About Shannon Boyce

As a singing teacher, I am acutely aware that most people let the picture of what it means to sing get in the way of singing.  The average person just opens their mouth to sing and quickly realizes it doesn’t come out the way they imagine how they would like their voice to sound.    I believe that everyone has a singing voice and that everyone can find their way to a more beautiful realized free voice no matter what style of music they want to sing.

My work is to help you or your child/teen to remove the obstacles that are in the way of you finding your most free and natural voice. Through a relaxed and efficient whole-person approach to singing I am your guide to overcoming the trauma that lives in the adult voice bringing you back to the innocence of the child’s voice that is still possible to recover.  And for the child or teen student, I am the calm reassuring guide that will help them to develop their voice in a playful, patient, calm, loving way that is appropriate for their developmental stage that adapts and changes as they grow.     

 Overcoming my own singing trauma.

I personally had to overcome trauma that lived in my own voice.  In my younger years singing was very natural but as I became a teen all I wanted to do was sing high, loud, and fast.  Coming from a divorced family life and having the challenge of dyslexia, I worked really hard to be seen and heard, but this caused trauma on my voice because I pushed my voice out of balance and over the edge to where I would often lose my voice.  I did not know how to keep my nervous system calm and relaxed so I could learn with ease.

I also had a well-meaning teacher who traumatized me even more by requiring that I have every song memorized from day one.  I was never allowed to use a music stand in the studio.  And not knowing enough about my learning needs, I wasn’t able to advocate for myself and therefore spent so much time learning the music I couldn’t be free and relaxed in my singing.  And on top of that the teacher was so impatient that if it wasn’t perfectly memorized, she would slam the book closed and throw me out of the studio.  The stress of memorizing quickly and the fear of not getting it right was not good for my nervous system and therefore, the voice was stiff, stuck, shrill, often out of tune, and certainly couldn’t move fast.  Bad vocal habits formed out of a bad learning process.

This is one reason that I bring the utmost patience with my students.  Luckily, later in my adult years I met The School of Uncovering the Voice that taught me how to cultivate self-patience.  It also taught me how to learn and get out of the way of myself.  This approach to singing calmed my nervous system and took care to teach me from my whole self and not just from parts of myself.  I came to a knowing of my voice and who I am as a person and not just trying to learn to sing better. 

How I finally learned to move my voice and sing fast.       

As a singing teacher it is important that I, too, continue to study singing so that I can stay fresh and renewed in my own singing and to stay on top of the newest developments in singing education.  So, I still regularly study with a wonderful teacher today who really helped me to take all I learned in Uncovering the Voice and apply it to performance practice.  One day we were working on quick moving passages and I was struggling.  She knew just the right thing to say.  She said, “You have to remember what it was like learning to ride a bicycle for the very first time, it’s a wobbly feeling.  You can’t be afraid to fall.”  It was just this image that allowed me to let go and feel like I was going to fall when the voice started to move fast.  It was so fast that it was the feeling just like the bicycle taking off for the first time.  All of sudden the bicycle was going without wobbling.  If you are worried about falling you will never learn to ride a bicycle.  The same is true with singing.  We have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, let go and go with the feeling of falling, then the voice can fly.  If we are holding on and stiff trying to make the voice and put it in a certain place it often won’t go.  Through this imagination my teacher empowered me and freed me and this is how I work with my students.     

My experiences of how I was traumatized and of how I overcame those traumas and the creative support I got from my later teachers informs my teaching today.  Luckily, for the students of today, much has changed in the world of neuroscience and education, including how voice lessons are taught.  We know that it’s not only the content of what is taught that is important, but how that content is taught and the personality and learning style of the student. 

My goal is to challenge my students just enough to move them forward but not to stress the nervous system or their since of self so that the learning can take place while the student is able to maintain calm well-being and feel safe, nourished, and empowered.  As a result, cultivation of love and reverence for the learning process happens and builds the student’s confidence to go out into the world to share their gifts.   

To put it simply, for the child, learning happens through play, and for the adult learning brings healing through the renewal of play, and for both the child and the adult it cultivates the imagination and the celebration of self. 

My job is not to tell my students what to do or how to do it in a mechanical way.  It’s also not about the student copying me, the teacher.  Those are old-school ways of teaching. 

My job is to inspire through imaginative pictures combined with teaching a functional understanding of how the voice works to guide the student to build their own consciousness around the voice and singing; ultimately, helping the student to realize the full potential that lives in their voice that gives them lifelong confidence and joy in singing whether that be as a soloist on the stage, a choir member, a parent or caregiver singing a lullaby, or just singing in the shower or while driving to work. 

Ultimately why I teach is because this is how I can contribute to making the world a better place, by helping others to come to know themselves through the process of singing.  As you move through the challenges that are holding you and your voice back you come to know yourself and connect to the deepest parts of your humanity and you become free to love and contribute to making the world a better place.  The individual and the world become better one glorious song at a time.