This is MPR's life kit.

I'm not a singer. When I open my mouth, I don't sound like Whitney Houston or Normani or Ariana Grande.

And I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Unless you are in a Grande. Then in that case, hey girl!

But jokes aside, singing can be such a big part of our lives. Whether it's listening to music and singing along,

carpal karaoke with friends, or singing choir music with your religious group. Yet, as ubiquitous as it is,

it's easy to feel like I can't do it. But the only way to know is to try. So I did. And I could.

So now go, okay, I can do this. Okay, I can do this.

In this episode of Life Kit, we're going to release our inhibitions, practice, practice, practice, and get a deeper understanding of ourselves.

I'm Isha Drain, a news assistant at It's Been A Minute. And I'm stepping out of my comfort zone so we can learn how to sing.

Because if I can do this, you can too.

Alright, alright, I can hear you all now. Isha, I don't know. I'm telling you if I try to open these pipes, it's not going to be pretty.

Before we even get into it, I need to burst your bubble right out the gate with Take Away One. If you can speak, you can sing.

All we were doing as a singer is we are elongating our natural emotive sounds. When we're happy, we have a sound. When we're sad, we have a sound.

And any time that we're doing things like that, we're actually singing in certain cultures, kind of sing, speak, anyway.

You know, there's often these entry points that people don't even realize because they often might think it's a little harder than it is.

That's Trinese Martin Robinson. She's a PhD in music education, a voice teacher at Princeton and Long Island University, and my vocal coach for this episode.

And if Trinese isn't enough to convince you, oh yeah, we got even more experts to shut down that self-doubt. That's how we do it at LifeKit.

Joanne Riccowski is an early childhood music specialist. She's also a former professor at Penn State. She says, we don't have to leave singing to the pros.

Everybody can do music. I'm not going to, you know, I play piano, but I'm not going to be a performer with the Cleveland Symphony. You know, that's not what I do.

But it doesn't mean I can't play piano. And I'm not going to sing with the met, but it doesn't mean I can't sing and sing with kids and sing with adults and groups.

Because I don't know about you, but I'm not trying to win a Grammy. I'm just trying to finally work up the courage to go to karaoke with my friends or sing in front of my parents without being roasted.

Plus, if performing is in a motivator, there are a ton of benefits to singing too. There are emotional psychological benefits. You release endorphins when you sing. It can bring you closer to people.

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