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The Three Aspects of Singing

Byjack

I’ve started to master singing and I think there are three main mentalities that allow you to produce a good sound, maybe a 4th step as well.

Step One: Relaxation

The mentality is that you feel completely and totally relaxed in your shoulders, neck, but MOSTLY the throat and vocal chords. Literally, every note has to be zero effort.

This is achieved by (in order of importance):

  1. Breathe support
  2. Keeping open for high notes
  3. Warmup
Step Two: Sit on the Note

Work on sitting on the note in the back of your throat instead of moving up or down (especially when going up). A good trick is to imagine moving down when you are going up for a note.

Step Three: Let the Consonants Carry the Sound

The last step is focusing on enunciating, basically letting the “speech level” words carry the sounds.

After all these steps, you should be left with clear notes that are on key, but the final step is always letting your voice and tonality tell a story and the emotions you feel.

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The Invitation From Life

Byjack

A few days ago, my coach asked me a powerful question. I don’t remember what it is but I came up with this poem.

the summer sun on the blue pool
smell of chlorine, flip flops on the concrete
the late nights in your city, lights on long streets
big dreams in a small classroom on a paper on the board
paint covering the canvases, dripping off the walls
life has always been waiting
for you to be recklessly, wildly, lovingly creative

This led to me deciding the most powerful question in this whole poem is “why has life always been waiting for you”?

I felt in many ways this is true. I live in a wonderfully creative city. I have a youtube channel, a coaching practice, a well-paying job with lots of free time. Life is waiting on me to make a move.

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Aim Technique Ideas

Byjack

Takeaways

  • Prefiring is not about shooting them before you clear a corner, a prefire is about shooting before your brain registers that they are there
  • Try jiggling with OP, when you repeek shoot without even knowing they are there
  • Try to understand their tempo and timings for when a peek is happening and adjust your predictions of their patterns
  • Can be strong in eco or save rounds
  • Crosshair placement doesn’t replace aim, crosshair place IS aim
  • If you can place crosshair faster and more accurately, you can also clear faster and prevent bad timings

Workpost 73: Progress

Byjack

I am trying some new things out to update my routines and actions from the last post.

  1. My morning routine: short walk outside. No computer or phone until I walk outside and get some good sun exposure.
  2. My reset. If I feel overwhelmed, take a shower or go into my closet.
  3. Practicing the transition from my chair to my door: I’m going to mark a tally on my “Active Life” tracker calendar (shout out to my girlfriend <3).

In trying out this new “Active Life” tracker, I decided the following today after trying it out today:

  1. I will leave the apartment as many times as I can
  2. If I feel tired and want to sleep, I can just go to the gym and come back after
  3. If I want to play Valorant or doomscroll, I can go out, do some quick work, then come back and go on my phone

I’m also proud of myself for doing some sketching today in the “woodcut” style that I plan to use for my business card.

I like it a lot but I want to continue on working on making it more clean like this:

Some thoughts:

  1. It helps to look at a photo reference
  2. Might help to sketch out a design beforehand
  3. Need a harder brush (sharper edges) for the image

Now it’s time to plan my day and look at yesterday’s questions.

  1. What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
    • Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it? Yes, I am behind schedule. I think what I need to do about it is that I want to focus more on the business side of things. For coaching that means finding clients and for AI gaming I’m not sure yet. Either way, I need to start figuring out what it looks like to run the business.
    • Should I extend the schedule? Maybe a little, but at the moment no.
    • Am I losing money? Yes, but this is something I want to do and get better at. The best thing to do for me is to not to have a gameplan, just run with what I have until the money runs out. Perhaps I could also try to find a business partner or something to level up to the next step or collaborate with my current business partner more.
  2. How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working? Leaving the apartment more. Doing a deep clean of my apartment.
  3. What do I do about my art coaching website? Create a powerpoint for it, create a basic website.
  4. How do I get everything done in such a short period of time? I don’t need to. I failed at section one of the business, but that’s ok. Failure = growth. I learned that not taking faster action to get to sales doesn’t work as well. Maybe I need to get more people involved to help me or to just bounce ideas off of.
  5. Should I start registering for fairs? Yes most definitely, also think more about what I can give away.
  6. Should I pay someone to design the website for me? I absolutely could, it probably is a very good idea.
  7. How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently? I need to find the joy in just creating this new art style.
  8. How do I start going to the gym and working outside the apartment consistently? Through my “Active Life” tracker! And from being the hero, and valuing my body as a temple. And by leaving the apartment every time I want to do something unhealthy (going outside, then coming back and gaming etc.)
  9. How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time? We can do it piece by piece, we also don’t need to cook immediately, just work on it slowly.
  10. How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses? I should focus work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for a specific time period (8-5). Then trust in the process. If I leave the apartment a lot, things will get done on all fronts.
  11. When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time. Not sure, we have a couple of options. We can focus on coaching, switch gears to AI therapist (as greater chances of monitization), or try to create a release schedule. Or forget about getting something out as being a full stack dev would be pretty valuable and worthy skill on its own right.

Now to write some of the questions I have for tomorrow:

  1. How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow?
  2. What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu?
  3. What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses?
  4. Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack?
  5. Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website?
  6. What can I give away at the fairs?
  7. What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards?
  8. When am I going to create my powerpoint for my coaching website outline?

I’m happy, I think two mentalities that are helping me are:

  1. Whenever I want to do something unhealthy or distracting (youtube, Valorant, etc.) first leave the apartment then do it when I come back. I usually get more done, are more in touch with my body and don’t feel the need to self medicate after.
  2. At the end of the day, imagine what I wished I got done, what would make me happy if I got done and turn those things into a list of questions to tackle and solve tomorrow.

Focus & Slowing Down

Byjack

Most people think that focus is a heavy thing, it is an effort of concentration. But really focus is a light thing. It is something subtractive. The more things you remove, the more focused you are.

Removing distractions, removing goals, removing worries, removing clutter. All those things contribute to the feeling of focus.

The first step of any focus exercises is simply focusing on yourself. Forget your goals and tasks. Let go of everything. Forget figuring out what to let go of and what to focus on. Simply direct your attention to your feelings. Breathe. Nothing else matters. Slow down.

Slowing down is one of the quickest ways to access focus because speeding up is the mindset of the unfocused. It is the mindset of trying to juggle many things, to switch between many things at the same time.

The Attractiveness Challenge

Byjack

I’m working on discovering and developing my own attractiveness. Just to clarify:

  • Attractiveness is not about finding faults, it’s about understanding your most beautiful self and letting yourself grow into that version of yourself. It’s not about imagining other people and wishing you were like them.
  • Attractiveness is very personal. It should be how you want to look to feel like yourself and feel confident. It can match societal versions of beauty but does not have to.

I discovered an exercise that can help:

  1. Stand in front of a full-length mirror
  2. Remove as much clothing as possible, naked if possible
  3. Stand straight and adjust your body to find the most attractive posture
  4. Note any other areas that need adjusting, skin, hair etc. in order to reach peak attractiveness
  5. Once you find your baseline (just standing straight), try different poses
  6. This is PARTICULARLY good at detecting problems with posture
  7. You can take this practice into ordinary life by imagining you are naked, it’s a more natural mentality for intuitively good posture and can make you feel more open and confident

This is an interesting idea, to be naked first because I think it follows the idea that I have with learning in general. You should always start with the basics and move upward. In attractiveness, you must first find your attractive yourself naked before finding your attractive self with clothes on. Just like with any other learning technique, clothes and other accessories (like makeup) actually distract from you seeing the lowest most basic level of yourself. You are the MOST natural and yourself when naked, so it makes sense to start there.

My initial thoughts:

  • The MAIN area that is keeping me from being my most attractive self is the posture of my neck and shoulders. My head is jutted forward making my chin weak and shoulders rounded forward, making my stomach stick out.
  • I may need to cut my hair since it is too much for the features of my face and makes my features look duller.
  • I have other minor areas of posture that need to be adjusted and other grooming things I may want to do.
  • This exercise is GREAT for feeling confident in your own skin, I noticed when I focus on improving my own posture, I open up my body instead of hunching and feel more confident.
  • I don’t actually need to get more fit and muscular like I always think I do. I just need to strengthen my back and core so I can naturally maintain a better posture.

This seems to work mostly for your body though, and not with your face. My intuition tells me that the biggest tool for facial symmetry is just finding ways to relax your face but I’m pretty lost in that area.

Onwards to a better-looking future!

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Workspace 22: Relax

Byjack

I had a slower start to the day. I started the day on my phone, waking up a bit early because my new retainer is bothering me when I sleep.

I watched some Valorant, talked to my girlfriend, and now I have a flight in about 3 hours. I want to leave in about 2 hours. I still have to take out the trash, eat up some more food and load the dishwasher.

I did a bit of a workout and I found out a couple of things that help with regaining energy, and gathering chi:

  1. Butt-clenched breathing: sounds a bit weird but it works. Lie down, clench the sphincter muscle (what you use to hold in poop) breath in. Then relax and breathe out. Repeat.
  2. Tummy circles: put the left hand over your stomach, then your right hand over that. Make circles over your stomach in the clockwise direction. Do it lightly. Then put your hands in the same area in your back and repeat.
  3. Extremity exercises: this can be any exercise that works your extremities. For example, doing a dead hang and focusing on clenching really hard with your hands but leaving everything else relaxed, or doing heel raises with the tips of your toes super engaged with everything else relaxed.
  4. Meditation: lie down close your eyes and walk down a staircase while counting to 10. Imagine the smell of wet stone, always puts me in a meditative state really quick for some reason.

Anyway goals for today. Just relax! I want to get all the chores sorted out and just spend the rest of my time relaxing.