Lea Salonga Quotes

When I was 12 and started to take singing lessons from a woman, she told me that I would probably spend the rest of my life taking care of my voice.

You can't treat your voice badly and expect it to stay around.

An athlete learns how to hold her breath, but that doesn't work in singing. You have to learn to relax.

I don't take care of my voice at all, which is one reason that I sound as bad as I do.

I try to frighten my very young colleagues into studying and understanding their voices before they attempt things that are beyond them. It's wise to take gymnastics and swimming to strengthen the body, because people don't realise what an athletic undertaking singing actually is.

Someone told me that you could learn to sing, and that there are muscles that if you build, you will sing.

I started taking singing classes just two years ago. It was great. I never knew I could sing but I kind of found my voice.

I took some voice lessons here and there as a teenager but nothing too serious. I started taking it more seriously when I was in Miss Saigon. I needed to improve my technique in order to survive doing that show as many time a week as I was doing it. It's not an easy show to sing, so I needed all the help I could get.

I have deliberately kept singing because I have to at my age. If I stopped for even a year my voice would slowly deteriorate until it's not there at all. That's a fact about getting to my age.

Some of my first teachers were incredibly tough. You could never sing more than three words without being stopped and having to do it over 20 times. I loved that - that sort of process of dissecting and trying to figure out and master this incredibly mysterious instrument.

When I was about forty-three years of age, I had a private secretary with a beautiful baritone voice. I told him I would give anything in the world if I could only carry a tune. He laughed and said, 'Anybody who has a voice and perseverance can sing.'

There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.

Over the years, I was lucky; right from the beginning, I studied with a lady who had a lot of... she was a classical singer, and of course, they're a little bit more into, you know, preserving the voice, making sure your instrument is ready to perform.

I can't hold a note. I tried a singing lesson, but my vocal coach kept giving me the stink eye.

I always want to pick songs that are really crazy rangy, and sometimes those low notes aren't there. But I started taking it way more seriously after a certain point, and I started doing vocal warm-ups every day, even when I wasn't singing, sometimes twice a day.

But I'm pretty lucky with my voice. When I first started touring I went to see a woman to give me some coaching on how not to lose my voice. And she was just saying really your voice is a muscle so if you're using it all the time you should actually come back from tour with a stronger voice than you left with. And that's really how I find it.

I started singing in a choir when I was 4 years old.

It's my duty to upkeep and safeguard my voice, my ability to sing.

When I first started singing - before 'Treat Me Like Fire' when I was working with a vocal coach - I realized that I wasn't even breathing when I was singing.

You have to learn how to sing from your diaphragm, and you don't become a great performer overnight. It takes a while. The more you do it, the better you are.

I feel like the kindest thing that I do to my voice is sing.

If your body is not in shape to sing [from the diaphragm] you will push and push but keep falling back on your throat to make the sound. This will ruin your voice.

I used to audition for musicals when I was in New York before I moved to L.A., but I couldn't quite hit a certain note, so I saw a teacher in L. A. who helped me get better at it. She showed me how to use a different part of my voice. You are never too old.

That sound in tune to you?.. Sounds sharp to me. Sounds like I'm playing sharp all the time. My singing teacher told us you should do that. Maybe I got it from her. She said singers when they grow old have a tendency to go flat. So if you sing sharp as a young person, as you get older and go flat, you'll be in tune. In other words, it's never thought good to be flat. It means you can't get to the tone.

I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.