Arden Kaywin:
You create the internal experience. The internal experience is what creates the external world. It is powerful and it is changing. It's changing singers' lives. And I say that with all the humbleness in the world, just because I wish that I had had that. I wish that I had had that when I was 24.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better.

Michael Walker:
If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right. So I'm excited to be here today with Arden Kaywin. She's a new friend and professional singer and vocal coach who's pioneering holistic transformative performance techniques for singers and songwriters. She's been featured in shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, ABC Family, ESPN, The WB, MTV, and a lot more. So basically she owns television at this point, and she's also worked with major label artists, contestants from American Idol, The Voice, The X Factor, indie artist and tween artists from KIDZ BOP and Disney.

Michael Walker:
So she has a ton of experience when it comes to really harnessing your voice. And as an artist and a performer, your voice and the vocals are often the very first thing that someone hears when they list to your music. It's so important. So I'm excited to talk a little bit today about how everyone who's listening to this right now can learn to really hone their voice and to have a holistic approach to singing. So thanks so much for taking the time to be here today, Arden.

Arden Kaywin:
You're welcome. I'm so excited.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So to start with, I'd love to hear just a little bit about your story and kind of how you got started down this path of becoming a vocal coach.

Arden Kaywin:
Yeah. So I'm a classically trained singer. My education and my background is in opera and classical music. So I have a bachelor's degree from a prestigious conservatory and a master's degree from another prestigious conservatory and launched out into that performing career and recognized that I got burnt out very quickly doing that.

Arden Kaywin:
Those who might be listening who know anything about that world, there's so many competing forces and factors in that performance going on and there's what the conductor wants, what the director wants, 200 years of history, language, performance practice, technique, all this stuff.

Arden Kaywin:
And I got to the San Francisco Opera. I was in the artist development program, which is you're doing the understudies and the small roles for their season. And I was just so burnt out because it was like, I was used to being... I don't know, can I curse on here? I won't. I won't. I will make it G-rated. I was used to being pooped on as a developing artist, but I was watching these singers who I was on stage with when I was doing supporting roles and they were doing lead roles, and I'm watching them just get it from the conductors and the directors.

Arden Kaywin:
I had this one experience where this one singer, she's like the best in the world at the role she was doing. And during intermission, the conductor tacked up on her dressing room door all the things that he wanted her to fix. And I'm like, "She's the best in the world at this. This is what I have to look forward to?" I was already feeling like it was just all these competing forces in my head and I was like, "Where's my artistry in all this?" And I didn't have the tools that I do now, but at the time I was like, "I can't be in this part of the industry anymore."

Arden Kaywin:
And so I blamed it on the opera world and I pulled a geographical, right? Which the thing is, wherever you go, you take yourself with you, right? But I didn't know that at that point. I was 24.

Arden Kaywin:
And so I had a bunch of contacts in Los Angeles, and during the time that I was in San Francisco, I had been hired to sing on a film soundtrack. And it was crossover like Josh Groban kind of popera kind of stuff. And the composer was a composer and not really a songwriter, and I, unbeknownst to them, had always written music and pop music. And when you're an opera singer, if you're writing pop music, you don't tell anyone about it because it's very like, "Oh, pop music? Look down the nose on it."

Arden Kaywin:
So for me, I never intended on doing anything with it. It was just like people paint or keep a journal, that was my outlet. I would just write pop songs. And I never played them for anyone and I never recorded them. But having this experience in a studio with this film composer who was not really a songwriter, I ended up rewriting a whole bunch of the songs with them, having an amazing experience in the studio and being like, "Oh okay, this is what I want to do."

Arden Kaywin:
So I'm burnt out in the opera world, so I left my contract when that was done in San Francisco, moved to Los Angeles and doing the thing, right? Doing open mic nights, putting myself out there. Anyways, I mean, this is way back. This is before... Well, this is just the beginning of iTunes, before Facebook or Instagram, none of that, no Spotify.

Arden Kaywin:
So I got signed on an indie label and I made two records and it did pretty well for an indie. I sold about 10,000 records at the time, I toured, licensed a lot of music to film and TV and still was feeling restless because I could see the direction that the music industry was going after about eight years of that. Now we're looking at all the social media and nobody buys records anymore. I mean, people actually bought records when I was doing this. I'm sure you remember those days.

Arden Kaywin:
And I could see, "Wow, I'm going to have to be on the road 250 days a year if I want to make a living at this. I'm going to have to license a lot more music." And I had done very well, like all the networks you mentioned at the beginning, but it was like, "I don't know. I want to get married." At that point, I was getting married and wanted to have a family. And I was like, "I don't know how I'm going to build this anymore." It's because I didn't know you at the time. I didn't know what you guys did back then, right?

Arden Kaywin:
But anyway, point being I, at the time, I kind of backdoored my way into teaching over that period of time because a lot of the producers and label people who knew me, they also knew that I had this incredible background in education as a technically trained singer.

Arden Kaywin:
So from time to time, I'd get a call from a producer friend or a label person who was like, "Hey, I have this singer. Can you just come produce vocals for the session because the singer is just not doing so well getting it out of them? We know they have a lot more and they're just not making the impact."

Arden Kaywin:
So I would go in and then it would be this great experience. The singer would be like, "Oh my God," the label would be like, "This is amazing," and so then invariably, I would get that question, "Well, do you coach? Can I keep working with you?" So I was like, "Yeah," because I was like, "Well, I'm not touring right now. I don't want to release any more records. I have no idea what I'm doing and I like this and I'm good at it."

Arden Kaywin:
And so that's sort of how I backdoored my way into coaching and teaching. And over the years, I parallel to that had my own journey, sort of my own I guess you would call it spiritual journey in terms of understanding myself and why I always felt that there was a level of impact and of connection that I always felt like I wasn't as readily achieving what I wanted to despite the fact that I'd had a lot of credits in my career, I had done a lot of things.

Arden Kaywin:
And in my own life, just turning 30 and we go through these periods in our lives. At the time, I embarked on a huge self-actualization process, a mindful practice, meditation work, all of that kind of stuff. And I started to notice what a huge impact it had on my singing and my performing and what a huge impact it was having on the singers that I would work with because I would bring in these ideas into the studio or when we were working in lessons.

Arden Kaywin:
And at that time, I was just teaching kind of traditional one-on-one come for a lesson once a week kind of lessons. And I was realizing, "Gosh, if they could do this work in concert with the technique work and the artistry work that we're doing just once a week, if they were doing this in between when they are seeing me, they could get infinitesimally better results than just coming once a week and it taking sometimes years, if ever, for them to achieve that." Because there are things that don't have anything to do with the technique but that are affecting the technique that I started to pick up on that are involved with mindset and heartset.

Arden Kaywin:
So I decided, "Okay, traditional training is not working anymore." It didn't work for me in the sense that I knew there was this other layer of things and it took me a decade plus of self-actualization and mindful practice and all these things to understand how these things relate, so I don't want it to have to take that long for anybody else. So I designed a program around it.

Arden Kaywin:
And it started in Los Angeles five or six years ago. It was all in person and it was how I wanted to help singers be able to bust through the blocks, the patterns, the habits that nine times out of 10, Michael, have nothing to do with singing and yet are 150% sabotaging that singer from being able to use the technique and tap into their most powerful, efficient sound to make the biggest impact with their sound.

Arden Kaywin:
So what I do today, I don't teach one-on-one anymore because I don't think it works because it's informational support instead of transformational support. And I think that's the biggest thing that I learned and why I changed around how I was working with singers was that I think most singers substitute informational support for transformational support. And you don't know how many times I'll be working with a recording artist or an opera singer, it's not genre specific. You guys, all the singers who come to me, they all think they're so different and they're all dealing with the same stuff.

Arden Kaywin:
So whatever it is, they all have a level of understanding. They've studied before. They've taken voice lessons. They've done the workshops. I mean, for a lot of the Broadway people and the opera people, they have degrees in this stuff and yet all of the results of that training are not showing up in the form of the successful high level career that they want because there is a disconnect between what they know intellectually, what they've been taught, and their body, their instrument and their energy's availability to be able to do all that when it counts and not get in their own way.

Arden Kaywin:
So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to change the paradigm for how singers are being trained." And yes, technique is important, it's super important and we work our singers hardcore in technique, you have to know that, but at the end of the day, I could give a singer the best technique in the world and it is not going to matter if their brain is sabotaging their body from using it.

Arden Kaywin:
Your body can't do what your brain is sabotaging. And any athlete knows this, right? Which is why Olympians, pro ball players, they understand get your head in the game and they're trained. The mental game is just as important as the physical game. And a singer is no different than an athlete. You're asking your body to do the same thing over and over again.

Arden Kaywin:
And so I basically designed the program that I wish that I had had when I was 24 to be able to feel like I could make that level of impact and deliver when it counted anytime, whatever the genre, it doesn't matter, and do it in a way that feels good, that doesn't feel like I'm striving or proving or whatever that is.

Arden Kaywin:
You know how many times you've probably seen, especially on the competition shows like Idol or The Voice or whatever, and there'll be a singer who arguably has a good voice, there's objectively nothing wrong with their voice, but they're just so up in there grooving and, "Listen to me and love me and watch me," and it cuts the audience off from their best sound and that impact. And the singer has one job and one job only, and that is to make an impact on their audience.

Arden Kaywin:
So when singers come to me, most of the singers who come to me have had a lot of training and they make records and they get like 5,000 spins and nobody's listening, or they are Broadway singers and they go and they can get into the callbacks, but they don't book. They're not booking. And so there's a disconnect between what they think they're bringing and what the audience is actually getting. And it affects their sound, it affects their technique and all of it.

Arden Kaywin:
So that's my long way of going around to the point that I came to this work through my own journey of figuring all this stuff out in my own life in these two parallel tracks and seeing what a huge impact it had in my own singing, in my own life, and then putting it together so that we can change this paradigm because the way singers are trained now, it just doesn't serve. You have so many singers out there with all this information and yet careers littered by the side of the road because they are not able to get out of their own way and break those blocks and patterns that prevent them from being able to actualize that talent, actualize that technique to take them to that elite level. So that's what I do.

Michael Walker:
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. That's so cool. And I love that you're combining those two different approaches in terms of both the technique, but also with your own inner work, self-actualization and the mindset around it and teaching that.

Michael Walker:
One quote that you shared that I think is so good is wherever you go, there you are. And it does seem like that inner work that you're talking about is so beneficial, not just in terms of singing, but just in terms of becoming a better human overall and it's going to ripple out in their entire life. And even if someone did manage to really turn their voice and build a successful career and they didn't do that inner work, then they're able to kind of build a giant house on a foundation of sand. And as soon as the wind blows, it can kind of all come crumbling down.

Michael Walker:
And I'm sure there's so many examples of people who are very materially successful, but they haven't done this other type of work that you're talking about in terms of actually self-discovery and letting go of the baggage and whatever it is that they're carrying around.

Michael Walker:
So I think it's awesome that you evolved in that work and I feel like that's kind of a trend or that's something that's really happening right now as a culture because it's one thing that we've sort of forgotten in a lot of cases. We've been focused on material success, and there's absolutely nothing wrong at all with the material success, it's awesome, but it's just as important, if not way more important to have that kind of inner peace and success at the same or else it's so easy to sabotage ourselves.

Arden Kaywin:
Well, yeah, and honestly, it affects the actual physical mechanism of your goals. So when you have, for example, I think about Adele. So Adele, if you're listening, I can help you. Adele has had to cancel I think two tours, two world tours now because of vocal hemorrhage and I believe has had two vocal hemorrhages. And so that's what a vocal hemorrhage is, it's like a burst blood vessel in your vocal folds and it comes from misuse. It's a vocal injury. It comes from singing on your instrument the wrong way. And I guarantee you, she has...

Arden Kaywin:
So you can fix that obviously medically, right? So you can fix the actual injury medically. There's different ways that otolaryngologists deal with that. But the thing is, the way that those happen is because somebody is misusing their instrument. And what I was going to say before is I guarantee you, she has had some of the best technicians, vocal coach technicians in the world if you're Adele, right, teaching her what she's supposed to be doing, how she needs to use her breath, use her instrument in order to not get that injury, and yet I think it was a year later, here we are again, there's another injury.

Arden Kaywin:
And at that point, when you have a career that size, right, where thousands of people are counting on you for their livelihood, tour roadies, you know what I mean, managers, publishers, all the way down to the people who take the tickets of the concerts, right? They're making money because she can sing.

Arden Kaywin:
And so there's all this identity wrapped up in the sound that she thinks she has to make in order to be successful, the sound that maybe she expects people to hear, the sound that maybe she feels is the sound that she judges as the most beautiful or powerful or whatever in her mind is the sound that is the one that she believes she has to make in order to be successful.

Arden Kaywin:
And so somebody comes in and shows her technique, right? But she's not going to use that technique if there's all kinds of patterns and conditioned thinking and blocks as to the sound she thinks she has to make in order to be successful. That will override all the techniques she's being given every single time And sabotage her from being able to sing in a way that will serve the longevity of her career.

Arden Kaywin:
And so even at that level, right? So it can prevent artists from getting to that level because they are... I mean, I can't tell you how many times I will hear from somebody, "I'm so in my head when I go in the studio. I'm in my head," or they'll say, "Maybe it's performance anxiety, maybe it's nerves," or maybe it's they have this idea like Adele, I think that might be what's going on with her, I don't know, I don't work with her, but I have worked with major label artists before and that's a big thing and it's a thing for unknown artists too, which is, "This is the sound I think I have to make an order to be successful."

Arden Kaywin:
And so now there's a fear loop that's been created, which is fear of either losing what I have in Adele's case or not getting what I want in an unknown artist's case. And that fear of failing, because ultimately, it's just a fear of failing, that fear of failing gets taken into the body.

Arden Kaywin:
And so we as humans, we physicalize our thoughts and our emotions. It's part of being human. It's what we do and it's normal. And that's fine if you're Joe Schmo sitting at your computer doing your day job. Physicalizing your thoughts and feelings is not going to prevent you from sending that sales email or whatever, but for a singer whose body is their instrument, physicalizing those thoughts and emotions and fears and feelings, it dramatically prevents the body from doing its job because sound is just a form of energy like light, like heat, right? And when you think about just high school physics, the law of entropy is that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It just changes forms.

Arden Kaywin:
And so your job as the singer, as the performer, is to create that sound energy in the form and be able to release it completely unencumbered so that the audience now gets that sound energy. And so if you're holding thoughts and feelings physically in your body, it prevents that energy from being the most free-flowing to get that impact on the audience and it prevents your body from doing what it needs to do physically for your technique in order to create that.

Arden Kaywin:
So, at the end of the day, if this artist is fearing failure... And they don't want to fail, because for most people, especially listening to this podcast, this is your life. This is your career. This is your dream. You don't want to be stuck at that crappy day job for the next 10 years of your life watching another day, another week, another month go by, right? And you feeling like a failure because you couldn't make this thing happen and you're doing everything that you know how to do. You know what I mean? You're doing workshops and you're hustling and you're recording and yet it's still not happening.

Arden Kaywin:
And so now that singer has all this fear of failure and all this pressure of losing their dream and they go into that audition or they go into the studio and now all of that fear subconsciously, most of the time it's not conscious, subconsciously is running the show and it's in their body. And we as humans, we all have the same fear reaction, which is fight or flight. It's been the same since the beginning of time, right? The caveman walks into the cave and there's the bear and the caveman's either going to run away from the bear or he's going to brace himself to fight the bear, right?

Arden Kaywin:
In that moment of audition or recording or performance, the singer literally subconsciously does not know the difference between the bear that has come into the cave to eat you and failing at this purpose, this gift that God gave you, the reason you were put on this planet.

Arden Kaywin:
And so that fear gets taken in the body. And if the fear reaction is fight, what that looks is make, force, do, push, manipulate, control, and now all that technique that you know has been completely sabotaged for all these control mechanisms because ego mind does not want you to fail at this. Ego mind does not want you to be at that crappy day job for the next five years, let alone five months, right? And so you're going to do this. You're going to fight the bear, right?

Arden Kaywin:
And so the body now reacts. And the crazy thing is now you have actually created the sound and the experience and the block of energy that you were terrified of making in the first place. And what's worse, Michael, is that now you have evidence that you're not good enough. You have evidence that you're going to fail. And so that then gets taken back into the next take that you're going to do if you're in the studio or the next audition, and now, you don't want to fail even more because now you have evidence that, "Oh my God, I don't know if this is going to work."

Arden Kaywin:
And so now you go even more into that make, force, do, push, manipulate, control that cuts you off from your technique, that cuts you off from the energy of your sound and cuts you off from that impact on the audience. And it becomes this negative feedback loop. And this is what takes talented singers down. And this is what prevents them from making the impact in their recordings.

Arden Kaywin:
I mean, I'm sure you hear this all the time. My last release, I had like 1200 spins on Spotify, if that. And the thing is, the work that you do with people is so powerful, but in my opinion, only when that performance can make an impact. Because at the end of the day, otherwise it's like, I mean, I hate to say this because it sounds so cruel, but lipstick on a pig. You can get the most expensive producer, the most expensive marketing campaign, you can throw all this money at this stuff, and at the end of the day, if that recording, if that performance doesn't make an impact, it's not going to matter.

Arden Kaywin:
And so understanding these blocks and that fear loop, that's just one, that's just one of the blocks. There's so many patterns that I see singers getting into, that when you change the thinking, you change the singing. And traditional training trains from the neck down. It leaves out the one part of the instrument, because as a singer, your whole body is your instrument, not just your vocal chords, and so traditional training leaves out the one part of the instrument that can and will sabotage everything else if it's not dealt with, and that's your mind.

Arden Kaywin:
And so when you change the thinking, then everything hooks into place. I can't tell you how many times my favorite moment when I'm working with singers is when they do the thing, like the high note that they never thought they could do or they get through the whole performance and it's so aligned and everybody's got goosebumps and it's that look on their face where they're like, "Holy," you know. I won't... I have a mouth like a sailor. Like, "Holy crap," and they feel how easy it was when they got out of their head and they got back into their awareness and none of that inner critic, none of that fear loop, none of those old conditioned patterns, habits, reactions are running the show.

Arden Kaywin:
And a lot of our favorite performers, that's what they're doing. Whether they were trained or not to do that, whether they realize it or not, some people are just born being able to do that. And lucky them. Lucky them. And the rest of us, we have to be taught, but it can be taught. And that's what allows the singers that I work with and that we work with here and on my team to be able to break through to those next levels in their singing, in their career, in their technique because they understand how to get out of their own way.

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Arden Kaywin:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Wow. That is so awesome. And yeah, like we were just talking about too, I think that that process of learning how to be present, how to get out of your mind and how to us and embrace and kind of process emotional baggage that they happen to be carrying around in their body is something that I imagine serves your students in so many different ways, not just in they're singing, but also makes a huge, profound impact on the singer themselves in and of itself.

Michael Walker:
The analogy that came up as you were describing that was just this idea of contraction and expansion and how carrying around that fear, that fear energy, is sort of this contraction where it's like this dense energy and it actually takes a good amount of energy just to kind of hold on to that, right? You kind of just feel it too. I can feel it in my solar plexus, that fear. And all of us to some extent, we have that because, like you were talking about, we evolved to have this fear response that in a lot of ways is outdated.

Michael Walker:
But, yeah, the analogy that came up was kind of this beach ball analogy that I've heard before, where it's kind of like when you have that fear response, you have that energy, it's like you're holding down this inflatable beach ball below the surface. And maybe you'd call it the ego mind or whatever, it's kind of holding this down like, "This can't be seen," or, "I need to hide this." There's maybe some shame there or there's some sort of emotional baggage, something that in lot of cases probably comes up from unconscious trauma that we didn't fully process, maybe from childhood even.

Michael Walker:
But it takes a lot of energy to hold that beach ball down below the surface. And that energy, if they are able to let go completely and be present and process it, you let go and it pops up to the surface. And maybe it explodes out of the surface a little bit when the beach ball first comes up, but then it just opens up that freedom to be able to express without necessarily having to divert that energy into holding down the beach ball.

Michael Walker:
So that was just one kind of analogy that was coming as you were sharing that, but that's so cool.

Michael Walker:
So I'd love to dive into... It feels like you did such a good job speaking to that specific feeling. And I know for sure that I myself as an artist have gone through that, that fear. I know that for a lot of the artists who are listening to this right now, that just probably hit the nail on the head in terms of exactly what they're going through.

Michael Walker:
So I'd love to dive a little bit into an overview of your process for how do they overcome that and how do they start to be able to really show up and be able to express their voice in a way that's authentic and kind of takes all the techniques that they've been learning and actually allows them to fully utilize them.

Arden Kaywin:
Yeah. So it all comes back to, for me, this really essential idea, which is that we were all, all humans, whether you're a singer or not, fundamentally built, Mother Nature built us fundamentally to be the most effective producer of resonant sound. So if you think of a baby, anybody listening who has kids, right? You have kids, Michael?

Michael Walker:
We do. We have three. We have a baby daughter who was just born a month ago.

Arden Kaywin:
Okay, so you're totally going to get this. If you think of an infant who can cry and cry and cry at the top of their lungs and they never get hoarse and they never get vocally tired, and it is the most present and resonant sound and they can do that for hours. I'm a parent too and it's like, you know this. And so that is because as the infant is born with that most effective mechanism that we are all born with, they don't have any either physical habits or emotional habits yet that have come in to get in the way of Mother Nature's most effective production of sound.

Arden Kaywin:
But as we get older from just our families, our society, our neighborhoods, perhaps religions, perhaps schooling, community, social experiences, we start to adopt physical habits and mental habits, psychological habits that over time inhibit Mother Nature's most effective production of sound.

Arden Kaywin:
So it can be something like a I had a singer who came from a huge family. I think she was the youngest of, I don't know, nine or something crazy like that. And it was a very chaotic experience for her growing up. It was a very chaotic upbringing. And after doing our work, she had this realization that in her family, the way that you were the most successful to have your needs met was to not be heard and not rock the boat and just kind of go along.

Arden Kaywin:
And so she adopted that psychological habit and now she's taking that into her music career. And if somebody has that habit, that belief, that conditioned way of thinking that if they are heard, that there will be negative consequences, so now she gets up. And when she's in her own practice, like when she's just practicing on her own where nobody's listening, she's got it. She is on, everything is hooking in and it's resonant and it's supported and powerful, but the minute anybody is listening, she goes into the bunker and her body is physically reacting to that old conditioned pattern of, "It's not safe to be heard. It's not safe to let myself speak my energy, my truth," because that was not how it was and her family, especially being the youngest.

Arden Kaywin:
So the process that I take my singers through is learning how to uncover, discover, discard these patterns, these stories, these ways of conditioned being, and we do that in two ways. We do that in work that is done on their own with guided meditations daily, with what I call thought exercises, which are journaling exercises for them to really understand what is the thinking going on behind all of this? What are the limiting beliefs? What are the stories I'm holding that don't serve me? Even sometimes traumas. And then how all of that, along with the technique work that they're learning, how all of that shows up, or doesn't show up if the case may be, in the moment of singing.

Arden Kaywin:
And so we have to address it in the moment of singing, because I don't know about you, but in my earlier training, I would have a coach or a teacher kind of tell me, "Yeah, you have a lot of tension on that note," maybe they would say, or, "Maybe you have a lot of tension in your jaw," or they'll say, "You're really pressing and pushing." And all these things, I'm listening and I'm like, "I know. I feel it. I know. Thanks, but no thanks. Okay, so what do you want me to do about it?" And they'd be like, "Go to yoga, go to acupuncture, go to therapy," go do whatever it may be, meditation.

Arden Kaywin:
And I would do all those things and I'd feel great. I'd have discoveries, I'd have breakthroughs. And then I would come back to singing and all the BS was like right back where it started because nobody was addressing how all of this stuff is related to my sense of identity as an artist, my fears of the future of what I want for my career, the fear of failure we were talking about. And so until and unless we address that stuff in the moment of performance, none of it changes.

Arden Kaywin:
And so the other piece of this puzzle is all of the work that the singers are doing in setting that technique, in understanding the things that are getting in their way and the meditation work and the thought exercises. And then they come into our studio class, and we work 100% virtual and it's amazing because you don't need to be in person for anything anymore. And we did this before COVID. Way before COVID we were doing this.

Arden Kaywin:
Anyway, so they'll come into studio class and come up against their edge where they start to feel themselves straining and pushing or they start to feel themself disconnecting. They start to feel that fear come up and I get to say, like if they were you, I'd be like, "Okay, Michael pause. Okay. Remember that thing that you discovered with me, like X, Y, Z, when you were doing your module writing on expectations or whatever the module was. Okay, that thing that happened that you told me about, that's this. You think it's because your support is not consistent. You think it's because you're pushing, but there is a reason, there is a reason why you are pushing, why your support is not connecting."

Arden Kaywin:
And so that singer has understood what they're supposed to be doing all along, but in that moment, brain sabotages body, they go back into the old limiting beliefs, they go back into the old stories, into the fears of failure, because in that moment, now they're singing and now it's like they're worth as an artist, they're worth as a human that's so tied up in their artistry and their vibration that they're making, it's hard because it's like your instrument is you. It's not the guitar where if there's something wrong with it, you can tune it up. You know what I mean? This is you.

Arden Kaywin:
And so there's so much tied into self-worth and identity and self-esteem. And we don't want to feel lack of worth. We don't want to feel lack of self-esteem. We're going to fight the bear. You know what I mean?

Arden Kaywin:
And so when we address all this stuff in the moments of singing, that's when the singer experiences what it's to be that infant again, in that sense, to have that open channel and to have that mechanism of sound. I'm constantly saying to my singers, "Your body knows how to do this. The problem is all those fears and all those things cause you not to trust. And so you need to get all up in there to control the outcome because you're either scared of losing what you have or not getting what you want."

Arden Kaywin:
And that how we get all just bent out of shape and it disconnects us from our instrument, it disconnects us from the full scope of what we could do with it, and it disconnects us from our audience and the impact that we're there to make.

Arden Kaywin:
So that's the process. That's sort of how we do it in a very kind of broad stroke.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Man, I find this so fascinating. And I think it really is true that our thoughts and our beliefs, that they have this physical, this... Because sometimes with, I don't know, with thoughts and emotions, they seem kind of ethereal. It seems kind of like they're constantly moving, it's kind of hard to put your finger on them, but it sounds like what you're saying is a lot of the work that you do is really about awareness of what's happening in the moment of singing, just shining a light on those feelings as they come up, which commonly you avoid looking at them or you don't really notice them, or usually they aren't fully-

Arden Kaywin:
Or you're just on autopilot. You know how many singers are just on autopilot? They're just not even present.

Michael Walker:
Right. Right. And so you being able to shine a light on them is literally, it's like little pockets of darkness, darkness or kind of firm fear, energy, and shining a light on them and whoosh, it really does help to dissolve.

Michael Walker:
So let's imagine that someone who's listening to this right now, let's imagine that they're getting ready to record a new song and they're about to step into the vocal booth. And they're walking up to the microphone. And as they start to sing, they feel this tension. They feel this fear and they're in that moment. What advice would you have for them sort of as an exercise or how would you coach them through that moment as they're singing and they notice that that fear starts to come up? What would sort of the exercise or the process be around that?

Arden Kaywin:
So I don't think you're going to like my answer because the game is not won on the field. By the time you get to that moment, if you're experiencing that, you've lost.

Michael Walker:
Right. That's a great point. So let me reimagine the question slightly.

Arden Kaywin:
Okay.

Michael Walker:
So let's say that they're at home and they're practicing and they're rehearsing and they want to do this work that you're talking about, what's one exercise as they're practicing for them if they notice that they have this fear, they're in that moment where it is kind of impacting their ability to sing, what would be a process or a good exercise for starting to deal with that?

Arden Kaywin:
Right. So I have trouble answering that because everything that I would suggest for somebody to do in that moment, if they don't have a practice of doing it when they're not singing, it's very hard for them to come to that in the moment that they are singing and practicing, right?

Arden Kaywin:
So part of the power of the process that we give singers, we're giving them a process that they do when they are not singing, so that when they get to that moment, if they start to recognize some of the fear or the tension, that they have really conditioned tools that can create a pattern interrupt immediately. You know what I mean? Which is not to say that a singer can't...

Arden Kaywin:
So the idea of a pattern interrupt can be really powerful, right? Because one of the things that we're always doing, that I'm always doing with my singers is you build the beliefs first. You build the identity first, and then the outcome that you want manifests in the material world in the form of the sound or the career or the downloads or whatever that you're going for. And so what we teach singers how to do is how to condition the beliefs, how to condition that identity.

Arden Kaywin:
And so that's not to say that a pattern interrupt can't work. I mean, if a singer is in that moment and they haven't done this work yet, to me, it's put it down, step away from the mic or whatever. Don't keep pushing yourself. Because if you're continuing to show up with the same energy and identity that you were five minutes ago, you're going to keep getting the same outcome.

Arden Kaywin:
So doing something that helps you shift your state. It can be putting on a song that you love, that empowers you, that makes you feel. This is something I do with my singers. We call it the soundtrack of awesome. We all have a soundtrack of awesome and it's the thing that when you start going into inner critic or you wake up in the morning and you feel the weight of the release that you have coming out and you're holding and contracting around it, it's just like put on your soundtrack of awesome. That's one way that you can shift your state. And we all have those songs that, when you hear them, they just... And that's what we're trying to create for our audience at the same time, right?

Arden Kaywin:
So get yourself in state, right? Another way to do that is we do a lot of mind-body work. So if there's something that that person does that takes them out of their mind and puts them back in their body, it could be going for a run, it could be doing yoga, it could be even in that moment, just breathwork. Different things work for different people, but the idea of a pattern interrupt, meaning don't keep doing what you're doing, don't keep screaming that take over and over and over again because... And they say the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, right?

Arden Kaywin:
So when we shift who we are being, when we shift the beliefs and the identity, then the outcome shifts because, something you said a minute ago about thoughts just kind of seem like they're these ethereal things that just pop in, you know what I mean? But the thing is, the thought is an electrical impulse in the brain. And so if you think about... So, okay, I'm going to geek out a little bit if that's okay with you.

Michael Walker:
Geek away.

Arden Kaywin:
Okay. So there's the Newtonian view of the world, which is Newton sitting under the apple tree and the apple falls. And it's like, "Ouch," and he discovered gravity, but it's also the Newtonian view of the world, which is that an external thing creates an internal experience. So the apple falls on his head and now, "Ouch, that hurt." That created an internal experience of annoyance for him or maybe it created an internal experience of elation because he discovered gravity, but either way, the external thing created the internal experience.

Arden Kaywin:
And so that's the Newtonian view of the world, but now, hundreds of years later, Einstein, so now there's the quantum view of the world based on quantum physics. And the quantum view of the world is we are all just energy. Everything is just made up of smaller and smaller and smaller parts of energy. At a cellular level, it goes to protons, neutrons, quarks, neutrinos, and those little subatomic particles are the same thing, it's the same energy that makes up everything else in the known universe and the unknown universe.

Arden Kaywin:
And so if we think of sound as just a form of energy and we are just made up of energy, okay? Those quarks, those protons, neutrons, neutrinos, they're not being created or destroyed within us, they're just changing forms. So we are all in that energetic soup together. Okay?

Arden Kaywin:
So a quantum view of the universe is, and I'm not taking credit for this at all, this is just very smart people that I love to geek out on in the work that I bring in with my singers because it freaking works is that you create the internal experience. The internal experience is what creates the external world, versus Newton, the external world is what creates the internal experience.

Arden Kaywin:
So most singers come to me and they are in the Newtonian view of the world. They are focused on reacting to everything that is going on. "Oh, my record should've been released by now," or all the shoulds, all the expectations, I get this one a lot, "I got to do this before I'm 30. I don't want to age out," all of these things that they're looking at the externals, it is what is creating and informing this internal state that is based on fear, that is based on what I call the not enough stuff, feeling like you're not enough, "I should be further along by now. My friends are making money in their jobs and here I am in my chosen field and I got nothing to show."

Arden Kaywin:
All of that external stuff creating this internal experience, that's very Newtonian, right? So what we do is we get in there to be able to engage with their technique and their instrument from a place of we help them learn how to create who they are being and the beliefs that they are choosing, which create an internal space, which then manifests the sound, the record, the performance.

Arden Kaywin:
I had a singer who she had no commercial releases, nothing. Okay? She had a hard drive full of songs that were just sitting there collecting dust because there was just so many blocks and so many things going on in her head preventing her from being able to show up in that session and sing the way she knew she can. And she was at some dead end day job hating her existence and feeling so much shame and so much guilt that she had this talent and it was going nowhere.

Arden Kaywin:
So from this work of being able to shift the internal state, so her body is now in this place where it can allow the technique and everything to happen that she's learning, then what she has to give is able to be manifested in the form of the sound, in the form of the performance that is so powerful because she created it internally first, and then she didn't have to think about what was happening in the career.

Arden Kaywin:
And so P.S., she did our program, it was like a year and a half ago, and three months later, she was at some event, it was already during COVID, some online event and came in contact with a woman who was working for an ad agency and found out that she was a singer and a songwriter and she was like, "Oh, we're working on a campaign for a big cosmetics brand and we need a song for their international holiday campaign. Do you want to submit anything?" And she said to me, "Arden, six months ago, not only would I have had nothing to submit, but I wouldn't have even felt like I could go in, and in an hour, put down an amazing vocal and submit something, and I just would've not even told her that I was a singer."

Arden Kaywin:
But because she was owning this identity, because she had shifted the beliefs, and the belief she was choosing was that she can trust her instrument, she can trust her voice, she can trust her body, that now this opportunity comes and she's like, "Arden, I went into the studio, it took me two hours. I did it, I submitted it and I got it." And it was a $50,000 license for an Estée Lauder commercial. Her song was the song. It was not this past holiday season, but the season before in an international commercial with her song. And then they released it because people were requesting it. So they released it on iTunes and Spotify, and then it snowballed and everything because she shifted, she understood and had the tools and had support to shift who she was being and showing up to her voice as.

Arden Kaywin:
And it can be hard because we tend to be really close to our own blocks to see them. We tend to be too close to our own BS to see it. And so if it were easy to do this work on your own, we would all be doing it. I've had to have my own mentors and my own guides. And so to be able to have that person to gently and compassionately hold this space for you to mirror back to you what is happening in your mind, what is happening in your body, and point out the pothole before you walk into it, point out the wall before you crash into it in terms of the result that you are bound to get if you keep doing what you're doing, and to how these singers to see that and to make these shifts in a very safe space and in a very short amount of time, we do this in eight weeks, it doesn't have to take long when you have a process that is very strategic and that is very sequential to be able to do that.

Arden Kaywin:
So I think you asked the question a minute ago about what would I tell somebody who's in that moment? I think that the number one thing is just to remind yourself that you are not your voice. You are not your song. You are not your career. You are not a singer, you just are. And that takes the pressure off. Because if you have worth and value because you are, and then you just get to show up to that performance or to that recording, that's trust.

Arden Kaywin:
Now, caveat, that's hard. That's hard to do. That is a lot easier said than done. And my experience is that that requires a lot of rewiring and a process for which to do that, but you can start with it, you can try it, you can play with it, and I would encourage singers to do that. And if you want support to be able to do it more easily, more readily, that's what we're here for, and to be able to connect that to the process of high level techniques so that when you're in that moment of acceptance, that you trust that your body's going to show up for you. Because that's another piece that gets really sticky, is that if I let go, then what will happen? What will show up? Will the technique show up? Will the sound show up? So there's that fear, there's that trust that has to be set.

Arden Kaywin:
So this is layers and layers and layers that we work with and it is powerful and it is changing. It's changing singers' lives. And I say that with all the humbleness in the world, just because I wish that I had had that. I wish that I had had that when I was 24. And so now my purpose is to be able to give that to the singers so that it doesn't take them a decade plus of piecing it together and figuring it out on their own, so that they get to go move into these careers that are powerful and that impact people, because isn't the whole point so that one of their songs does that for somebody so that somebody else can put one of their songs on their soundtrack of awesome and have that transformative experience just because that person knew how to advocate for themselves and invest in themselves when they had the chance to be able to get past these blocks so that they don't just become another singer who was and never was?

Michael Walker:
Holy cow. That's so good. I have so much respect for who you are and what you're doing and being able to pay it forward, and really can relate to you in a lot of different ways with my own journey with becoming a coach. And it sounds like really kind of the core of what you're sharing right now is sort of this shift in perspective from rather than trying to solve issues on the surface, which sort of maybe an analogy is a tree with roots, but then it has these branches and leaves on the end, right? And sort of trying to fix the leaves on the end when really the foundation to focus on is the roots and the source of the being rather than the doing.

Michael Walker:
And so really what you're able to do is just kind of go back to the roots of who you are and being able to allow them to be freely. It's just so awesome. So I appreciate you sharing that and I appreciate what you're doing. And for anyone here right now who would to dive deeper and learn a little bit more about your techniques and take the next step, what would be the best place for them to go to learn more?

Arden Kaywin:
Yeah. So I think on your podcast website, there's two links that I gave you. One is a link to a masterclass, which it's a free masterclass. It's a masterclass I did around what I call the five shifts, which are the five shifts that really take struggling artists to being successful pros and really get those breakthroughs that bring a whirlwind of opportunities, of performances, of acclaim, of success.

Arden Kaywin:
So that link is in the podcast thing. It's not a very intuitive link. I don't even know if I would say it here, but 

Michael Walker:
We'll include... Yeah, like always, we'll make sure to include all the links that you share here in the description for the show. So any of the links we'll be able to find just below the description.

Arden Kaywin:
Yeah. So that really speaks to the five shifts that I have noticed that when we make them really change the game.

Arden Kaywin:
And then the second one is if somebody wants to book a call with me, we can get on the phone 45 minutes to an hour, and it's a discovery call around, okay, what's going on? What are the big issues? Because most of the time, the big issue is, "I don't have my breath under me," or, "I have a lot of strain or tension," or, "Nobody buys my records," or, "I can't get into the callbacks." These are the symptoms. These are the symptoms. They're not the real problem.

Arden Kaywin:
And so I want to know what are the symptoms? It's like a doctor visit, like, let's see, tell me where it hurts. Let's dig in to what the issues are, what is the gap between where you are and where you want to go and what you can do to fix it.

Arden Kaywin:
And so we'll see if it's a fit. And if it is, that's awesome. If it's not, that's okay too. I'll point you in a different direction. Because this work, the one caveat that I will give is that this work is not for new singers. And what I mean by new singers is I don't mean that you have never sung before. I mean that you have never studied before. So you may be somebody who has released four records, but you've never taken voice lessons. And the thing about that is there is just a base level of knowledge around technique and things that if you're experiencing all this insecurity and you're experiencing nerves, if you're experiencing tension and things like that, that just with a basic level of technique tools, we'll fix that. You know what I mean?

Arden Kaywin:
And so if you've never studied one-on-one with an expert teacher for a period of time, then this call is not for you yet, however, if you have had technical training, if you are putting yourself out there and you're just not seeing the results of all that training and hustle in the form of the career that you want, that's who this call is for. So I just want to put that caveat out there. And anybody can go to my website, which is ardenkaywinvocalstudio.com, and look around.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Very cool. Well, yeah, I think for anyone who meets those criteria, it's an awesome opportunity to be able to speak with you directly and get that kind of personalized customization based on their situation, what they're going through. So I would definitely encourage anyone who this has resonated with to go check it out.

Michael Walker:
And also I can speak to personally the importance of everything that you described about the roots and the foundation, about everything comes from that. It's why in our program too, and I think in every program that there is, it should start off with some fundamental aspect of that identity work and really figuring out what are the internal blocks right now that are kind of preventing you from taking the steps in the first place in order to be that person and to be able to take that point of view of being that person from the start.

Michael Walker:
Because I think that that is something that not just is a cool idea, but it's something that's been proven over and over and over again with the most successful Olympic athletes and entrepreneurs, is that their visionnaires and they have the ability to create this internal belief system and identity around it, so much so that sometimes it'll literally rewrite things around them like Steve Jobs' distortion field.

Michael Walker:
So I believe in it very strongly and I appreciate that you're doing that type of work with artists and, yeah, as well.

Arden Kaywin:
And you want to know the cool thing?

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Arden Kaywin:
You want to know the cool thing? Is that for a singer, when they do that work, it changes the sound. You know how many singers come to me and they have so much tension? They get tension in their jaw, tension in their neck, and voice teachers, they don't know how to get rid of it. Because when you understand where it comes from, like you said, the roots, breathwork, all the things that singers think are issues in their technique, and I don't want to say magically because it's a very systematic way that we do this, but all of those issues, running out of breath, "I can't get my breath under me, there's tension, there's strain," they all get fixed when we address, like you were saying, the roots first.

Arden Kaywin:
So it's not just that they feel better in their journey because they're not shoulding all over themselves and sabotaging themselves from opportunities, but also because it actually changes the way that the singer engages with their instrument and it actually brings forth the most aligned and most powerful, most free, most healthy, most resonant sound.

Arden Kaywin:
So that to me is the coolest thing, is that you do all this inner work and you feel amazing, singers are always telling me, "Oh my God, Arden, I came in and I thought I was doing a singing program, but this has changed my life." And I say to them, "And what's the cherry on top? You know you can deliver to the best of your potential with your voice any time it counts. Time, place, it doesn't matter." So it's fun. It's really fun.

Michael Walker:
That's so cool.

Arden Kaywin:
And I appreciate that you geek out on all that stuff too because it's pretty cool stuff.

Michael Walker:
It's very cool stuff. Well, hey, Arden, it was awesome meeting you and thank you for sharing your lessons and your wisdom. And I would definitely encourage anyone who wants to learn more to go check out the links. And, yeah, thanks again. You're awesome.

Arden Kaywin:
Thank you.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow.

Michael Walker:
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Michael Walker:
The time to be a modern musicians is now, and I'll look forward to seeing you on our next episode.