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Don't give up

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jzhang172

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I've been singing for about 4 months now and there were ALOT of times that I thought I should just stick to dancing/rapping.

But that mindset made me bitter and angry and I began making excuses for myself.

If there's one thing I know, I can do anything. For me, it felt that everyone else was enjoying singing while I was suffering so much because I would spend so much doing it, doing exercises but still be not that good. I remember hearing my roommate sing and although he wasn't good, he wasn't bad either. He never practices. Why couldn't I sing every time like that?

But then I found out that you have to love to get better. Hating over and over again, not even for singing, but for everything in general will just create a cycle of repeated failure that will make you bitter. Always strive to get better and don't look at it as a defeat. Keep things that are warm to you. If you're feeling bad and can't find the energy to continue, take a break, find something that makes you feel good and continue. Don't give up.

I guess my overall message is not to don't give up, but find love through it all. Your love for singing will always be there, but your hate will block progress, so it's better to find everything that supports you or makes you feel good and then continuing from there.

It's easy to get caught in a complexity that should be so simple.

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Learning good technique is very hard, but there are good reasons for it. There are a lot of singers that do not sound consistent, botch everything live and generally have to get caught walking ass backwards into a great recording. If you know the vocaL anatomy, all of their functions and how they contribute to the sound, you will never get stuck in this spot. Trust me, you could be doing absolutely everything perfectly but messing up one little thing. Once all the problems are resolved and you have tried every tone, technique and style and mastered them all, you will be invincible.

It just takes time. Sometimes it takes getting really bad before you start to get better. Don't take the easy road out. Singing is one thing that anyone can do and if you truly don't have the voice for it you will if you keep going. I believe a lot of the topology in the vocal tract can be reshaped permanently with ridiculous amounts of practice myself.

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But then I found out that you have to love to get better. Hating over and over again, not even for singing, but for everything in general will just create a cycle of repeated failure that will make you bitter. Always strive to get better and don't look at it as a defeat. Keep things that are warm to you. If you're feeling bad and can't find the energy to continue, take a break, find something that makes you feel good and continue. Don't give up.

Exactly. Singing is mental. Yes, the exercises are important but the mindset can either poison you or help you. You sing because you love to sing and cannot think of not singing.

And yes, like you said, on a day that doesn't feel as productive, give it a rest, get your mind completely out of it. Come back to it fresh, with a joy that you can do some things today that you could not do at first. You will get to where you want to go. Each journey, for all of us, is still one foot in front of the other, repeat as necessary.

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Ahh yes i love helping people out with these kinds of dilemmas

Just think out it diz way use the pleasure and pain principle

You wanna become a great singer but is on the verge of giving up?

Tell yourself this you can't be a great singer if you give up so don't give up

Think of something negative and use that to push you forward

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Halcyon has a point. If you give up, then you have lost. If you don't give up, then you haven't lost, you're just having a tough day.

Though I don't believe in using something negative to push me forward, maybe it does help some. It's just that, a few times, I see people who beat themselves to smithereens trying to prove to their parents, aged or dead, that they are too good enough, and they strain and hurt themselves and it's a vicious cycle. So, no, I don't always believe in the negative thought.

I do believe in the positive thought. I'm going to sing and, please believe me, you cannot stop me. It's gonna happen and you can't stop it. In the words of Bon Scott, "lock your daughters, lock up your wifes ..."

And I don't mean that I am going to sing horribly although, if I do, that's just a happy coincidence. I'm going to sing the best that I can but I am going to sing, heck or high water (paraphrased from what I was actually raised with, which included a profane word. In fact, the whole phrase might be profane because it describes defiance.)

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I knew there would be some misinterpretation to what I said

Hahahh thats my fault lemme clear that up ronws

What i meant by using negative to push you forward is

Man has a natural tendency to avoid negative stimulus

Now if you make not achieving your goal a negative stimulus then you will want to avoid that at all costs hence pushing you forward

By avoiding the negative you move towards the positive

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I knew there would be some misinterpretation to what I said

Hahahh thats my fault lemme clear that up ronws

What i meant by using negative to push you forward is

Man has a natural tendency to avoid negative stimulus

Now if you make not achieving your goal a negative stimulus then you will want to avoid that at all costs hence pushing you forward

By avoiding the negative you move towards the positive

Actually, I understand better than you think, Halcyon. It's part of operant conditioning, something I learned while training my dog.

And it works on people, too. In fact, pretty much any creature, including all mammals.

What you are talking about is called negative reinforcement, where in the stopping of a behavior is rewarded. It's okay, as a quadrant of the OC. But nothing beats + R. All creatures avoid punishment and seek reward. Here's the problem with just avoiding punishment. It leads to shut down. When all you are doing is stopping stuff to avoid punishment, you are not being led anywhere. But +R leads somewhere. When you are rewarded, you tend to do the rewarding thing, again. It's below the conscious level.

So many who teach only by punishment (stimulus introduced to stop a behavior from happening again) will not succeed because all you have done stopped something, if you are lucky, and I will explain that in a minute. If you combine the punishment with a reward for doing the right thing, the training happens much quicker.

When I say lucky in stopping something with punishment, this comes directly from operant conditioning. The stimulus to stop the behavior must happen within 1 to 2 seconds of the behavior to be corrected. And here's the really hard part. The subject, dog or human, has to a) see the stimulus as a punishment and B) connect it with the behavior to be stopped. A dog owner on a forum that i would go to had a Dogo de Argentino who would run through a bramble patch every day on his rounds of the property. He would come back with sharpy, pointy things in his business and not a care in the world. The barbs from the bramble were not enough of a "punishment for him" and furthermore, it did not stop him from taking the same path, again and again.

My dog, with his first owners, would wrestle in play. So, when I got him and wanted to stop a behavior, such as jumping on people, I would initially grab his scruff and pin him to the ground. And he would grin at me, get up, and do it some more. Because I had just inadvertantly rewarded him. He did not see the scruff and pin as a punishment but as wrestling, a reward. What stopped him? Rewarding him for breaking "off" when he wanted to jump on someone. I gave him high value rewards for listening to me.

Same with people.

There are a few reasons I am the "cheerleader." First off, in tough love mode, I rub people the wrong way. Second, it's not usually effective because people get defensive.

More importantly, people learn faster and move to the good thing quicker when you reward that. So, if someone does one thing right in a song, I will say, 'Do that some more, whatever that was." It's not because I don't want to be critical. It's because I want to help lead in the good direction. The wrong direction dies from lack of attention.

My fingers be smokin' from all this typiing.

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Hhahah that's operatin conditiong by B.F skinner

Ok maybe what i said was half baked

Like you said combine punisment and reward and the results are better

That is my fault again

But i already assumed the reward when i said that

The reward would have been being able to sing great living the dream etc

So basically were on the same page

Because people avoid punishment more than they seek rewards

What im trying to espouse here is by avoiding the negative ( giving up and not reaching your goal) youre bound to win the battle in the mental aspect anyway

Think about it

Winners are just losers who got tired of losing

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Never use a negative to reinforce a positive. Your mind still focuses on the negative.

It is better to say "If I train I will be a better singer" Than "If I train I will not sound like crap anymore".

Actually thats the same thing

Not sounding crap = getting better

Take this for example

You train everyday assuming its the right training

But the gains are very2x slow and i mean very2x which is very true to singing

How can you give yourself the motivation to keep going if you barely even see any gains?

Well to me IMO you use negative reinforcement by telling yourself

If I don't practice ill never get to where I want to be

Then.follow it up with something positive.. So i have to practice hard

And like you said the negative sticks to your head more

Thats the pleasure and pain principle

Like a bow and arrow the more you pull it ( the more negative it is)

The more power it will have to propel the arrow (your goal) forward

To.make it simple

Just have a really strong desire to succeed

Or just have really strong desire to not fail

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Actually thats the same thing

Not sounding crap = getting better

Take this for example

You train everyday assuming its the right training

But the gains are very2x slow and i mean very2x which is very true to singing

How can you give yourself the motivation to keep going if you barely even see any gains?

Well to me IMO you use negative reinforcement by telling yourself

If I don't practice ill never get to where I want to be

Then.follow it up with something positive.. So i have to practice hard

And like you said the negative sticks to your head more

Thats the pleasure and pain principle

Like a bow and arrow the more you pull it ( the more negative it is)

The more power it will have to propel the arrow (your goal) forward

To.make it simple

Just have a really strong desire to succeed

Or just have really strong desire to not fail

What I mean in my quote is If you use a statement or thought Like " If I train I will not sound like crap"

It is a subconscious thing. What sticks in your subconscious is "I will sound like crap".

Always use the positive statement " I will be great"

Negative sticks in your subconscious more.

Have a strong desire to succeed, Do not let failure into the thought.

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No i believe your statement is lacking

True what sticks to your mind is you will sound like crap......if you do not practice so you see now that you've associated sounding like crap to not practicing then you will want to practice to not sound like crap

Take this for example

You don't think im .not gonna touch that hot oven so my hand stays burn free

But you rather you think the opposite you think im not gonna touch that cuz it will hurt and burn my hand

Its innate its our nature to avoid negative and be attracted to the positive

If you associate not practicing to be negative

And practicing to be positive then you give a reason to practice

Because we will want to avoid the negative

Its like think of something negative and avoid it

Think of the effects of giving up and avoid it

You see im merely agreeing with it's just from a different perspective

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The brain doesnt work that way, or yes it does... But for getting maximum results you should"fool" the brain.

The brain cant separate what is imagination from what is real,so if you say:

"I have à 5 octave controlled beautiful voice"

"ive got the timbre of celine dion"

Ect

The brain Will belive so and results Will be alot greater.

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I love being the contrarian hahahah

But hey the idea of death makes life infinitely more valuable than the idea of having life and being able to do anything

I never said beat yourself up or anything

I said think of the consequences of giving up

And if that to you is unpleasurable then you will naturally avoid it

And if you find succeeding to be pleasurable then you will.naturally be drawn to it

And btw jens just merely believing wont make you.anything

Of course you have to believe to start.but that alone will not get you to where you wanna be

Look at american idol they say they can sing and sound great and they truly believe that

But just because you believe it doesnt mean its true

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And it can be important for a punishment to stop something. Like the time I injured my voice, twice. It took the second bout of partial laryngitis for it to get through my thick skull that I was doing something wrong for my voice. But I did learn. I literally thought to myself, I will never do that again. And went back to soft descending sirens to rehab. Some of the songs I recorded during that recovery are in my "sins of the past" thread. Doing the right things for my voice helped lead to recovery and the other reward, the joy of singing.

To me, there is a difference between sounding great and "not sound like crap," and those are different from actually sounding bad.

Even the negative things you tell yourself or do to yourself are for a reward. For example, working yourself to a fine frazzle to prove that you are working so that yourself and your family will see that you are engaged in a valid pursuit. That is for the reward of their approval, even if it is tearing you apart. You are still seeking the reward.

So, to be clear, OC does not imply morality, it is simply how an organism learns.

There are those who love to argue and the arguing is rewarding. Some always have to win the argument, and that is rewarding. Some are driven to be seen as critical. For them, that is a sign of adulthood because that is what their parents did and if others see them as critical, then they have achieved adulthood and find that rewarding. But not necessarily moral.

I work at my singing not because I am trying to avoid sounding like crap. I am working at singing because singing is art, it is beauty, it is feeling, it pleases me. Singing is its own reward, singing well is rewarding.

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True morality is not involved here

I love to argue to open peoples minds and mine as well

If we all agreed on everything life would be pretty boring

As for me i sing because i love to

But whenever i feel like giving up and losing hope

I tell myself if i give up i wont be a great singer

And from that i decide to keep pushing forward

I find it funny because what i said was basically what every one else here means its just taken into a different persepective

Nd see you said you see singing as a reward

Now if you gave up that would be negative and youd want yo avoid it and you keep on singing because to you it is pleasurable

You just agreed with me

I mean you have to agree because i mean exactly what you see the difference being only in perspective

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I love to argue to open peoples minds and mine as well

If we all agreed on everything life would be pretty boring

Because it is rewarding to you to be contrarian and to argue.

As for me i sing because i love to

But whenever i feel like giving up and losing hope

I tell myself if i give up i wont be a great singer

And from that i decide to keep pushing forward

And that is a main difference in our perspectives. I don't contemplate giving up. Some days are not as productive as others. But the thought of giving up does not enter my mind. So, I don't have to avoid the negative because it is not there for me. The non-productive day is an obstacle to get around, not an incentive to quit.

I find it funny because what i said was basically what every one else here means its just taken into a different persepective

Nd see you said you see singing as a reward

Now if you gave up that would be negative and youd want yo avoid it and you keep on singing because to you it is pleasurable

You just agreed with me

I mean you have to agree because i mean exactly what you see the difference being only in perspective

I was going to say that just because you say a similar thing from an opposite perspective doesn't make your interpretation correct, in a mirror image. But never mind that. You already have a different perspective and, from your perspective, you are equally right and you already love to argue, a different reward than mine.

That is, I don't have to "win" this discussion to know I am right or to be validated. Does that make me arrogant?

:lol:

Finally, I can be just like everyone else, for a moment.

:lol::lol:

That ought to hurt some feelings.

Or is that tough love?

See, now my sardonic humor comes out and it deteriorates from here .....

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of course it's refreshing to have a discussion of ideas

but then again you only said I have the mirror image perspective because it was relative to your perspective and

I could easily and confidently say the exact words you said down to the period using my perspective as the point of reference

so it's a stalemate

hahahah

i love discussions like this it sharpens the mind

but to lay it down as simple and as bare as i can to avoid confusion

pleasure and pain principle

people avoid pain and are drawn to pleasure

associate something as pain you avoid it

associate something as pleasure you are drawn to it

now if you associate being a mediocre singer as pain you avoid that

and if you associate being a great singer as pleasure you will be drawn

this principle is in the works in our lives everyday

whether you know it or not

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You have your reward, Halcyon.

But, I suppose, in the end, what should count is whether you enjoy the singing that you do. Having opposing perspectives does not guarantee the validity of that perspective.

I knew a guy that decided he could find fault with Caruso. Did that make his arguments valid? Did it mean that Caruso had faults?

Now we are on the slippery slope of semantics.

You want the "win" you go ahead and take it.

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hahah

Im just playing ya ronws

i do love to sing i really do

and i sing because i love it

im not trying to prove anyone wrong or try to prove im right im merely expressing an idea

there is no win here only learning

i enjoy that discussion

thank you

i love having discussions about ideas because

you learn and see new things from a different perspective

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Yeah Agree thats why were here aren't we?:cool:

To learn to sing beautiful

And w/regards to the idea

Well whatever floats your boat

I merely showed you guys a different angle on the subject but whatever

All that matters is to stay focused on your goal

Whether you use positive or negative reinforcement

If it keeps you motivated then stick to it

Thats what counts

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And now that i have made you guys think

That to me is my win

I argue not to prove im right I argue to make people think

And I too ronws do not need validation or approval

Having opposing perspectives doesnt guarantee their validity. you said this in reference to your perspective

I'll throw it back in refernce to mine

Because the idea I presented is already established in the fields of psychology

Now the only question here is why I met heavy resistance to an already established psychological fact

So it begs the question who is the contrarian now? ;)

I would gladly deliver that knock out punch and be blunt if thats what it takes to get the idea across

A very simple idea and it led to this

Probably one of the simplest if not the simplest of ideas

It stills blows my mind why there is so much resistance to this when its already a fact

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