tasties together!

Mia and I have started a food blog! I've been wanting to take pictures of the amazing food that we've been making and then posting them, however I don't have a camera. I think that I will be getting one service of my documenting and cataloging Newberry Library project! For now we will be writing about the foods we make!

Hooray!

Syphilis is back!

or so the ads on the CTA claim. I'm really bemused by those advertisements, clearly what they intend to impart is that "Syphilis is a viable disease that is showing up once more, get tested." but I can't help but read it in the tone that one might read "The McRib is back!"

I had a voice lesson for the first time since June on Monday, it was really nice to do again. I had even taken a pretty hefty hiatus from practicing, due to trying to find jobs and struggling to deal with change in my life. This pause in my practicing has not gone unnoticed, man does my breath support suck! It's not so bad, I just feel some lines that I would have not needed to even think about before. Not to worry however I'll just have to start practicing again.

One of the things that I have been chipping away at working at but was brought up very clearly in my lesson on Monday, is to not worry about singing beautifully. Since I entered college my private voice teachers have said things like sing louder, or fuller, but this new teacher I think put it in the best way: She asked me if I had ever heard a violin played up close. The answer is emphatically yes, her point is that up close the violin doesn't sound so nice. We like the violin for its sweet sound, but up close it's not so beautiful. You hear the attack of the bow, you hear the grittier sounds that this supposedly elegant instrument makes, the instrument is played for the room. The room takes the sound and smooths it out.

The same with the voice, it doesn't need to sound beautiful in my head, and in my mouth, but out in the room. This is why I'm (justifiably) uncomfortable with close miking, it picks up all the edginess that the room is intended to smooth out.

That's the way it feels to sing this way to me: it feels like I'm singing on the edge. Which is cool because as Duff'll tell life is to be lived on the edge, otherwise you are not living at all. However what do I really mean by saying that I'm singing on the edge (my voice teacher asked how it felt to sing that way, I told her about the edge...teachers frequently ask how singing certain ways feel, only sometimes is there something to tell them). Singing on the edge is a slightly unnerving thing, because you're singing on the edge of control. I feel like if I sing any bigger (not necessarily louder) than I will lose control. My voice will crack or something.

This is however a feeling that I need to embrace, I need to feel like I'm losing control of my voice. I think that one of the main things I need to work out in my voice is that I always need to be in control, when I let go of this I tend to have excellent results.

However this is just me and the way I sing, too "beautiful" and too in control.

Next: Da Corneto

more tunes!

hey guys this time I actually put another song on the little pod cast site....I'm not posting a link because there is a link marked "hear me sing" in the side bar. use it.

I've been thinkin' 'bout the Law

...and I'll tell you about it in another post, right now I'm interested in getting out to the perfect fall day.

Also maybe I am meant to be a music teacher after all, because I walked by the Merit School of Music after grocery shopping and got super excited thinking about how I would go about conducting a Theory class. There's the thing though, I don't want to direct choir or band or any of that nonsense, I'm too much of a perfectionist to teach music to a large group of people, I want to teach theory. I know that I've expounded upon the music is cool in many ways and theory allows me to explain why it's cool before....hmm upon review of my mighty archives....what's that? I barely post 5 times a month in good times? well...whatever....I'm awesome!

Anyhow, maybe upon further examination I haven't written about this (though I'm sure that I have, I need to get on top of my labels so I know what the heck I've written about) I love theory and hate it for the same reason, it is in many ways completely self serving and potentially unnecessary, yet it explains so many of the intuitive things we do in music.

So yeah I was walking my groceries back thinking about how I would tell kids that "scales" and "triads" and such were all just different names that we give collections of notes. And I convinced myself that I could make kids like music theory! I'm goofy and really animated and get excited about things like that, and I could totally make that overcome the fact that most kids think that music theory is boring. It is only boring if you let it be, much like most other things in life.

Anyhow I'm going to go home and pack because I'm going to my parent's for the New Year, which is why I've been thinking about the Law!

Also today is my parent's 30th wedding anniversary! wowy zowy!

some history

When I was at rehearsal on Wednesday Derek told me a little about the neighborhood to which I just moved. We live in this little one and a half square block area that has all sorts of beautiful old town houses and is even a "boulevard" historic neighborhood.
Now it seems a bit out of place because the rest of the neighborhood around it is either new condos (last 5 years I would say) to the east of us, or a mix of really "city" feeling things. There are two salvation army home/places to get a room, the mercy home for children, the Mexican embassy (out there on Ashland totally don't expect it) and there's the magnet school and the police training academy. Nothing resembling the lovely townhouses and treed streets we live on.

Apparently most of the area was razed (there was a disagreement between Will and Derek about why) I think in the 60s. Either it was for urban renewal, or it was because of the riots. After M.L. King died apparently parts of the city were just torn up from the rioting (someone correct me if I'm wrong about the source of the riots) Anyhow our little area was saved apparently because it was the red light district, and the police protected it?...? According to Derek there were some well know Madames living there well into the 80s. Kind of cool huh...historically speaking.

One of the many things that I love about this place is that from the porch the alley way in back is not neatly done. It curves around, there are legitimate separate apartments over garages, you can see in peoples back yards, and there are all sorts of different porches.

little italy

It was raining when I sat down to write this post but it is no longer.
Chicago's been doing that for the past few days.
Actually I find that Chicago has this incredible ability in the summer to rain for 10-20 minutes right at 5:00 only down town. There have been at the very least three incidences where I have been leaving work at five just to get soaked, and as soon as I get on the bus it stops...man! if I had only stayed in the office 10 more minutes I would not be miserably wet on an air conditioned bus.
yeah, it did that yesterday, but when I arrived in Hyde Park for rehearsal there was no evidence that it had rained at all...there were puddles when I got home, so that was something.
I had a very slow morning and decided that since I wasn't going to get into CIAO any time in the morning anyway that I would walk down to drop off rent. I subsequently walked down Taylor st. which is for those of you not familiar with Chicago little Italy. I was in a very narrative mood this morning, you know if someone were reading about my day in a book or even a well written blog what would it sound like. I mean my questing for my purple shorts was cut short by...well finding them. In general I have little interest in reading or writing blogs that are simply a catalogue for events that have happened in someones life, travel yes, day to day searching for a job in Chicago...no, not really. excepting anecdotes of course.
I've been trying to decide if I think I would be friends with this guy or not. Sometimes I wonder these things. I probably would, as Mia puts it, I have a proclivity to befriending men who are nice but just a bit off.
Anyhow I finally have a copy of my recital with track breaks between every song (thanks Richard) so I'll be posting things on the podbean account
okokok, I promise to think of something substantive next time.