Still taking the lessons

A few weeks ago I mentioned I'd started singing lessons, which felt like an odd thing to admit in public for somebody who already has songs out. Here's the follow-up nobody asked for.

I'm still going. I practice every other day, which is less than I said I would and more than I expected to manage.

The thing I didn't see coming is how unglamorous the useful part is. I thought lessons would be about reaching higher, hitting the big note, adding something. Mostly it's been about breathing, and about staying relaxed in a place where I'd been quietly bracing for years without knowing it. The range came a little. The ease came more.

The strange part is what it's done to old songs. There are tracks I've lived with for months that I now hear differently — I can tell where I was pushing, where I was straining and calling it feeling. You can't unhear that. It's a little uncomfortable and mostly it's just useful.

I'm not going to pretend I've become a singer in six weeks. I'm a songwriter who's getting less afraid of his own voice, which is a smaller claim and a truer one.

If you've been thinking about it and telling yourself you're too old or too far along — you're not. I'm proof the floor is lower than you think.