‘Singing, that’s not for me’
When I was about 13, I decided I couldn’t sing. Looking back on it now, I realize how strange that actually was for a 13-year-old. Up until then, I’d sung quite carefree in the church choir and at home with my family, but I kept losing my voice more and more often. The first few times, I actually thought it was kind of cool, but after a while I had enough of it. So I decided: singing just isn’t for me.
I didn’t start singing again until a few years later, when I took guitar lessons and my teacher insisted that you couldn’t learn to play the guitar without singing along. After much persuasion, he finally managed to convince me to give it a try, and as a result, I rediscovered the joy of singing; not long after, I started singing in his band—which went just fine. It wasn’t until I was at the conservatory—where I studied classical piano and had to sing in the choir—that the problems resurfaced. On the advice of a teacher, I decided to take action this time, and through visits to a speech therapist and, later, singing lessons, I discovered just how much you can develop your voice—and, above all, how much fun it was! I hadn’t expected that. Like many people, I believed that your voice is just the way it is and that there’s little you can do to change it. So if you had told me back then that I would earn a master’s degree in voice and build a career as a singer and voice teacher, I would have thought you were crazy.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for people to think they can’t sing. Particularly heartbreaking are the examples of people who, as children, weren’t allowed to sing along in class because their teacher decided they couldn’t stay in tune. One of these people wrote me a moving email after my book was published. After such a negative childhood experience, he had never dared to sing again. Now, at the age of 70, he had secretly started practicing with the help of my book and discovered that he could, in fact, sing after all.
© 2025 Ineke Vandoorn
Zing Magazine nr 126 – Dec 25/Jan 26