Why Your Singing Isn’t Improving (You’re Trying to Ice the Cake Too Soon)

In this episode, Sarah uses a powerful analogy to explain why so many singers feel stuck: they’re trying to “ice the cake” before it’s even baked. She breaks down how singing, like baking, requires the right ingredients in the right order — and why skipping foundational steps leads to frustration and inconsistency. The episode explores vocal balance, self-awareness, and why quick fixes don’t create lasting results. If you’ve been working hard but not seeing progress, this will help you understand what your voice actually needs.

Did audition season not quite go the way you'd like? Or you feel like winter was a real freaking drag on your dreams and goals? And you feel all out of wack and like you need a SPARK to get that flame in you going again? Perhaps you've always wondered about Manifestation as an artist- you've dabbled, you believe...sort of, but something about it always felt...off 

Well, the Inevitable Artist Activation is for you, dearie- do this powerful 14 day challenge to get your spark back, get real with what's holding you back and magnetize yourself to the manifestations that have been pulsing in your heart 

Join the Inevitable Artist Activation HERE

Wanting to understand what steps your voice needs so you can bake your own singing cake? Get DISCOVER- find out what your vocal habits are that are stopping you from progressing in the way you want. Learn to become your own voice teacher so that you no longer are second guessing if what you're doing is even working. 

Get DISCOVER HERE

Have you loved these episodes? Leave a 5 star written review on Apple Podcasts, take a screenshot and send it to singerspath@gmail.com to be entered to win a FREE private lesson with Sarah! Winners to be announced at the end of spring! *You MUST email a picture of your screenshot to be entered!***

Reminder- if you HAVE already submitted a review for the podcast or other products from SB Vocal Studio- send an email with a screenshot and let Sarah know so you're eligible to win a FREE lesson!

Make sure to follow Sarah on Tik Tok and Instagram @singwithbish

Questions or Topic Recommendations for Sarah? Know someone who would be a perfect guest on the podcast? Fill out the form below!

Contact Sarah HERE

Want to check out the associates at Sarah Bishop Vocal Studio? 

Learn more about associates Lily and Jeremy here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

If you're tired of not making progress and you're ready to be the artist you know you're meant to be, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Singer's Path Podcast. The Path or Performing Artists training hub will cover everything, including singing tips that actually work, advice from top industry professionals, and life-changing mindset shifts. Out with the starving artist and in with the thriving artist. I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, professional singer, actor, educator, and entrepreneur. I'm not afraid to speak the truth and stop the gatekeeping of quality information so you can actually become the artist you dream of being. So let's get on the path, shall we? Even though we're all on our own journeys, it always helps to have a guide. Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Singer's Path Podcast. It is me, your host, Sarah Bishop. And today we are going to be talking about a piece of content that I made recently and this analogy that kind of popped in my head. And we're going to talk about how it relates to singing. And just like always, as you come on here and you expect something a bit unhinged, um, that's we're gonna be diving into. And today we're gonna be exploring why singing is like baking. Now, I don't know, I'm on TikTok live as per usual. I don't know how many people who are on the live that are also bakers or who enjoy baking. But baking, you know, you have to be kind of precise, right? When you I will say I'm not really the best at baking, okay? Sometimes um my creations turn out really well, but as far as like icing and decorating the cake, uh, that's pretty much hardly ever a win for me. I will have to at some point um post some of my bakes because they're pretty bad. But my husband and I love to watch this show called The Great British Bake Off. Um, it's really popular in the US, and I remember going to a world teacher conference called IvoCon and talking to all of the British people about the Great British Bake Off and how psyched I was to, you know, talk about it with them. And all of them are like, what? So I think it might be called something else, and also maybe it's just not as big of a deal. I don't know. I feel like the Netflix owners on, you know, in the US are just obsessed with great British bake-off, right? So anyway, this, you know, I I'm obsessed with that show. We watch it all the time, and the bakes that these people are doing are incredible. Okay, they're so nuanced and specific and gorgeous and difficult. And so one year for Christmas, I asked for the great British Bake Off cookbooks and have since then been trying to bake creations that are honestly kind of hard and pretty difficult. So kind of hard and difficult. Yeah, they're they're not great. And so those bakes when they're pretty challenging like that, tend to be uh a very much a hit or miss for me. If I go on Pinterest and I just pick a random like cake recipe that's pretty cash, then that's usually better. Um, however, I when I've been baking lately and trying and failing to bake and doing so and not as you know precise of a way and kind of quote unquote winging it, and oh, we'll just try this and we'll do this. Yeah, so baking is chemistry, right? And if you don't have the right chemistry or your oven's messed up, or you know, somewhere along the way, you don't, especially when you're doing something hard, like you're like making like an egg white, um, like uh what is it called? Icing, and sometimes it'll like split. Like something can happen, just the tempo or the speed or the timing of which you're doing something is could throw it off completely. Okay. It could cause it to end up such a mess that you have to like scrap it and start over. Okay. Because baking, it especially the more difficult things you do, it becomes very precise. Okay. And the reason I relate this to singing is because some of you, a lot like some clients that I've had or students or people that I see on the internet, and like I get this because this used to be my mentality. For some reason, with singing, we just like automatically assume you either have it or you don't, which is so toxic and so wrong and messed up that we don't equival it with strengthening well, like similarly to any part of the body, right? So when you're going to the gym, we don't expect someone just to roll out of bed and be like physically an athlete, right? And just be able to naturally the normal person just be able to naturally be excellent at, you know, running a marathon without no training at all, or, you know, weightlifting 300 pounds without like training to do that, right? But for some reason, with singing, even though it's a part of our body and it is a skill and it's something that needs practiced, we just assume that if we can't do it automatically, there's something wrong with us. Okay. And a lot of my brand and my content page and this podcast is, you know, we combine talking about the technical things that you can do and the mental things because being an artist is a reflection of life and studying a craft is an ongoing thing. So it's there is not one without the other. Okay. So I was recently in session with a client and um they, you know, really want to sound really powerful and they want a belt really high. But the reality is where they are in their singing journey is that, you know, they're just starting to develop chest voice, okay? Like, and that doesn't mean that other parts of their voice aren't strong, but usually when I talk about vocal balance, and we're gonna get into here that in a second, you know, each voice has different habits and tendencies in which are locking them into their inability to balance, right? If we're working towards being on balance, it probably means something's off balance, okay? So when I was talking about discover recently, that class, that mini course really teaches you how to hear, like a voice teacher, detect where you're off balance. And then the next step to discover is pillars, which conditions in, right, based off of your vocal habit and where you are uh where you are being held back. It addresses that with specific, customized, curated exercises that are specific to that tendency. Now, it is a self-paced course. You know, there are tools that are provided to help you narrow down even more the specificity because I teach you, okay, this thing is happening. We need to adjust it. What are the tools available to you to adjust it? Okay. So that's how vocal balance works. That's how the development of the voice works, right? We have to understand what our habits are doing and what that's doing to hold our voice back from where we want to go. Then we have to curate the actual tools that will move us in the direction that we actually want to go. Okay. Sometimes if you do the wrong tools, you'll go in the opposite direction and you won't progress the way that you want to. And then you'll wonder why you're so confused. And this is why we're going to use analogy as a baking, um, the baking analogy here in a second. So then, then and only then, right? In order to for it to be consistent, have as much control and nuance that I know you guys want. Then after you're balanced, you can use the instrument and you can move up and down, and there aren't a bunch of hiccups, right? It's not that there'll never be hiccups, right? It's an ongoing thing, but you have way more awareness of how to evenly kind of navigate your voice and your body, then we can be specific, okay? Then we can start to, you know, turn up the chest dominant mix and the head dominant mix and all of that. Okay. So now back to the baking analogy, okay. Why singing is like baking is because singing, like I just said, requires specific ingredients, as would a cake. Okay. Sho, and I said this in the piece of content on TikTok, but it's true. Sugar body, flour. Instead, it's like chest voice, hell voice, T A N C T engagement versus air, air pressure, and then like vocal cord closure and resistance, and then like leaning into, you know, adjusting the shape, and then that influences resonance and then finding stability. Like those are the ingredients that we have access to when we're making a sound. Okay. We have to be able to thin the voice out. We want to do some kind of uh physical narrowing and contracting. Um, we need to lean into uh good vocal fold closure or a release vocal fold closure, uh, if that's you know the sound that we want to make. But we have to be aware of what the ingredients are, right? So that's why Discover and Pillars are so great because they are like, hey, you need to learn to bake and get back to like a really clean, like, oh, that baked those cookies turned out flat as fuck because you put too much salt in. Okay, we're identifying that. All right. Now we're gonna fix it. And like the recipe for what your voice needs right now is to adjust this, this, this. And then pillars drills it in. Okay. Some of you, and like this client that I had just mentioned before, she wants to belt really high and do these incredible, insane things. She wants a Paul Hollywood handshake. She wants to go in and sing like Demi Lovato effortlessly. Okay. And when I'm saying these baking references, she wants cake boss level. She wants, oh, I'm gonna make a cake sculpture of the most incredible thing I've ever created. I I want to sound like that effortlessly. I want to just wake up and be so proud and know that I'm going to, um, I'm going to just completely sing the shit out of this. Okay. Now, let's talk about talent because yeah, are some people born like natural bakers, natural singers? Are they born farther ahead in the process? Yes. Okay. There are, there are Kelly Clarksons that exist that wake up, Renee raps. They wake up, right? And they roll out of bed and they can do things functionally, but you also don't know what goes behind the scene. How much of the has that person practiced? How much is that intuitive to that person? You don't know if they've taken voice lessons, right? I'm sure Renee Rap had, you know, I know, I know she has interviews where she talks about not wanting to get in her head. Like there are very natural singers, intuitive singers that are naturally tuned into their body, okay. And they know what to adjust and they know how to explore shape. Okay. Not everybody's like that. That's pretty rare. Okay. So some people, yes, are born ahead. All right. So unfortunately for you, and this is where the mental game comes in. Y'all like go, okay, well, if I don't just naturally have it, then it's never gonna happen for me. Okay. And this is where I want to stop you, and this is where I want to talk about the cake. Because a lot of you just need to make a vanilla bean like birthday cake with like a simple icing, right? And you need to learn how to make a cake that doesn't turn out like shit, right? You need to know, it needs to be fluffy, not stodgy, no soggy bottom. Just like, let's make a basic bake. Okay, let's make a loaf of bread that is not gonna like be gross or hard or dense, or you know what I mean? So, like that's where a lot of you, and even professionals, guys, and that's why people are like, well, I already know vocal technique. And I'm like, yeah, but like your cakes keep coming out like hard. And then you wonder why like mixed belting sounds bad, or you're stuck, you're you're stuck making muffins and it hasn't translated to a cup cup cupcake, and you don't know what that is, what that ingredient is that's causing the sound not to be what you want. You've been stuck in classical land and you're expecting to belt, and you have done nothing to tweak your sound. You're just carrying over your Bel Canto training, expecting that to be the same when it's just not. You're using a muffin recipe and expecting a cupcake. Sometimes that works, right? We all know chocolate muffins sometimes are kind of like chocolate cake, but you know there's something off. Okay, you're trying to make a brand muffin and expecting a freaking carrot cake.

unknown 11:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

So that's what I'm saying. Like, here's the thing, okay? This this client, I did, I did look at her in the face and it was aggressive. But like, this is when I work privately with clients, they they pay me good money to be as honest and ruthless as possible so we can move as quickly as possible. And I hold them. I'm I'm not just like wrecking them, right? I'd hope not. But I looked at her and I was like, listen, because she because she was going, Oh, I don't really like how this sounds. Like, I want to be able to belt high, but Home Girl has a really light chest. Okay, she sings like this. Okay, so I'm like, listen, if we want to sound like heart or paramour in our cake baking process, we're still on the batter, honey boo-boo. We haven't even baked the cake yet because you're expecting step eight, right? She goes, I don't like this sound. I don't like how it sounds on the song. I think it sounds too loud and it sounds ugly. And I'm like, Cool, yeah, because we're gonna put it in the oven and we gotta like master what this feels like. And she's like, Well, can we like can we shape it? Can we make it um more warm? Or can I make it sound good? And I was like, Yeah. And this was the banger. You're putting icing on batter, right? You're putting icing on batter. We can't expect to decorate a cake that isn't even baked yet. If you want to sing challenging things, you need to have a cake to ice. Okay, that's why I'm I drill vocal balance, vocal balance, vocal balance all the time. And that's like why pillars and discover are like at this point, like the sole things on my storefront. Because they are the foundation to everything. And I don't want to sell you advanced mix and how to decorate an exquisite cake and do all these fancy things if you can't even put it in the oven and have it come out, not like undercooked, right? Like that is not an integrity. I'm not trying to push things that you're not ready for. Everybody needs this, everybody needs to double check their recipes and make sure that their voice is functioning in the way they want to. Hello, people on live are starting to hear. So thank you, thank you. Um, does that make sense? So I I know it was kind of savage, but I looked at this client dead in the eye and I was like, listen, at this point, you're trying to ice batter. And I know we want it to go faster, but I can guarantee it's going to go faster when you stop looking at again, cake boss, and going, well, why does my cake not look as fancy as that? Right? Why do I not sound like Haley Williams yet? Well, because you're on your path right now. And if you would take your focus from comparing why you don't sound like them and just put it on yourself and just do the damn exercise and trust me, I can almost guarantee that level of surrender and trust, right? Not surrender like giving up, but but trusting your own process, trusting yourself, knowing that that time and energy and focus will be applied in a positive way and get you where you want to go. If you can just like redirect yourself and put yourself into that, we're gonna put this damn cake in the oven. And I promise, I promise it's gonna get better and you're gonna be able to do what you want. But as far as you're being distracted and then feeling bad about yourself and not liking the way that it sounds, like, listen, all of those are so real. Okay. And that's why I created the inner circle membership. All of that is about the mentality, the self-esteem, the embodiment around being an artist, and just how much of a mind fuck that is. That's why the community exists, okay? So that's very real. All right. But but while you guys are comparing yourself, you're actually sucking out your fo your focus and your energy. You're you're leaking it. You're leaking your actual ability to focus in on yourself and go, okay, I'm trusting, and this is this is hard. And this there's gonna be a point where I'm gonna talk about this in a second, why this process is kind of hard to trust. Um, oh, I trust that if I just do this thing, it will get better. There's so much nonsense, bullshit, fuckery online about, well, just do this one thing and then it will just happen. It will just happen with just this one trick. And I kind of did a crash out episode like a few episodes ago, being like the difference between education and marketing online, especially with singers, is just fucking singers up so badly because of their expectations. Not only are we coming in with this, already expecting that we should be perfect without any training whatsoever. Again, putting icing on batter, right? And just being like, well, Kelly Clarkson was that. And if I'm just not like her, it's just not in the cards for me. Not only is that bad, but then we have people who understand how marketing works and they want to apply to your dopamine and the quick fixes and all of that, so that you stay engaged and that you get on their pot, you buy their things, and oh, it like they're they're selling to the human experience and the desire that I want this to be easy. Well, I'm here in integrity and honesty as a professional singer and someone that's done this for many years. That philosophy, that okay, I'm just gonna raise my yaya, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do a couple of these things, I'm just gonna wow like a baby, right? That suddenly will help me find my mix forever and then I'm done and I'm good, girl. And then I'm I'm good. That, my friends, is like putting the cake ingredients in a mug and sticking it in the microwave. Waiting for two minutes, and then expecting a Paul Hollywood handshake. Girl, it's not gonna work. Sure, is it a del is it a delightful snack? Sure. Would you put it on your wedding table? No. No, you wouldn't, right? It's a quick fix, it's a quick thing, you're gonna get that result. And then you're gonna wonder why ya works one day and then it doesn't work another day. Or you're gonna work, you're gonna wonder, well, why does it work for her and it doesn't work for me? Because generalized tools are not specific to each body, each person's need, each person's vocal tendencies, each person's nervous system, each person's stories and attachments to their voice that they bring each day with them. So, yeah, will ya work for some people brilliantly? Yeah. Will just doing a bratty sound up and down work for some people? Sure. It will. But will it work for every voice all the time? No. Okay. And that's where it comes down to oh, I need to understand how to be present with myself, know that my voice is gonna change and my body's gonna change as I grow and evolve as a person. And then I'm staying flexible to actually listening to my body, learning to detect what it needs, working with someone that I trust, and doing that training in the in-between over how to adjust to how my body is changing. And then I give it, you know, the antidote to whatever habit I have, right? And again, Discover and Pillars talks about this and the whole mental load that comes with it, the impatience, the looking at other people, being like, why does my sound not sound like heart yet? I don't understand. I've been working forever. I'm really in discomfort because I've been chasing around a solution. I've been trying out different recipes, nothing is freaking working. I don't know. I can almost guarantee the reason the sound doesn't sound the way that you want it to yet is probably because you are missing, you are missing the self-awareness or the self-compassion piece because you're either expecting a result and you're you're pressing a result out of yourself without doing the proper training. And again, you're just expecting, okay, I'm gonna pop, I'm gonna just try this. Just you don't have the right recipe. You're just throwing random ingredients into the mug and you're popping into the microwave and you're like, why is this gross? Well, you have to figure out what your bot what the ingredients for your body is. And then when you start building that awareness of balance and you start building that relationship with yourself, then all of a sudden, the more difficult things like mix belting really high or singing in a head-dominant way, they become easy. Okay. They become, oh, I under already understand what my toolkit is. I already understand how to isolate certain ingredients that go into the sound. And then I can give a little tweak and then all of a sudden the sound is a lot different. Now, are there other things that go with this? Sure. Um, are some people born more naturally able to sing head dominant styles? Are some people born more naturally belters? Yeah. You know, can I get you to belt right now? Probably doing a call sound? Sure. Okay. Singing is paradoxical. Everything in life is paradoxical. Is it both simple and complex? Yeah, it is. Right. And if you're listening to this being like, Sarah, you're fucking crazy. I'm like, yeah, welcome. Okay. This is life. At a certain point when our brains fully form, like, was it 27 or 26? You start to understand that life in itself is paradoxical. This and and singing is just a mirror of whatever your internal world is, and any art form is a mirror for what life is. So of course it's paradoxical. Is acting the same way? Is it both simple and complex? Yeah. Is dancing the same way? Yeah. So I guess what I want to say is when you learn to sing, you're signing up for a ride. Okay. You're signing up to learn a skill. And it's going to teach you more about yourself, probably, than you know, how much you'll be learning about like the pedagogical aspects of it. It's going to reveal so much about how you approach things, your own patience with yourself, your compassion with yourself, your attachment to outcomes, um, your ability to kind of surrender and trust the process, um, your, you know, your relationship and working with certain people, who do you trust, who do you not, what works for you, what doesn't. But again, beginning to sing is more about starting a relationship with self and starting to be able to love yourself through the self awareness of each step of what you'll need. And I will tell you the more advanced you get in singing, the more nuanced those things are. Like at this point, my function of my voice is excellent. But what gets in the way now is my nervous system and subconscious and the attachments and stories and kind of pushing away opportunities that I've wanted. All of that is coming full circle. And it actually can sometimes cling on to my voice and affect my auditions and it embodies how I behave. Okay. So even when you're at wedding cake status, I would like to say I'm at wedding cake status. Okay. Sometimes if you're nervous making the cake and your hands are shaking, it's not going to work so well, right? So there's other things that come into play. Again, your body is your instrument, right? But just like baking, you can learn what the ingredients are. You can learn how to bake anything, right? But you have to be patient with the skill set and learning things, right? And again, in the great British bake-off, you know, those recipes are challenging. And you, you know, again, the more challenging the coordination, if you're singing my days from the notebook, if a couple things are off, yeah, it's gonna like the larynx is flying up too high and it's unstable, or you know, your jaw is affecting the tone quality, or okay, your soft palate is collapsing, or it's like a little bit tight on this side. That is gonna have a great deal of influence on the resonance, right? When you watch these, these expert bakers and chefs, like it comes down to detail and nuance. The skill that goes into a singer that has that much detail, nuance, performance, emotion, passion, uh, control, it's it's complex. That's what I mean. It can be complex. And you could also probably give yourself a belt call and make it simple for a second. But the level you guys are saying you want, right? It's gonna take, it's gonna take being kind to yourself to understand where you are in your journey and then just moving from that place. Okay. A lot of us, most of us, always need to just like check our and tweak our ingredients of making a basic loaf of bread and making a basic cake. And so that's where I would have you start so that you are aware with the ingredients and you are becoming you're developing a closer relationship with self. Okay. Um, and we just said I have to go because I'm teaching right after this. So I just came in in a punchy episode. What is the way out? Like I said, um, Williams, it's it's about self-awareness and being kind to yourself, right? Again, I I have something. If you're like, I don't know how to identify that in myself, I don't know where I'm at with that. I don't know how to detect what my voice needs. That's what Discover does. It teaches you to do that, okay. Um, and then if you want the functional training, once you've identified, okay, where in your voice is off balance, then pillars then will rebalance you. Okay. And then you'll use it forever. Okay. Again, this was not meant to be kind of an add or a push for that. In fact, um, I really want to start putting the focus of the podcast onto more of that mental shift. Um, as we get into May, I'm gonna be doing a really, really, really, really exciting challenge that I really hope you guys uh stick around for. So we'll be hearing about it more on the podcast. Um, if you're listening to me on TikTok live right now, make sure you give me a like and a follow. Um, if you want to learn more about this upcoming challenge, make sure that you, you know, join the Secret Singer Digest. That's where I like I release things and I also release them on the podcast. Um, so yeah, podcast, email lists, those are most likely the best ways to like be the first to hear about things. I release things on here faster than I would with content. Okay. So with all of that, I really hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day. Um, be kind to yourself. Don't expect to ice batter. That's just a pan of goo. Okay. You need to be kind and understanding and trusting your teacher of where you're at and know that they have your back of where you want to go. And if you're not in that position, then maybe it's time that you become a little bit more self-aware. So if you're DIYing things and you're training yourself, that it's a little bit more um functionally focused so that you'll actually improve and not feel so frustrated and like you're like, why does my cake taste like shit? Well, yeah, you gotta, you're gonna have to tweak some ingredients and get a closer awareness of what you are actually looking to do. Okay. With all of that, um, I really appreciate you hopping on TikTok live with me for this brief like 20 minutes. And I'm gonna get off because I'm gonna teach group lessons. Um, I love connecting with my students. I don't want to leave them waiting. Um, love you guys. I hope everybody has a wonderful rest of your day. And if you love this podcast, right, uh, please feel free to leave us a five-star written review. And if you send us a screenshot of that review, I love to enter people uh into win a free lesson with me in a drawing. We'll probably be doing the spring drawing here, possibly in May. It's just a wonderful way of like saying thank you for listening and like giving your feedback and all of that. Um, obviously, I'm only gonna reward you if you leave me a good review, if you leave me a shitty review. I'm not sure that you would want a lesson with me anyway. So, five-star written reviews, take a screenshot, send it to singerspath at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you. And with all of that, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much. Bye. Let's work together to spread the joys of music. Until next time, I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, signing off from the Singer's Path Podcast. Thanks for listening.