Why creativity and authenticity are more important than technique

As a mompreneur who works at home with two young kids and a houseful of dirty laundry and dishes that just won't seem to clean themselves, there's not always a lot of space for quiet reflection or dreaming up new ideas.  Thank God for showers!  This week, I was stepping out of the shower when the title to this post came to me.

I started taking voice lessons at age 13 and only paused in the past couple years because, well, children!  But as I've paused I've had the space to notice the obsession with technique.  From the very beginning it was all about learning to sing the "right" way.  This way was also considered the "healthy" way or the "classical" way or what have you.  What's interesting, though, is that the more I started focusing on singing the "right" way, the less I could sing at all.  I became so obsessed with doing it just the way my teacher(s) wanted me to that I lost all sense of how to sing at all and developed many technical issues that weren't there when I opened my mouth at age 5 with a full, natural vibrato.  I spent so many years flailing with my feet in the air trying to sing with ease and freedom, believing that if I could just solve this technique puzzle I could get on with life and sing what I wanted to and have fun again.

This is not to say that technique is unimportant.  As a voice teacher myself for the past decade plus, technique has been the primary focus of most of my lessons.  But the more I've taught, and the more I've learned and experienced, the more I've seen that technique is not the be-all, end-all many teachers and academic programs would have us believe.

For technique is meant to serve the muse.  Technique is meant to be what allows you to sing - or paint, or dance, or play, or whatever your art may be - the song inside your soul.  Technique is meant to serve your innate creativity, that spark you were born with that begs to be expressed as much as possible.

But nurturing this spark gets forgotten.

And when it is not nurtured it starts to fade and eventually disappear until you're left standing on the opera stage when you don't even like opera.

When I listen to or watch a truly great artist, I don't care if they crack, or sing a touch off-key or fall out of a turn.  I want to be moved.  I want to feel deep down in my gut the excitement or grief, the incredible wellspring of emotion that the music or play or poem or even meal contains.

That is why Bob Dylan had such a long career.  That is why Adele inspires such raving fans.  They are honoring their authentic creative voice as much as they can.  Would they be better served with stronger technique or more pleasant voices?  Maybe. Who's to say?  But I'd rather listen to either of them any day over someone with near-perfect technique who can't move me.

So why are creativity and authenticity more important than technique? Because that's where the magic comes from.  That's what moves people.  That's what inspires. And it's what feeds the artists themselves. 

Eventually, I did figure out the whole technique/singing with ease thing.  But I figured it out by letting go of the obsession and starting to focus instead on these two other pieces: creativity and authenticity.  And it's why I teach them now.

So the spark doesn't get forgotten.