his song?

Why do some leaders deliver a message like a UPS package while others seem to emanate it from who they are?

Where does the ability to be a great improviser come from?

Technique, skills, chops are an essential ingredient on the path of mastery in any endeavor. We all can stand to continuously work on the mechanics of our music, our voice, our work and there are many great resources for that. In fact the Sing15 practice does indeed help us develop these aspects of the voice, if more as a byproduct than a direct design.

The larger opportunity inside the Sing15 practice, though, is to cultivate our connection to our voice, to enchant the physical instrument of our bodies with playfulness, curiosity, honesty, adventure.

By doing the practice every day, little by little, we develop a sense of capacity, confidence and connection that starts to appear inside all the places in our lives where we use our voice.

After a few hours of perusing the galleries this way and beginning to get weary of so much input and walking, we happened upon an archway with a slack, unpainted door. It wasn’t prominent amidst all the storefronts with big windows and creative signs, and yet we both started walking toward it. There was something mysterious and alluring about it.

We slowly opened the door to find a pathway leading somewhere we couldn’t see, and silently entered. What we found was a compound with small stone buildings and a large courtyard, slightly overgrown, with clusters of benches, wildflowers, climbing vines, old trees and a swing. It felt like a magical garden. We decided to stay a while.

Where are the doorways of your singing practice? Where will you find an opening to a richer experience, to surprise?

Be a traveler looking for those moments that pull you into a new, unexpected space.

Try this

Let’s go for a vocal walk up and down the range of your voice. Take a generous breath and, singing lightly on an “ahhhhhh” sound, start as deep in your register as you can go. Then begin sliding up until you reach somewhere near the top of your range. Then begin sliding down again until you once again reach your lowest note. Now, do this again but more slowly. In fact, see how slowly you can go. Your aim is to notice the sensations of each place along your range.

Feel for the interesting, the strange, the attractive, the ugly.

Do this a while, up and down, down and up, and then make the choice to spend some time exploring a place in your range that feels more interesting. Maybe you like the way it feels in your mouth to sing that tone, or maybe you feel it in your chest. Maybe the note just makes you happy or more alive.

Use your attraction to this place as a doorway through which you can explore more. Try singing the same note using a different vowel. Try moving away from the note slightly and then back to it. Then just follow this exploration wherever it takes you.

At other times, I sit down with my guitar as I would in a conversation with a long missed friend, hearing every facet of its voice. This is a wholly more enjoyable experience.

Listening well brings us quickly into the present moment. As I sit writing this, I hear the plastic-y thud of my fingers on my computer keyboard, the soft, persistent hum of a refrigerator, the pulsating chorus of cicadas outside, an occasional car motor nearing and then fading, the caws of grackles. Suddenly the fluctuations of my mind are more distance and the world feels more juicy.

Our ability to enjoy the music we make with our voices is directly proportional to the quality of our listening.

The greatest improvisers are the best listeners, for they are tuned into what is occurring in the moment and can respond instantly to what is actually there, rather than some idea of what sounds good.

It may sound counter intuitive, but to gain greater vocal freedom and enjoyment, we can start with listening.

Try this:

As you begin your practice today, start by growing Dumbo ears. For a few minutes, just listen. What do you hear? Then listen more closely. Then even more closely.

Try listening more deeply to any one sound.

For example, on the surface, the hum of my refrigerator is one solid drone, but the more I listen, I can hear different aspects of it, a low tone that pulses, a higher tone that, though continuous, is really made up of tiny clicks.

You can also scan your environment for sounds other than the ones that first present themselves. What sounds are hiding out, ready to be discovered by your big listening?

Now turn the same kind of listening inward. Begin making some tones with your voice. Anything will do. You could hum or sing “Mahhhhh.”

The key is to be focused on what you hear, like it is a new creature at the zoo that you have never even heard of before.

It doesn’t matter what sounds you make with your mouth. You could even try singing a familiar song, but with your attention more on listening than on singing.

Simply play around with sounds and become fascinated with what you hear.

You are developing muscles here that will serve you greatly as you expand your vocal practice.