Do You Secretly Do This In The Shower?

I know you do it.

When you’re home on your own. When you’re certain you won’t be overheard or interrupted by someone walking in on you.

When you strip off all your clothes, draw the curtain (or close the glass door) and stand wet and naked in the steam…

It doesn’t take long before the urge strikes. And I should know, I’m guilty of indulging myself all the time.

Because if there is one time we can truly feel like an unstoppable, divatastic, hot-as-hell whipass…it’s when we let loose and sing – really loudly – in the shower.

It doesn’t matter whether you are channeling Bono or Freddie or Gaga or Miley or even Pavarotti (may the big man rest in peace) – in the shower you get the kind of voice you only ever dream you have. Sometimes it feels like you can sing anything you want. For as long as you like (and still be able to speak afterwards – bonus!)

You see, the shower is one of those “perfect places”. A zone where everything comes together to make you a bigger, better, more resonant version of you.

The warm steam gives you clarity of voice and opens up your lungs. The standing-there-naked-and-alone-thing (unless you fancy singing a duet) gives you the psychological freedom to let it all – literally – hang out.

And really, how can you be self-conscious about the sound of your voice when you’re standing there completely naked, performing to your collection of toiletries, the assorted marine life on your shower curtain and possibly even a rubber duck? No inhibitions left by then, my friend.

But the real reason the shower is so appealing is the acoustic.

All of that porcelain and glass come together to bounce around the sound like an adoring groupie, buffering and polishing it, shining it up just for you. So by the time it comes back, what you hear is so damn resonant that you can’t help but feel like a total superstar. You just sound so good.

(If you want to know what the opposite of the shower-singing-halo-effect is, then go find yourself a recording studio. They are built to be acoustically dead so that the engineer can give the sound his own special brand of multi-track loving. I’ve also been in warm up rooms the size of small wardrobes with walls of carpet, which I believe are even worse, like the acoustic undead. You can only ever leave a space like this regretting you ever became a singer in the first place.)

The thing is – if you were to play your rock star shower set somewhere dryer and more public, like the street outside your favourite cafe, or standing on a bench in the park, or at the entrance to the underground, how would it sound? Would the looks of the passers-by put you off? Would the wider open spaces render you small voiced and timid?

Chances are you would probably be too self-conscious to even start…to allow yourself one tiny little fragile note in public.

It’s not the acoustic but how the acoustic makes us feel.

We can judge ourselves so harshly when we believe the acoustic – our audience – is unfavourable. We stand up and muster the courage and conviction to say something, but all we get is poor feedback. So we start to doubt or even dislike what we hear, which only makes it even harder to say the next thing with any confidence. And it’s a feedback loop that can really drive us into the ground.

Because when you play to an acoustic, the space is both physical and emotional. The walls will either absorb or reflect the sound. Your audience will either respond to what you are saying or switch off and let it go over their heads. The trick is to learn to play with the acoustic, not to let it grind your confidence down. If the room is dead and you’re not getting anything back, the worse thing you can do is push even harder.

Better to stay focused on your core sound – your message – and trust in it enough so that you can deliver with the same rock star confidence regardless of the acoustic “feedback”.

This is why singing in the shower can teach you a truly valuable lesson – that you are only as hot as you think you sound. So don’t let a supposedly “dead” and unresponsive acoustic get you down. Remember that it’s better to say (or sing) what you really want with as much abandon and liberation as you can, because the value of what you get back is really all in your head. Keep thinking “I rock”, and chances are you will.

Have you ever experienced the shower-singing-halo-effect outside the shower? Have you ever played to an undead room full of acoustic spongy types who gave you nothing back? Did it get you down or make you stronger?

If this post worked for you, perhaps you might like these too:

Three Ways To Deal With Fear Crashing Your Party
Are You Playing To The Wrong Crowd?
What The World Cup Can Teach You About Singing Away Your Fear

Tagged as: acoustic, audience, belief, confidence, self-awareness