gone

I realize I've been a bit negligent.....I will fix this soon.

but not today...or at least not right now....(study study study study)

power

I think that we do a lot of things in life to have a sense of power and control. This can manifest itself in big or little ways, whether it is putting on that pair of really tall sexy shoes or manipulating situations to your advantage, I think that we all in some way seek to control the situations that we place ourselves in.

I think that a lot of behavior that really disgusts us from the outside is the result of someone attempting to remain in control of their situation, more or less successfully as the case may be.

I know that I have a control issue when it comes to my life. I always like to be in control of my actions. The good results of this are things like very moderate drinking habits.

However I notice that this limits my singing sometimes. I won't just reach for something if I don't know exactly it will come out. I've made leaps and bounds in this department. Every time I let go I think that my sound becomes richer and freer. It's hard for me to ascertain this from in my head, but it does feel better. I remember the first time I let go to sing the top whistle notes in my range. It was scary, I had no idea what would come out of my mouth...and goodness all sorts of crazy things came out (it sort of clicks into place sometime). I can sing many of those notes by bringing my head voice up, but it is much healthier to just let go.

so apply to life? I think so. Sometimes I just have to let go of all the strands that I am trying to hold and ride whatever current for a moment. Life generally works out well, we just have to decide that we're going to let it.

vocal re-hashing

I have just come out of an extremely busy vocal period of time. It has been fairly strenuous and I am now paying for it. Luckily I have a little bit of down time, meaning no performances for a while, of course I still have seven and a half hours of rehearsal a week, what would I do with my life if not for that. Not wake up at 6 to do school work?

My voice teacher asked me how I felt with the Schostakovich piece I sang for the Jewish Music concert. After mumbling something about the inadequacy of one week to prepare a Schostakovich piece in Russian I came up with the real answer. I feel as if I sang that piece on my "fake voice", the sheen that lives on top of my real voice that I sing with when my real voice is on vacation.

How to explain this...

I do a tremendous amount of choral singing (something that will certainly be changing next year, I love it but I need to not do this to myself). Choral singing inherently requires a different manner of singing than solo singing. This is a huge struggle for everyone who pursues both solo and choral singing. I tend to control too much in my throat in choral singing, straighten and darken my tone, this is because no matter how much we attempt to flee from the little boy sound, that is the tone quality that so much choral music was written for boys. (speaking of which check out "I am the day" creepy!, also ask me to do my choir boy voice for you some time...years of emulating that song has created a monster)

Anyhow the larynx comes up and I tend to cover my mouth, this is my default I'm tired and will just do this to promote blending. However, the "problem" is that I can call this fake voice in for "real" singing as well. Just push it up and out of the system. The thing is many people can't tell, they still come and ask me to sing them to sleep (yes that has happened more than once).

Real singing is an effort of the lower body, everything is engaged and you feel invigorated all over afterward. The analogy that I frequently use is that your belly is a submarine and all of the business on top is just the periscope...good for looking out of, but not much else. Another frequently used analogy is that all sound is supported below, and then happens above your top teeth. Your head is like a house of mirrors that reflects the sound but does not hinder it.

So that's what I did in my voice lesson, tried to re-find my voice. It worked fairly well, I just have to keep it up. Interestingly, "real" singing sounds quieter to me in my head, but from the out side I'm told it's louder than "fake" singing. I guess that's because when I'm singing poorly the sound gets caught up in my mouth and such and is louder to me. So if I look lax tongued and air headed, I'm probably doing something right...unless I'm taking a test, then we have a problem.

grace

Something that I have recently given a lot of thought to is how to deal with insult, or criticism with grace. We certainly can not expect that we will always be received with the reaction that we think that we deserve, so how to deal with this?

I recently had a really unfortunate run in with someone...my voice teacher...who was simply down right mean with me. I am certainly not blameless in the situation, but he called my professionalism in to question and told me that if I were in conservatory I would be kicked out of the program for such behavior. This was not true, as I found out later there was a lot of other things going on to miff him, but still unnecessary.

However the timing was terrible, my senior recital was days away and I still needed to work with him and my accompanist together.

How to deal with this...for me this first involved sobbing on the phone to a past voice teacher who had once studied with this man as well. And then it involved a lot of resilience. I dressed up nicely for my lesson, and steeled myself. My father used to tell me (in reference to arm wrestling) that steel is strong, and it does not need to push back. I decided to take this advice.

We ultimately got work accomplished...he did not mention anything to me, nor did he really talk to me, he mostly talked to my accompanist. I have since had my voice lesson canceled and have had 2 rehearsals and 2 performances with him and run into him at the local coffee shop where I do my readings on Thursdays.

I have been incredibly nice, polite and pleasant with him upon every occasion. I think this is the best thing to be done. Perhaps he regrets what he said to me, perhaps not, but being nice confuses him at moments and makes all situations more pleasant. I had to get over quite a bit of hurt to be able to get to a place to be nice to him, but it really only took me a day to do this, and now two weeks later I have no animosity towards him.

We'll see what happens tomorrow at my first post recital lesson with him. I think that the important thing is that I dealt with my hurt with out negatively engaging him. I certainly did point out to him that his words were unnecessarily harsh, but I got over my hurt and anger away from him. Now if we need to talk about this I at least will be able to do it in a productive manner. I have no idea if he will be able to, as he has a history of burning bridges.

So my advice extends to him as well. He needs to support the people who he hurt who are now hurting him back (read the University). It's not about being the better person, or even necessarily the bigger person, but knowing how to let go of things that are in the past and should no longer be prevalent. I don't know how to describe it other than you have to unwrap your ego from the situation and subsequently make the best of it.

just some things

just some things for your amusement.

First something to appeal to those who love Gypsies
in fact check out that entire page if you like the top one...this has to be the best thing I've found (via someone else of course)

then for those who love strings

if you like the strings then check out some history

debates!

am I arguing this with any accuracy?

The Pub

I was at the pub last night, after a fairly tumultuous day, which I won't go into here, however one of the people who I met there asked me about musical notation.
namely he wanted to know why we have so many different clefs and why we don't just make all of our instruments transposing.
I looked at him and told him he was nuts...how confusing would that be. To have a c on the staff but any variety of actual notes played.
Then I was like is that really more confusing than different clefs.
I still stick with yes. From a practical standpoint you want everyone to be able to play the same notes when you call out a letter name, and while good instrumentalists who play transposing instruments know exactly what's going on...
interjecting thought says that if you learn to read music with your instrument you just associate that space with whatever note it indicates on your instrument.

My explanation was based in vocal music. Notation was initially created by and for vocalists, and the different ranges of voices are separated by about a third (please correct me if I'm wrong) and this is why clefs are as they are...maybe

except for that c clef is move able

I don't know, I still think that having all instruments be transposing is nuts