Avocational Singer

First Element of "Barefoot Singing" -- Back to Nature

2011-07-11T00:45:00.000-04:00

Ever since I posted the other day about the notion of categorizing myself as a "Barefoot Singer," the thoughts have been coming to me about what type of singer this might be. Have been scribbling down notes in a rather haphazard way as the most appealing elements of barefoot running start to shape an approach to singing in my brain.

Originally, this post planned to list all the elements scribbled over my notepaper. But now it seems like there is too much to say about each element, so I may have to make one post for each element I discover and wish to discuss.

Here is one of the elements, in very rough form right now, but pressing to lead the way as all the elements collect themselves into some kind of unified theory. This won't always be worded exactly right. It is a floundering around to put something into words in order to clarify it.

Barefoot Singing seeks to uncover,

to rediscover,

the natural function of the body

One of the aspects of barefoot running that I love the most is that there is a great respect for the design of the human foot. Barefoot runners learn that -- contrary to what they may have always heard -- the arch does not need to be supported from some outside source, like a man made shoe. The arch of the foot is a thing of beauty capable of providing the spring action necessary to propel the human above. It is not fragile; it is strong and wonderful! That arch may be in an underdeveloped and weakened state from years of wearing shoes, but it will be restored and strengthened once it is being used the way it was designed to be used by nature.

Besides the arch of the foot being weakened, the years of wearing poorly designed shoes may have malformed the foot, crowding the toes together and eliminating the natural splay of the toes while barefoot, losing the advantage of the natural alignment of each toe with each corresponding metatarsal head. This misalignment has consequences that affect balance, and cause other muscles to be recruited to make up for the loss of function. It may take some time, once the shoes come off, to redevelop the natural alignment again, and getting the other muscles to give up the compensatory job they've been doing.

From wearing shoes with a raised heel, the way the person approaches her relationship with the ground she walks on will have changed. She may strike with her heel and her leg extended with a straight knee, instead of landing on her mid-foot with her knee bent in order to absorb the shock.

So ... "Barefoot Singing" will seek to discover the natural function of the voice. The voice evolved from the expression of primal emotion, and the best sounds are produced when connected to that well of feeling. Society has taught us to "protect" ourselves -- like when we put on shoes to protect our feet and support our arches -- by introducing tensions to suppress the natural expressive quality of the voice. Like children who run barefoot in their youth but find out they have to put on shoes in order to fit into society, our voices which squealed freely with delight and cried at loud decibels found they had to be toned down and put in little boxes that hid our feelings instead of revealing them in order to get along in society.

As I explore this idea of the primal voice, I am reminded of an early influence -- work we did from a text we used in college by Kristin Linklater called Freeing the Natural Voice. Some of these ideas were presented to me back then, and I hardly realized the influence they had on me until I awakened to this new desire to become a "barefoot singer." I recently googled Kristin Linklater and found that she has a great web site with lots of information about her ideas about the voice and her work with actors to relax the tensions that interfere with the voice's expressive connection to that primal emotion. In a sense that fits the thinking in this post, one could say that by helping the actors to remove the tensions, she is helping them to remove the shoes that are on the voice. Barefoot runners are fond of calling shoes "foot coffins." Are the tensions we develop to hide our true thoughts and emotions the same as "voice coffins?"

There are other vocal pedagogues who speak about this connection to the primal sound. Oren Brown, in his book Discover Your Voice, comes to mind as one. In fact, in the first chapter -- which is titled "Primal Sound" -- is written, "Primal sound is ... the reflexive sound which produces emotional expression." He also says "You must rediscover yourself," because of how our coordination has been impaired from the tendency to inhibit it. And Stephen Smith, in his book The Naked Voice discusses the desirability for singers to reconnect with original source of utterance and the inhibitions introduced to the voice by "environmental contaminants"

This all reminds me of how it felt to take off my "inhibitive" shoes and rediscover and reconnect with how it felt to go barefoot after all these years of wearing shoes everywhere. I thought that when I tried barefoot running it would be a new experience, but instead I rediscovered an old one. It felt very familiar, but I had not felt that feeling for many years. It was so freeing.

So, this idea of rediscovering the primal sound is not new to vocal pedagogy as a foundation for good singing. It's out there. It's the starting place. It's common sense. It's understanding that the body does know how to sing.

I'm not saying that there is not some learning to do. It's just that the starting place has to be a trust in the wisdom and design of the custom apparatus that is built-in to humans that serves this use. We have to take off the shoes we have put on our voices and find out what our voices have to teach us about what the capabilities are. We need teachers and guides, (the barefoot runners have teachers and guides too), but we must not abandon the trust in the body itself to know how to sing. We must not forget that -- like the feet that teach the barefoot runner how to run again -- our voices themselves hold a primary place amongst our teachers and we must learn to listen to what our voices are trying to tell us.

"Barefoot Singing"

2011-07-05T12:43:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers,

You have been with me since the beginning of this blog two years ago. Each post I have offered you has been a little snapshot. In the beginning, frequent snapshots, and as we've moved along, more occasional snapshots, of my quest and life as a developing avocational singer.

Just because you haven't heard from me does not mean that a lot of singing and growing has not gone on in between these snapshot moments I have offered you. My quest to master my singing voice and find out exactly who I am as a singer has continued, even though as part of that quest you have seen me apparently side-tracked by Kung Fu, or the new-found interest in Barefoot Running.

If any of you have clicked over on the Barefoot Fresca blog, you have seen me be very active over there exploring a completely new experience. Barefoot running actually ended up shaking up my world and changing a lot of the way I feel and think about things. Barefoot running became the portal into being able to experience the utmost fulfillment and enjoyment of being a runner. It was a niche that was waiting for me to find it. It was a category of runner to which, heretofore unknown to me, I already belonged which had been waiting to reveal itself to me. All I had needed to do to find it was to take off my shoes.

For some time now, I have been mulling over just what way some of the experiences and knowledge from barefoot running might apply to the singing life. If I found a niche in the running world that suits me so well, are there aspects of this niche that apply to me as a singer as well?

If I am a Barefoot Runner, is there some way that I can be a Barefoot Singer?

In the next post I will undertake the bold task of defining a new singing category, one that, like with the barefoot running, I belong to without having hitherto known I belonged. One that suits me and is authentic to my experience as a person and as a singer. This shall become my new path, or perhaps not so new a path but rather a path that I have been on, but which shall now be more clearly defined for me and for all of you, and given a name. The name assigned shall be a light upon the path. The name of the new category will be "Barefoot Singing."

I am foggy on just exactly what "Barefoot Singing" will and should be, but in the next post I plan to shoot out some preliminary ideas and maybe as we go along, it will become clearer.

I know a couple of things already that this path will do. It will, as barefoot running does, question conventional wisdom. It will demonstrate that there are other ways to think about things. It will defy usual and standard recommendations. Stay posted!

Sincerely,

"Avocational Singer,"
henceforth AKA "The Barefoot Singer"

What a Kung Fu Black Sash Test Has to Teach About Approaching a Song

2011-06-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

On my other blog, Barefoot Fresca, I just finished up a post demonstrating, with illustrations and videos, a practice session I had in preparation for a re-test I am taking in Kung Fu this week. It occurred to me that much of what I was doing was similar to the kind of analysis and breakdown that is often necessary for a singer when she wants to intimately understand a piece of music.

First, check out the post here:

"If at First You Don't Succeed -- Practice!"

Now that you've done that, I'll show you what I mean about the approach being the same.

What I was practicing in the blog post was getting into my sparring gear in 3 minutes or less.

The Run-through
The first thing I did was a run-through to see where I was at. I video-taped the run-through to help with my analysis of the state of things. This is like recording or videotaping a run-through of singing a song.

Next, I impartially observed the outcome of the taping. While I succeeded to get my Kung Fu sparring gear on in 3 minutes, there were little areas of concern which, when nervous, might cause problems and cost seconds during the re-test. I made a note of where these areas of concern were and planned to visit each area separately in the next part of the practice session.

This is what a singer can do, circling the places in the music, specific measures that are causing problems, not secure, or display some kind of potential trouble or that might make the whole thing fall apart when under pressure during a performance.

Trouble Spot Number 1-- The Sparring Shoes
I noticed during the video, and also remembered from the actual experience as well, that there is sometimes confusion with putting on the Kung Fu shoes. Before taking a close look at the matter, the two shoes looked identical to me. That's because I had been observing the shoes while "on the fly" and I had never actually stopped to examine them.

This can happen when we just keep trying to learn a piece of music by singing straight through it over and over again. We may think that two particular musical phrases are identical, but when we stop to study the two phrases, which might be in different places in the music, we discover that there is a slight difference to them.

When I examined the Kung Fu sparring shoes, I found out that there was, indeed a left one and a right one. Not only that, I discovered that the shoes were shaped differently, one having a wider rounder toe box, and the other having a narrower, pointier one.

Two phrases in the same piece of music may have subtle differences like that also. Perhaps the same phrase starts on a different beat of the measure in one place than the other. Perhaps there is one note added to a little run, or an extra rest stuck in there. Taking the time to examine exactly what is happening brings greater understanding.

Once I knew there was a left and a right shoe, I found another surprise. I had assumed that the two shoes would mirror each other and that the manner of fastening the shoes would be the same. I discovered that my assumption was wrong and that the strap of the shoe went in the same direction for both shoes.

Sometimes, before we look closely, we might make an assumption about a section of music based on some other song we have sung and not realize that our assumption has caused us to learn the section wrong.

Trouble Spot Number 2 -- The Glove
When I took my black sash test, I was unable to slip the glove on quickly enough because it gave me some trouble by being tightly closed, and also because I forgot there was a hand strap inside the glove.

There can be a part of the music that has a specific difficulty to it that throws the singer each time she gets to that spot.

To solve the glove problem, I developed a technique that I would use for putting on the glove. By rehearsing this approach, I trained myself to do the same thing and set myself up right so I could put the glove on faster and with less effort. First, I opened the glove. Adding that step ensured that the other parts of the task were easier.

With the difficult music section, often there is a constriction, just like the closed glove. Learning how to remain open can often lead the way to better handling the section.

This is a dumb little post, but I hope you have been able to see how the process is the same. I now know that sparring gear inside and out. I know the pitfalls and problems and I've developed and practiced strategies. When the nerves of the moment hit, I will know exactly where I am at all times. This is the kind of preparation and readiness that is also needed to perform a song well too!

How to Love Your Voice

2011-04-20T10:26:00.000-04:00

When singer's are recommended to "love their voice" what does that mean exactly? The first inclination might be to think it means to love the sound of one's voice. But doesn't that bring to mind the mythological Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in the water? It seems like there must be a healthier version of loving one's voice than that.

What examples of loving something could serve as a model to love the voice?

One of the most wonderful examples of love, when it's done right, is the love of a mother for her children. So, one way for a singer to love her voice is to love it the way a mother loves a child.

A mother feeds her child nutritious food to help keep her child's body growing and repairing itself healthy and strong. She doesn't give her child junk to eat.

A singer can love her voice by caring about nutrition and eating in a way that helps the cells, tendons, muscles, etc... involved in singing to repair and maintain themselves healthily.

A mother observes when her child is getting tired, often evident because the child begins to behave differently, and takes that child for a "time out" so the child can become integrated and peaceful again. She notices what situations and conditions are prerequisites for this dis-integration and plans and foresees potential problems.

A singer can do that with her voice too, paying close attention to different behaviors that signal it is time for a rest, and observing and learning what kinds of situations lead to the disintegration of the voice.

A mother ensures that her child get the needed amounts of sleep, even to the point of forcing the child to go to bed at a much earlier time than the child wants to.

A singer needs that kind of rest to function optimally, and sometimes singers, like athletes, might have to forego late night social events in order to get adequate rest for optimal functioning.

A mother researches and finds the best schools, television programs, books she can afford in order to inform her child of the higher path of learning. A mother sacrifices having luxury items and provides the lessons, teachers and materials she feels are better.

A singer strives to give her voice the best education possible to give her voice every advantage of learning. A singer makes financial sacrifices to in order to provide her voice with better instruction and materials.

A mother who loves her child listens to that child and tries to truly hear and understand what her child is telling her -- especially when the child is telling her, "something is wrong; I am not comfortable with this; I am being harmed by this situation" -- and believe and take the information into account when she decides things for that child.

So, also, a singer who loves her voice learns to listen to her voice when it says, "this just doesn't feel right to me."

A good mother disciplines a child. She says "no" when it is right to do that. She makes that child observe a schedule of some sort, and helps the child develop and practice routines and regular positive habits. She catches little things and bad habits that could cause bigger problems later if not addressed early.

Yet a mother permits her child to make mistakes, knowing that it is okay to make mistakes and even necessary in order to learn. She is patient with her child, knowing that perfection is too much to expect of one so young and inexperienced. She recognizes what is "too much too soon" and celebrates the strengths her child already possesses. She has reasonable expectations. Yet she also recognizes potential and has vision for what the child can become.

A mother accepts her child. She does not compare her child to others. She would not trade her child for any other child in the world. She does not try to mold that child into some preconceived image, but steps back and observes and discovers just who this little person is. She tries to find out where the child's natural passions and interests lie, and then nurtures and explores that interest with the child, assisting the child in reaching his/her potential. She lets that child be who that child was meant to be. She allows the child to be free.

A singer accepts her voice. She does not compare her voice to others. She would not trade her own voice for any other voice in the world. She does not try to mold that voice into some preconceived image, but steps back and observes and discovers just what this voice she has been given is. She tries to find out where the voice's natural passions and interests lie, and then nurtures and explores that interest with her voice, assisting the voice in reaching its potential. She lets the voice be what the voice was meant to be. She allows the voice to be free.

Finally, when all is said and done, a mother shares her child with the world. As she watches her child go forth to achieve his own personal mission in the world, she feels very proud of her child. If she sees her child doing good out there in the world, she has the reward of seeing efforts of her love blessing not just her own child, but all who come in contact with that child.

Inventing a Singing Form like Tai Chi Form

2011-01-31T11:47:00.000-05:00

I was reading this about Tai Chi today:

The solo form should take the students through a complete, natural range of motion over their center of gravity. Accurate, repeated practice of the solo routine is said to retrain posture, encourage circulation throughout the students' bodies, maintain flexibility through their joints, and further familiarize students with the martial application sequences implied by the forms. (From Wikipedia article -- Tai Chi Chuan)

I was thinking of how great it would be to have a single form that could accomplish things like this for the voice for the singer to practice every day. This single singing form would take the singer through a complete, natural range of motion over their "center of gravity." To me, the "center of gravity" could be a place of balanced phonation.

I once invented an exercise that I thought could accomplish something like this, only I was vaguely aware of what my intentions were. I called it a Figure 8. I don't know if my exercise was really any good, but my attempt to create a "form" with this Figure 8 exercise was headed in the right direction. I was trying to find a "center of gravity" within the singing voice that could serve as a kind of unifying theory of voice. Usually when someone is studying voice, one of the big problems is not having a center. It seems as if the voice is "broken" into two (or many) segments: the registers. In my feeble attempt to try to unify it, I thought that finding a central place, a place that was the "heart" of the singing voice, I might be able to devise a way of training and moving and coordinating all the complex muscular adjustments and movement so that there was some kind of smooth form the voice could work through.

My first thought was that this "center" could be the place where the action of the thyro-arytenoids (TA)and the crico-thyroids (CT) were exactly equal participation.

But what I didn't realize when I was devising this theory, was that I had formed a wrong idea of where this place in the voice of equal TA-CT participation was. It was a sloppy mistake, because all I had to do was think about it for a minute or two, but -- well, I'm sure I'm not the first theoretician to have formulated a theory with inexact or incomplete information. I'm sure scientists do it all the time, and merely revise their theories as new and better information comes their way, either to their personal understanding, or to the understanding of the community at large.

(One of the really great things about being an amateur, by the way, is that the penalties for being wrong are small and mostly inconsequential. I'm doing it for fun and interest and passion and I've got time to be wrong. In fact, however much I would like to, if I never achieve my goal in this life it really doesn't matter much at all. What matters is that I occupied my time pursuing something that brings me enjoyment and fulfillment.)

I have not abandoned a desire to understand/discover/define a kind of "center" of the voice. My most recent inclination is to dub the glottal opening itself as the "center" and declare that the glottal opening is the stabilizing point because the objective is for it to stay in the same place while all the other mechanical and moving parts surrounding it and affecting it adjust and change. All kinds of things are happening around this space, but it remains a stable centering point within the cyclone of activity. It is a strange thought that a space, something that contains no matter and that is empty, might be thought of as the center of something, similar to the eye of the storm. In that case, there would have to be no rigidity, no fixing. The space is just there, and everything else moves around it, with that as the point of reference

I think the idea of the glottal space works better than my original idea of making a specific muscular position (i.e., point of equal participation of TA/CT) the center, because that muscular position would not remain the same throughout the whole range of motion. By thinking of the opening itself as the center, that opening would remain in the same spot while things were changing around it. There would be no "coming back" to that position because it would always be maintained.

Okay, but back to the idea of a form that would take the singer through a complete range of motion surrounding that opening may not be as feasible as it is for the Tai Chi practitioner to do it in a Tai Chi form. One of the reasons it works in Tai Chi is that there can be a continuous flow of movement for an extended period of time. With the voice, there is always a need to interrupt the continuity in order to replenish the supply of air. So, one long continuous all-encompassing form that covers all bases may not be the right answer.

I guess disciplines evolve the way they do for a reason. In the tradition of training the vocal apparatus, a whole bunch of different kinds of exercises are needed in order to move and develop various different skills and qualities and train the different and varying actions of the muscles involved in singing. So, maybe the quest for some kind of unifying, all-encompassing routine for the voice that could take care of everything with one daily swoop is not realistically attainable. As appealing an idea as it is, perhaps there is no master form that can be developed that could accomplish all vocal conditioning in one fell swoop.

That leaves the singer with the task of picking and choosing from thousands of potential exercises and drills and making up a routine of their own for daily vocal mastery practice, which is always a confusing and formidable task.

Local Music Groups Like Local Farm Movement

2010-12-16T12:16:00.001-05:00

I had a little inspiring thought right now as I was going about my housework and listening to "Holiday Pops" on Sirius Internet Radio (which has a free 7-day trial which I'm checking out).

What does that expression I've head so much -- "to serve art" -- really mean? As an avocational singer, I feel that I'm beginning to come closer to an understanding of what it means. As I now am participating in two local musical choirs, and come into contact with all the excellent voices and musicianship surrounding me, and experience the leadership of very musical and accomplished directors, it has been given me a great joy to finally begin to realize that music as an art can be served in so many ways at so many places and so many times. It doesn't depend on the venue, necessarily. The presence of a person dedicated to serving art in a small local group can make the difference for everyone.

I am still glowing from the holiday concert this past weekend given by our all-women's community choir. We sang to a packed house. We have been here seven years and now have a local following and our concerts are full of warmth and love. Our families, children, neighbors, local shopkeepers, all gather together and we all just have a great evening together. We've all helped to produce it -- from the families that made do without the family member who was rehearsing, to the friends that set aside the date and bought a ticket to come in, to the local businesses that bought an ad in the program -- each and every one of us has cause to celebrate the fact that this production is happening because of a contribution we made that makes a difference. As a community, we have produced some art and it is special because it is our own.

I had a little solo in Britten's Ceremony of Carols. Afterward, I was presented with the customary little bouquet of flowers, and as I walked to the back of the church at the end of the concert, my daughter and several of her friends gathered around me, a bouquet of flowers of a different kind. Their faces were shining and smiling and they wanted to talk to me because I was someone they knew in the choir. I loved them there with me so much that I wanted to give them something, so I began to pluck flowers out of my bouquet and hand one to each of the girls. "You don't have to do that!" they protested, as if I was giving away something so precious and valuable. But the sight of them walking away with a flower was so beautiful I could think of no better way to enjoy that bouquet of flowers (Besides, I kept the ones I really loved -- the roses).

I think it could be so beautiful to grow a movement to support local music groups something like the movement to support local farmers and growers within the community. The little choirs and chamber groups and small opera companies (like the one I saw in Princeton this past summer) remind me so much of the small farmers. While the farmers are planting seeds, using their organic farming methods, and producing crops to bring to the local farmer's market, the small community music groups are selecting their repertoire, rehearsing and growing their musical performances to bring to the center of the town for consumption by the community.

The way our community choir is bringing us together to partake of the same musical experience unifies us, just like sharing the same food does, even if for one evening. It is a very inspiring and beautiful thing and I think it cuts to the heart, perhaps, of what being an avocational singer is truly all about.

And the children who are there absorb this music, and seeds are being sewn in their hearts that serves to keep the music alive from generation to generation. Who knows what will come of it?

A New Era for Singing

2010-10-30T21:53:00.001-04:00

Well, it's time for me to come over and start paying attention to my poor little Avocational Singer blog. Things have been so hopping over on the Barefoot Fresca blog that I've gotten a little sidetracked over there, but I can never forget my little labor of love over here where my first passion lies.

Where to start -- where to start -- where to start?!? There is just so much going on. Some of the events over the summer and some of the thoughtful decisions I've made have catapulted me into a new era of my singing life.

Let's try to break it down:

------------------------------------Choir Number I-------------------------------------------
I am still singing with my beloved all-women's community choir. I was an inaugural member of this choir and the women there are like family to me. Just like in a family, when one member wants to branch out and grow and explore, the family member still wants to keep grounded with her sisters. So, I am kind of killing myself trying to sing in two choirs.

The interesting thing is that our choir director is on an exciting sabbatical overseas and we have an interim director who is raising the bar as far as our reading and the amount of material and the pace at which we need to learn it. This is kind of exciting, and since I'm being challenged in Choir Number II on this level it is fun to try to keep pace and apply new and developing skills.

--------------------------------------Choir Number II-----------------------------------------------
This has been so great for me. The choir director had told me, when I auditioned, that I would fall in about the middle of this choir as far as my level of mastery and technical ability and she was exactly right. I feel invigorated by the people around me -- the ones with more highly developed voices, technical mastery, and musicianship -- but also feel like I'm making a positive contribution to my section, and that my own skills and sound weigh in more on the plus side than the minus side. In other words, I don't think I'm a problem in the choir. (phew!) That fares me well in the "choir self-esteem" department.

One thing I love about the new choir is that the director is herself a masterful singer and knows about voice. She guides with really healthy principles. In addition, her knowledge and approach is close to what I am getting in my new voice lessons so one reinforces the other and I am making good progress. Sometimes what a singer has to do in choir can undermine what she is working for in lessons, so it feels really good for everything to be lined up just right. How'd I get so lucky?

Another thing I love about the new choir is that there is a focus on precision with breathing and consonants in the music. I had never heard of assigning an exact time value to a consonant before I read it this past summer in the Robert Shaw Reader and now I am in a choir where I have to apply that concept. You know how when you learn a new word, all of a sudden you start hearing it all over the place? Well, that's what this was like.

Some people don't need things broken down to that extent (or maybe they do -- who knows?), but I am benefiting greatly from breaking it all down.

--------------------------------------Voice Lessons----------------------------------------------------
I've only had a couple, but I would definitely say my new lessons with my new teacher are going very well. I definitely feel that I am in the right place for me vocally at this point in time. The teacher is extremely knowledgeable and I am enjoying the time spent in lessons immensely and I am also enjoying some of the good things that are happening vocally towards mastery.

All in all, exciting things are happening -- if -- if I can keep up the pace. The new schedule requires me to be on top of more things: reading e-mails from two different choir directors and two different board directors, supporting the fund raising for two different choirs, helping concerts to be successful by promoting them for two different choirs, managing a new protocol for setting up and getting to voice lessons, learning two sets of music and trying to remember which folder to bring to which rehearsal.

It seems like, with two choirs, the week comes around again so fast and I hadn't got a chance to work on my music. Or I've only had a chance to look at one or two key pieces.

I believe that during this time of transition I'll be all mixed up for a little while, but will eventually get it all organized and in place. There is a learning curve when new things are introduced into a schedule and I believe I can learn to manage what I've got. I will try it out for this year and see what happens. It's a lot of fun and it really keeps me on my toes.

Gentleness in Singing

2010-10-26T12:03:00.004-04:00

There is nothing so strong as gentleness and gentleness is real strength.

(Francis de Sales)

I once asked my very first voice teacher, “Do you have to be really strong to sing high notes?”

She answered, “Yes, but it’s not the kind of strength you think.”

I have always remembered that answer as something of a mystery. And finally in my life I’m beginning to understand the mystery.

Don’t manhandle your voice. A soft sigh is the way to great resonance and sound. This is what I’m discovering. A very gentle beginning will carry you very far.

Did you ever watch the classic scenario of a child with a toy that wouldn’t go? At first she tries to get the object to go every which way, and then at some point – when she can’t figure it out – she starts slamming the toy harder and harder and trying to force it to perform the desired action. The frustration becomes enormous and the effort grows greater and greater. The child doesn’t seem to understand that her method is wrong. She makes the mistake of thinking she is not powerful enough to make the toy work, and she concludes that she needs more strength and more and more force to achieve her ends, and doesn’t understand that what she really needs is a new approach.

I have been down that path and made that mistake as I’ve literally engaged in a wrestling match with my voice over the years in my attempts to master it. Buy nowadays I have been discovering that what I perceive as small is actually the key to getting big and beautiful sound. I think this “smallness” is what Jean-Ronald Lafond refers to when he writes on his blog about “the little voice.”

I have recently been doing some exercises to find my falsetto voice. Apparently women have falsetto too but it isn’t as obvious because of women’s head voice. I always thought that falsetto, if I would bother to play around with it, would be something that would occur in my higher range. But I have been experimenting with finding it throughout my entire range, including the lower. In the process of doing these exercises, which I shall post in Frescamari’s Practice Room at some point, after only a day or two I was surprise to find this soft little cooing voice.

This is a voice that many women singers may already be aware of, but I -- with my big loud voice, coming from a family that spoke very vigorously because we had to compete to be heard -- was not accustomed to nor familiar with this soft approach.

I have begun to use this little voice to sing songs. To my surprise, when I played the recordings back, the sound was big, resonant and beautiful. The wobble or distortion that often crept into my singing has receded, because the forcing that was causing it has ceased and my apparatus is responding to the more gentle approach.

I do find that I have to be very strong to use this voice. Even stronger, in fact, then when I mistakenly let loose all the other kind of strength that I had. The strength is hard to describe, and it is not what I thought it would be. I’ve heard some singers say it is isometric strength. At any rate, it is not for those that cower at the thought of using great effort. But it is finally an effort that is being used constructively, as opposed to destructively, like the child banging the toy to try to get it to work.

I am very excited about this discovery. It is leading me to a greater versatility.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here to hear some samples.

Open My Mouth -- And Sing!

2010-10-13T19:40:00.000-04:00

The kind of singing I want to do is larger than life.

Like a lot of things that are larger than life, it doesn't feel natural when first put on. So, for a person who wants to feel natural, there can be a resistance to doing things the larger way.

When I was first learning Tai Chi forms, I learned a compact kind of form where the movements were small.

But then I moved on to learning a different form where the movements were longer and extended and took up more space. At first no one explained to me that the new form was bigger, so I was still doing it with the smaller gestures.

It takes a kind of boldness to use the larger gestures. It takes an openness and more strength. It takes more energy and commitment. It is a fuller use of self.

The reason the larger version is not comfortable or natural-feeling is because it is not within our repertoire of self-expression yet. We never needed our expression to be that large for our daily life. But something from a distance needs to be larger to be seen and heard.

I remember when I was in high school, our English teacher picked three of us from the class -- me and two of my girlfriends -- to paint a mural on the back wall of his classroom. Up until that point, I had drawn on small canvases. When I wanted to draw or paint a picture I used something close to 9" x 12." Now as I confronted the task of blowing up my vision and seeing something bigger, my brush strokes had to be bigger. I had to reach above my head and go all the way down to my feet with my paintbrush. I had to use my whole body to paint, not just my hand and arm and shoulder muscles. I had to work on a section while keeping a much larger picture in mind. I had to understand when I was painting detail that it was going to be a small part of the whole, even though it seemed so large in front of me.

It's one thing to draw a 1" circle on a piece of paper, or a 4" circle or an 8" circle. The bigger the circle gets, the larger the motion you have to use while holding the pencil. But when we were painting that mural, we might have to draw a 6-foot circle. Now a circle always comes out better when it is drawn with one or two big motions as opposed to chipped away at in choppy little sections. The sense of roundness is different.

I am finally starting to understand just how big the kind of singing I want to be able to do is.

Part of the detail work, a part of singing which seemed so small, is to get my mouth open. I must learn a larger way to form vowels, and work with a much larger space.

It is time to open my mouth now.

Building From the Ground Up

2010-09-30T12:00:00.000-04:00

Building My Running Form From Scratch
Over the summer, I had the very interesting experience of transforming myself into a Barefoot Runner. It is a development in my fitness life that I had never previously imagined, and there was a gradual sequence of events that led to my taking this path.

I have had conversations with a number of advanced shod runners who are attracted to barefoot running and kind of want to try it, but who have invested so much time in developing their running mileage that they are understandably reluctant to go back and start all over again. And that is what they would need to do -- start all over again -- should they want to learn how to run barefoot.

Because in order to learn the running form that bare feet can teach us, we have to forget almost everything we know about running and start from scratch.

Something I'm learning about barefoot runners in general -- as I acquaint myself with this movement -- is that often they are people, like me, who encountered injuries, limitations, or struggles with running that brought them to give the ideas in the barefoot running movement a try.

I was in an optimal situation to pick up this new running form. I had been trying to get back into running after many years of non-running. I was starting fresh after having taken 6 months off for an injury to my foot.

So, I didn't have to sacrifice mileage and conditioning in order to go back and re-form my running. I completely understand why someone who competes and has the legacy of all that mileage would not want to go back and be like a beginner again.

Building My Singing Voice From Scratch
Well, just like in my barefoot running, I am in the position where I'm going to be, yet again, building my voice from scratch.

I am very happy to say that I have been accepted into the studio of a new voice teacher whose vocal approach and philosophy are very appealing to me. The daunting aspect of it, however, is that it will mean building up from scratch again.

Yes, I am 49 years old and will be starting from scratch -- yet again! But, hey -- like with the barefoot running -- I'm not going anywhere. And I really have nothing to lose.

I will add that the process of getting into the studio of this teacher was a personal growth experience for me. Having been let go from the other vocal studio left me feeling a bit deflated, and for a while I felt a little unsure whether I would be fortunate enough to find a new situation where I could learn at the level I desired to be taught.

But some advice I read by guest blogger, Blue Yonder, in her post "An Avocational Singer Attends a NATS conference" inspired in me some courage to step up to the plate. In that post she had said,

I do think it's important for us avocational singers to approach performance and training situations with the right attitude. I often have doubts and ask myself, "Do I belong here with these other singers who might be career-track? Can I cut it?" I realize now that I need to take the attitude: "I BELONG HERE!!!" Aim high and prepare to work hard--but once you get in, never question whether you belong in the program, regardless of whether you got in by audition, application, or just by putting your name on a signup sheet.

Bearing this advice in mind, I decided to "go for it" and approach a high-level, well-known, very busy teacher whose studio included high-level singers on a career-track. I boldly signed up for a lesson with the teacher. The teacher asked me for a letter introducing myself. I was as honest as I could be at representing who I was as a singer, and I was delighted and surprised when the response I received was that the teacher would be most happy to confirm the trial lesson.

My first lesson was wonderful. The teacher asked me to tell my singer's story. I told the teacher that I write a blog about my experiences of being an avocational singer. I explained that my defining mantra was: "I've been trying to learn to sing for 25+ years and I'm not giving up -- even if it takes a lifetime." The teacher smiled and said, "Good for you!"

I sang "Auf dem Wasser zu singen," by Schubert in the low key. -- (To hear me experimenting with three different keys on this song, check out the Frescamari Practice Room post: "Auf dem Wasser zu singen in three keys") -- I chose the low key because I usually start with the low key and proceed to the higher one once warmed up well. I told the teacher that I had taught this to myself using recordings and that I did not know German. The teacher complimented me on the work I had done on the German and said that my enjoyment of that kind of meticulous drilling and work on the pronunciation, syllable by syllable, was going to help me as I built my technique from scratch with the teacher.

After singing the song, the teacher told me that there was no reason in the world why I could not achieve my singing dream.

I walked away feeling very optimistic about commencing on this next phase of my singing journey. I realize that it's going to take a lot of patience. I learned a lot about this kind of patience while going round and round on what I termed The Barefoot Mile this past summer (mentioned in this post from Barefoot Fresca blog). I reflected on this experience in my barefoot running blog post "Patience."

As it turns out, something that may have seemed like a total diversionary side trip -- the excursion into barefoot running -- has developed a quality and frame of mind in me that will be needed as I start anew this next leg of my lifetime vocal journey.

I Am A Choir Singer

2010-09-21T12:10:00.001-04:00

In the post where I was giving a little account about my time at the Westminster Choir Festival this summer, I mentioned the need to master my voice in such a way that I could sing well with a choir. A commenter, babydramatic, said this: "Since for good or for ill, most of my singing will be in a choir (or as one of their featured soloists) I have needed to do this and have been largely successful."

"Since for good or for ill, most of my singing will be in a choir."

This could be the refrain of the avocational singer.

Most of my thrust in trying to master my singing voice has been with the idea of solo singing in mind. But more of my singing and performing time is spent singing with others in my women's choir, and now a second choir which I have just joined.

So, paralleling my work on my solo voice, has always been a gradually growing appreciation of the skills that are necessary to sing with an ensemble. Since "for good or for ill" most of my time will be spent singing with an ensemble, I have become interested in learning how to do that well and, most recently, learning how to do that well with higher level singers in a higher level choir.

To that end, after having experienced the Mozart's Requiem with orchestra in a beautiful performing space this past summer, singing alongside many experienced and professional level choral singers, I am expanding my singing realm by exploring the choral world. I have invested in a couple of books about choir: The Robert Shaw Reader -- which I am currently reading and finding quite fascinating -- and, waiting on the shelf, is Shirlee Emmons' Prescriptions for Choral Excellence. A new book I've spotted that is coming out will go on my wish list: The Solo Singer in the Choral Setting: A Handbook for Achieving Vocal Health.

I have noticed that a lot of singers who have music degrees have experienced a choir education in an academic setting along the way. "Oh, I sang that when I was in college." This higher level choral experience has been kind of a gap in my musical education,. As a kind of self-schooled -- home-schooled, if you will -- musician, I have to get everything piecemeal and makeshift and I don't always know what piece of the puzzle to add next.

As much as I love solo singing, and that is my passion and first drive, reflecting over my experiences has caused me to realize that I've been conditioned to be a choral singer for most of my life.

I still remember the first moments I became enchanted by the idea that two voices could blend in harmony -- that one person could sing different tones that blended with the melody of another and add depth and complexity to the music. It happened when I was in church as a little girl, sitting beside my mother. As the congregation sang, my mother always made up a harmony, and I always thought it was so cool and sounded so nice and I wondered how she did it.

Next, I experienced harmonic singing at girl scout camp around a campfire. The counselors would teach us different parts and the music we were all able to make together was very beautiful and satisfying.

When I came home form girl scout camp, I didn't want that singing magic to end, so I would teach my three sisters all the parts and we formed our own little choir in the home. We had hours of fun on car trips harmonizing like this together.

Singing in church choirs, singing in school, being selected to go to inter-school choral events, high school choir, all county and all state choir, and finally the choir award at graduation time.

Why didn't I see it all before? That I am a choir singer! It is part of my true singer-identity (and destiny?) I love harmonizing with others. I love music that was written for different vocal parts. It sprouted up naturally and organically and it was there all along and I hardly recognized it. It is good for an avocational singer to love singing with a choir!

Auditioned for a New Choir and Got In

2010-09-10T14:58:00.000-04:00

I broke out of my comfort zone this week and finally took the step to audition for a second choir in our area. The audition went very well and I have been accepted in to the new choir. I have been wanting to do more singing for a while, and have been looking for a new challenge and this provides just what I need for the time being.

I have to thank The Choir Girl blogger for giving me the nudge I needed to make the move. I've been reading about how she challenged herself to up-the-ante of her own choir experience, and I was inspired to make the contact and get myself to the audition partly because of seeing how happy she was at being successful. She also gave me a few words of encouragement in response to some comments I made on her blog post.

I arrived at the conductor's home a bit nervous, but had brought along Schubert's An die Musick, which I felt was now in good enough shape to use. I brought it in two keys, but ended up singing it in the higher key.

The song went really well, but during the little vocalizing we did beforehand to test my range, my middle voice was acting a bit funky, and it fell apart a little bit at the seams. The conductor was very knowledgeable about voice and knew what was happening and we were able to discuss the issue intelligently. Sometimes when I'm not warmed up enough, or when I'm nervous, or when I've skipped a few too many days practice, my voice will revert to the old imbalances. It doesn't take long to get it back together again, but I had trouble with it while I was in there. It's natural to feel a little disappointed when that happens, but I realize more and more that I just have to deal with whatever situation is present, and whatever difficulties are there and manage the situation with whatever skill and know-how I've managed to accumulate thus far. So, I wasn't really upset. I just dealt with it.

The sight-reading didn't go as well as I would have liked. The piece was deceptively simple-looking, but there were some tricky intervals. She said that I did "okay" on the sight reading. I'll settle for "okay" for now, but I want to improve that. I would love to sight read something someday and have it be a "wow!" That would mean adding a little more sight-reading practice regularly to my regimen.

I'm excited to start in this new choir. After having the experience with The Westminster Choir Festival this summer, I have been eager to be in a place that can stimulate my growth as a choir singer. I have seen that there is so much more. Singing with an ensemble is a skill, and I have learned that there is so much more to it than I had previously been aware.

Some exciting things about my new choir:

There will be composers coming to work their own compositions with the choir
There are in-reach programs that help the singers to improve their musical skills (such as site-singing workshops that I may just avail myself of)
There are many solo opportunities and there is a specific goal to help singers this way. The director of the choir specifically mentioned this while we were together.
The programs and music are wide and varied. Many cultures are explored and there is even an exciting Video Game concert.
There will be professional and higher level singers in the choir and it's always good, like I found out this summer at the festival, to be rubbing elbows (and resonances) with more advanced singers. That's always good for learning and growing.
The choir attracts "big" voices, and free, healthy singing is encouraged (no need to regularly squeeze my voice into the little choir boy box, except for a special effect or ornamental purposes).
The conductor is an excellent singer herself and really seems to know about voice. In fact, I spotted my favorite vocal book on her bookshelf behind her as she sat at the piano Discover Your Voice, by Oren Brown.

All in all I feel this is a very good step I'm taking, but of course it is adding to my roster of commitments and in the coming weeks it will be a challenge to balance the new time commitments with the other aspects of my life. I checked the performance schedule and the concerts for the all-women's choir I belong to do not conflict with the new choir. But it will be tough! I am bound and determined to keep feeding my family well. I will have to manage my energy levels carefully and watch for little wasted pockets of time. I will find out in due time if it's all too much, but for now I'm excited to take on the challenge and am expecting it to enhance my life.

New-to-Me Information on Breathing -- Active and Passive Inhalers and Exhalers

2010-09-06T11:18:00.001-04:00

Everybody here knows that I am far from being an expert and that I like to share my explorations and discoveries with readers of this blog. I don't really understand breathing for singers in general, but from having striven to find my own answers for my own body, I've observed many things about my own breathing and made certain choices, while singing, that work for me. I'm not sure that I've "arrived" at a breathing solution yet. I think the development of breathing itself is part of the progression of using better and better breathing technique as one goes along. I believe that singer-breathing is an ongoing living component of singing that will change with time and growth, just like the other aspects of voice. I don't think the breathing is some kind of set technique that you put in place and just leave there. It is flowing, flexible, open to growth and freedom and increasing strength and efficiency. I have also slowly come to believe that due to the variables in individual physiology, there may be more than one answer for singers about breathing.

Well, in the course of my ever and on-going quest to understand and grow, I was doing a little research (for a possible future blog post) on how high heels and their effect on posture might impact a singer's breathing technique. As so often happens when one is out there googling away, I found many interesting sites to get sidetracked on.

One site I discovered led me to some new information about breathing that may be of interest to singers. It was on the web site of recorder-maker, Adriana Breukink. She had an article that described different kinds of recorder players and how they breathed, "Inhalers and Exhalers." The "inhaler" recorder players were active and energetic in drawing the breath in, and passive in exhaling the breath. The air flowed freely through the recorder. The "exhaler" recorder players allowed the breath to fall in passively -- or kind of renew itself automatically, I guess -- and energetically blew through recorders with active and engaged exhalation. She says that these two breathing types may necessitate different recorder designs.

There is a link from that page to a German page on "Terlusollogie ®" The page was in German, so I had to use google translator to get me an English version to read. This page is about the observations that there are different breathing "types" constitutionally, and it seems to claim that these types are imprinted at birth.

There is a little test on the page to determine whether one is an "Inhaler" or "Exhaler."

I did not take the test -- later for fun, maybe -- because just from my observations over the years, while running and while trying to sing, and while just observing my breath and doing yoga breathing exercises, I think I am an active inhaler. This is why I have noisy breathing sometimes, I think.

The Terlusollogie web site mentions this being something imprinted at birth, but up to this point I had explained my breathing pattern to being overweight. I had conjectured that it took more energy to take a breath in because it was being weighed down by a layer of fat, but that the same layer of fat had caused me to exhale passively because all I had to do was relax and the weight would apply the pressure for the air to leave the body. Right or wrong, I have focused a lot of my breath management work on learning to use muscles in exhaling in order to better control the outflow.

I have observed this pattern as a runner too. In my early days of being a runner -- and those were days when I was a "normal" weight -- I had trouble breathing. I would gasp for air and have a lot of fear that I wasn't going to get more air in soon enough. I would immediately collapse after having taken a breath, and the air would whoosh out quickly as I just allowed the forces to expel it, and then I would inhale vigorously to get more oxygen in there quickly. I have spent many years trying to work on rhythmic controlled breathing while running. This may be related in some way to my breathing style, or it may have some contribution to the formation of my breathing style. Hard to tell which comes first, the chicken or the egg.

There is probably something valid about going "against" type to learn more about one's body and breathing, but in the end, my hunch is that the more natural one to one's self is going to be the winner for free and beautiful singing.

I find this information very interesting. I think the application it has for singing is that it opens the mind for the singer to consider that there is a constitutional variable in the strategies one will adopt for breath management while singing. This can have consequences in many ways. If one is working with a teacher who believes strongly in breathing a certain way, that teacher's method may work with people who are wired to use breath that way, but confusing for people with a different breathing type. I think there is the potential for a singer, unaware of these possibilities, to spend many years trying to force her breathing into one prototype, and cause a lot of frustration and tension because she may be working against her natural structure.

Amongst many other things I started wondering about -- taking this inhaler/exhaler-types theory in mind -- I began to wonder if different voice types might be like the different recorder designs she mentioned and if the breathing type matched the instrument in some cases. For example, do dramatic voices require a more active exhale? Or, should knowing that you are naturally a passive exhaler necessitate your doing specific exercises to strengthen and coordinate the muscles for more active exhalation? Or vice versa?

In the end, this information fits with a holistic view I am forming of my life, including my singing voice. As I've mentioned here, I have become very interested in barefoot running. The philosophy of letting my bare feet tell my what my running form should be has been crossing over into my singing. Just as I "listen" to what the nerve endings in my feet, and any pain or discomfort I have while running barefoot, is telling me about how to set my feet down and lift them as I run, so too there are things my body is telling me about how to sing that I want to listen to more carefully.

For many years my singing training has been from the "outside-in." Trying to apply what teachers describe to my body. But from barefoot running -- not discounting the valuable input from knowledgeable people with experience and insight -- I am learning to listen to what my body is saying. The natural way I am inclined to breathe is one thing I might want to listen to as I further hone and master the abilities of my instrument.

Something New -- Singing Music on my Blog -- "An die musick" by Schubert

2010-08-31T18:36:00.000-04:00

Many of you Avocational Singer blog readers have gone for visits to Frescamari's Practice Room to sit and listen in on all my experimentations and voice discovery missions. I first invited everyone to come over to that virtual practice room in this post, where I compared visiting my practice room to visiting a painter's studio.

I chose the Posterous site for my virtual practice room because it was a convenient way to store mp3 files for free and it was simple to get the files posted, by merely e-mailing the files. Posterous would automatically embed the files in a player, so the work was done for me. I will continue to devote time and attention to the ramblings and scribblings and trial and error of that Internet practice room. It serves as a kind of online practice journal for me and I have benefited greatly from posting my practice mp3 files there and commenting on them. From the looks of the numbers (thousands) of visits, it seems that people enjoy browsing through some of the stuff I've got up there.

However, I have wanted to be able to post a file once in a while on this blog. I just needed some time to do some research and tinker around and figure out how to embed a player. I have created a little test blog to play around with this technical stuff and have been busy experimenting over there.

I think I have figured out how to neatly and easily embed a little player so that I can, once in a while, put up an mp3 file right on the blog, so you will not have to take the little cyber-journey over to the practice studio. This would have been great to do when I was pursuing the 24 Arias in 24 Weeks project (which I have not abandoned entirely yet -- I'm just splitting the sessions up -- having completed 10 of them in 10 weeks last winter. I think I may start another 10-week session this Fall. If you are a new reader and don't know what I'm talking about, 10 of 24 Italian Arias I learned in 10 weeks are posted in Frescamari's Performance Space, another posterous blog.)

So, to test out my new mp3-player-embedding abilities, below I have embedded this morning's rendition of "An die musick," by Franz Schubert. To help me learn this song, I purchased a book Music Minus One High Voice Soprano, Vol. 1 Schubert German Lieder (Book & CD), and have used the CD that came with it for accompaniment. I have done most of the work on this song by myself, since I am between teachers right now.

Some other work I did on this song leading up to what I've got today can be found in Frescamari's Practice Room.

So, here it is, my progress thus far on "An die musick" in an embedded player right on the blog:

Classical Vocal Repertoire and a Book of Glinka Songs

2010-08-23T20:08:00.001-04:00

I interrupt my regular blog posting to bring you a spontaneous post. I know I just wrote a post about parental musical influences and I do hope you all get to read and enjoy that post, but I am just feeling so good about a music book that arrived in the mail today and I wanted to share the experience with you.

Remember a few posts ago, when I told you that the organist from my church, who is Russian, wanted to do a recital with me? Well, in that post, I mentioned that he loved the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, and he encouraged me to explore this composer. He said he would help me with the Russian language.

Well, why not?

Well, here's why not. Isn't singing in Russian kind of advanced? Isn't singing in Russian something you do after you've established your international opera career and have a recital schedule around the world and a recording contract? Isn't singing in Russian something you do for your thesis project in graduate music school? Does a little struggling avocational singer such as myself ever sing in Russian?

To make a long story short, I figured Russian was way off my radar, considering the fact that I don't know any other languages except Spanish yet, and I just figured that it would be years and years and years before I got to Russian, and being that I'm older and all, I just figured maybe Russian might be for another lifetime or something. That's the way I perceived it, at any rate. We all know how faulty our perceptions can be, however. But, in a similar way as to how we have to give our voices freedom, and not constrict them or try to mold and shape them to what we want them to be, we also have to give our repertoire development and education freedom to develop and grow the way it wants to. If a pianist comes into my life who would like to collaborate on some music and can school me on Russian stuff, I'm not going to say I'm not ready for that. It's an opportunity and it's the way the larger musical forces of the universe are kind of guiding me to a new area of exploration, enrichment and study.

So, I set about to get my hands on some Glinka music. I didn't have great luck finding a collection of Glinka songs from my usual Internet sources, so getting some was either going to involve getting myself to a good music store or library -- like the Juilliard store or the New York Public Library for Performing Arts -- or, as I wrote about in that same blog post -- challenge myself by doing something I'd wanted to do for a long time -- calling Glendower Jones, owner of Classical Vocal Repertoire.

I have to admit that I have a fear of calling people on the telephone. They even have a psychological term for people afraid to make phone calls -- "Call Reluctance." It's usually connected with a career in sales, but it revolves around being afraid of self-promotion. I've written on this blog before about how I didn't continue to pursue a career in theater because of this distaste for self-promotion. One time I even bought a book to try to help me get over my fear, back when I had a little scrapbooking hobby business. I can't find the book I had back then but it was something along the lines of I'd Rather Have a Root Canal Than do Cold Calling!

Anyway, you'd think that if you were not a professional singer, you would not have to do any cold calling or self-promotion, and that one of the perks of being an Avocational Singer is that you'd have an easy life, right?

Wrong!!

Avocational Singers have to do scary icky things too if they want to grow and be all that they can be.

So, after exhausting many possibilities, it seemed that the musical forces that be were setting me up to make that scary phone call to Glendower Jones. Now, people who have phone fear are afraid of rejection. It doesn't matter what kind of rejection. Just rejection in general. Rationality does not come into play. If it did, it would not be scary, because our intellect would tell us that the worse thing that could happen when we call the music book store would be "No, I'm sorry, we don't have any Glinka."

Actually, no, for the person with these kind of fears, the worst thing that could happen would be for them to say, "NO! We don't have any Glinka, and never never never bother me again!!!" in a really mean scary voice.

Okay, well, back to the task. So, my task, if I really wanted to proceed on, was to make this phone call.

And I bet you all know what happened. Glendower Jones was one of the kindest and most wonderful of professional people to call on the phone. He was extremely knowledgeable and helpful, just as I'd heard from all kinds of singers that he was.

He had a complete volume of Glinka songs, of course, and he took the order and sent it.

Now the real treat is that the book came today and it was a beautiful volume, one that any singer would want to have in his/her collection. Here's a picture:

The hardcover book felt soft and smooth to the touch. It came protected by a sturdy cardboard enclosure, and the invoice was printed on a cream-colored paper that was heavy and smooth.

Since our phone conversation had gone so well, I was brave enough to mention an Argentinian composer, whose songs I had searched for and been unable to find. Mr. Jones, as a response to that conversation, had enclosed with my order a sheet, on the same creamy paper, a list of available titles from that composer.

I ended up really liking doing business "the old fashioned way," without the impersonal filling in of Internet forms.

I was delighted by the entire experience, and feel that by pushing past my fear, I reaped a great benefit of now having a great source from which to purchase my music.

In the end, I've realized that having a passion for something forces me to grow. When you really have an interest and you really love something, scary obstacles might delay you temporarily, but the desire to explore, find out and see eventually wins out overcomes the fear. One gets to the point where in order to continue on, you have to face the scary monster and it is that desire to see it through that helps you take the growth step.

Parental Musical Influences

2010-08-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting here in my kitchen with my book Pronunciation Guide for the Lieder Anthology open in front of me as I wait for the CD practice mp3 files to load import into my iTunes for my personal practice use. (I find it easier to find and control the practice from itunes than from a CD player.)

Anyway, with the book open on my lap, I've been sitting here sounding out the German for "Auf dem Wasser zu singen" syllable by syllable. It is slow, laborious work. It is being done without the benefit and advice of a knowledgeable coach or teacher at this point, but there is great value in what I am doing, even though it is quite a struggle. But we all know that this is the kind of struggle has big payoffs sometimes, so I am patient with it.

In walks my daughter to heat herself up a little snack. I hear her repeating the "ich laut" sound -- [ç] -- as she's pressing the buttons on the microwave. She's picking up the new sound very spontaneously and easily (like a child without decades of muscle memory programmed in). In fact, she barely realizes she's doing it, like when you find yourself humming a little tune that's got into your head and you're scarcely aware that you are humming. I stop and we talk for a minute, and I tell her that is a sound that's in the German language which we don't use in English. She is interested for a second, but I am gaging how much I can tell her before she tunes out.

"German's a weird language," she says, as she takes her snack out of the microwave.

I resist the urge, as a parent, to capitalize on this "teaching moment," by embarking on a lecture about languages. I've ruined too many moments of true and natural interest in my children by trying to get too much in on these little opportunities. So, I restrain myself and content myself with that little exchange and release her to go have her snack in the other room.

But in my heart I am happy. Because I know that these little moments add up. I know what it feels like to look back on childhood and remember the little moments that stand out and stayed with me when I became a grown-up (Am I a grown up yet? I'm still waiting for that to happen.)

How many times have we read a book about some accomplished masterful singer, and the first chapter almost always tells us all about the musical household they grew up in?

I have engaged in some reflecting in recent years on how my musical interests came about from the influence of my musical mother. I have vivid memories of her practicing the piano or organ in the living room, rehearsing with our local community theater group or having wedding singers over the house to practice songs for weddings. It was her involvement in these things that brought me into the world of music. At the time I had not realized what was happening exactly, but it was as natural as learning to walk or to talk, and I find it fascinating that it can happen like this. It is a beautiful example of how the life of an avocational musician makes waves in time and space, and makes the world a more musical place.

So, I don't know what little memories will impress myself on my daughter when she is all grown up. Maybe this moment in the kitchen when she picked up the [ç] sound and learned what it was will be one of those memories.

I don't want to ruin what is natural by coming in and trying to force or manipulate the situation. In fact, I'd prefer to not even be conscious of any effect my pursuit might be having. I will just continue to pursue my passion and leave those other effects up to the greater scheme of things.

Guest Post: An Avocational Singer Attends a NATS Workshop

2010-08-16T07:53:00.002-04:00

Well, dear readers of this blog, I have a little something different for you today, and something that I hope you find informative and enjoyable. One of the avocational singers I have come to know through this blog, Blue Yonder, has graciously agreed to share her recent experiences attending a NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) Workshop.

Blue Yonder is a lyric soprano who has been a commenter on this blog for many a post, and some of you may have already learned a lot from her astute comments. I recently learned that she had attended her local NATS workshop and I thought you readers might be as interested as I was to hear about it, and whether it was a comfortable environment for an avocational singer.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to help us avocational singers find each other on the Internet and share our experience of being high level singers with a passion to master the vocal instrument, yet not on a career track. I have been so happy to have heard from quite a few of you, through comments on this blog and in my e-mail.

I hope you will all benefit to hear about Blue Yonder's experience.

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Blue Yonder Attends a NATS Workshop
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As a high-level amateur, it's always a challenge to find the right kind of training opportunities for my level and goals. Consequently, I was delighted to learn about a performance workshop held this summer by the local NATS chapter and advertised on their website. It is a week-long program consisting of morning coachings followed by afternoon masterclasses in acting, bodywork, and diction,and culminating in a recital. Each participant brought in two pieces to coach for this program.

My first minor concern about attending was whether I could hold my own in a summer program like this. The program is non-auditioned, but I did not know what level of participants it would draw and whether I could keep up. My fears were unfounded. Ages varied from 16 to 40-something, and levels ranged from performing newbies to very good conservatory students working on master's degrees. I landed pretty squarely in the middle. Also, other avocational singers were in attendance.

The program itself was intense (for me) and enriching and positive. Every day, we sang one or both of our selections for our peers and the program faculty. We had access to well-reputed coaches with whom I never imagined I would get to work, being an avocational singer. The singers were nice people and I enjoyed getting to know them and hear about where they are in their journey. The masterclass teachers were generous with their time and expertise. They were fully engaged in working with each singer, regardless of level.

Actually, I love the masterclass/workshop format for three reasons. First, you get practice performing a selection and working on it in front of an audience. Also, you get exposure to lots of different repertoire inside and outside of your fach. And lastly, when there is diversity in the level of singers, you get to learn about the different issues faced by singers at different levels, and how to address those issues given an individual singer's particular strengths and weaknesses.

Overall, I would say that this workshop and the other local NATS events are great opportunities for the avocational singer to gain performance experience and training. I've felt welcome at the events I've attended so far, and the local NATS festival even has an "Avocational" category for participants.

I do think it's important for us avocational singers to approach performance and training situations with the right attitude. I often have doubts and ask myself, "Do I belong here with these other singers who might be career-track? Can I cut it?" I realize now that I need to take the attitude: "I BELONG HERE!!!" Aim high and prepare to work hard--but once you get in, never question whether you belong in the program, regardless of whether you got in by audition, application, or just by putting your name on a signup sheet.

I'll close with a couple of my favorite learnings from the workshop:

1. Italian texts require a surprising amount of detailed diction work. One must go through the aria or song with a fine-tooth comb and make sure all of these points are addressed

a) Vowels - Pure (non-dipthongized) and Italianate (e.g. American "a" versus the considerably brighter Italian "a")

b) Consonants - Can the listener distinguish whether any given consonant is a single or a double?

c) Vowel clusters - Can the listener hear all of the vowels in the cluster? Is the correct one stressed and/or lengthened, if applicable?

d) Text underlay - If the text underlay is ambiguous, match syllables to the notes in the manner that is the "most Italian" (observing Italian speech inflection and important words)

e) Inflection - Would a native Italian be convinced by your speech inflection? (alternating stressed-unstressed syllables - think of the stereotypical Italian accent)

f) Open/closed vowels - Are the e's and o's pronounced correctly as open or closed, depending on the word? (this one is debated by the experts)

2. 100% dramatic commitment is not just a native talent that no one else can acquire. It is something that I can practice and improve. As part of my practice regimen, I want to start doing dramatic readings of aria/song texts in a 100% committed, uninhibited way. Then I want to practice singing them with so much dramatic commitment that there's no room for thoughts about technique, mistakes, etc.

Grieving a Loss -- Yet Another Voice Teacher is Gone

2010-08-06T17:52:00.000-04:00

I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about this, but since it is part of my avocational journey, I must. So, here goes:

I recently received word from my voice teacher telling me that she would no longer be able to accommodate my lesson time in her studio.

One reason I didn't want to write it, was because I feel embarrassed to admit I was rejected and not one of the more desirable students. I had thought I was doing pretty well, and was finally beginning to put together a technique. I was working hard towards my goals, and I was excited about the progress I was making. I felt that I had momentum going and was not prepared to come to a screeching halt unexpectedly like this.

I had hoped that this new thrust would be the one to take me to a point, at long last, of a basic mastery of my vocal instrument. I say "basic" because mastery is a lifetime pursuit that is never fully attained due to the truth that there is always more. But I have always believed there would come a point where technique became secure enough and awareness of the ins and outs of vocal issues became such that a singer "arrived" at a moment where she didn't need a teacher any more -- at least not every week -- except for a basic tuneup once in a while.

I have been very slow and long to get to this point, as I've noted on this blog. But in this late time of my singing life, I have finally sensed it on the horizon.

But now I have a temporary setback in that I am without a teacher.

This journey cannot be undertaken without a guide.

Here is how I'm feeling right now. I feel like a person who had wanted to climb a giant mountain and had hired an experienced guide to help navigate the way to the top. Just when I got to the point where I could see some peaks, the guide can no longer continue the journey and must leave me there out on a ledge. I feel stranded and alone on top of a cliff, close to the mountain top, but without a guide.

So, I sit on the little ledge. First, I just cry. "Oh, whatever shall I do now? What will become of me?" But since that isn't really going to resolve the issue, once that indulgence has passed I have to sit and think of my options. First I have to make a decision, sitting there out on the snowy ledge by myself. Do I still want to try to get to the top of the mountain or do I want to give up?

If I give up, I can just find my way back down to the comfy lodge at the foot of the mountain, go in and order a glass of wine, and sit curled up by the fire reading a nice book. That would be very comfortable and nurturing. No tough things to go through. No scrapes and bruises from grabbing onto rocks. No feeling exhausted from the exertion of effort. No getting discouraged. No rejection. No disappointments. Lots of comfort and "peace." I can watch the young people come in breathless, with their rosy cheeks and talk about how wonderful the view was from the top.

But if I decide that I still want to try, then there's work to do. I must begin the work of trying to find a new guide to help me get to the top. As I make the rounds of the mountain guides, many of them might discourage me. "Why don't you just take the nice little bus tour up with all the other older folk? You shouldn't be exerting yourself at your age." Or "Why don't you just admit that your body isn't made for mountain climbing and just take the cable car up?"

But I have to pick myself up and get out there and make the rounds. Make the rounds until I find someone skilled who is willing to help me the rest of the way, and won't abandon me mid-mountain.

Finding a good voice teacher is a lot of work. There is a lot of asking around, gathering of names, and then the legwork of getting to sample lessons . Sometimes this work has to be done when you have a low level of confidence in your mission. There are so many questions. Will the teacher want me as a student, or find me undesirable as the other teacher did? The kind of mission I'm on -- older avocational singer who's not giving up -- is one I have to sell, or at least find the right kind of person who would get on board with me and help. I can't do this if I'm not feeling like I'm believing in my mission myself.

So, the first work I have to do, before I make one phone call or set one foot on the pavement, is to find a way to believe in myself again. This is the task that will help me get the job done. A way I've used to achieve this in the past is to pray and renew my spirit, so that's what I'll be doing as a precursor to getting out there to embark on a new fresh stab at getting to the top of the mountain. The clock is ticking, but it's still not too late for me to get there.

My Visit to Opera New Jersey

2010-08-02T10:36:00.000-04:00

I am going to be brave and write about my experience attending the opera a couple of weeks ago. The reason I say "brave" is that I don't really know too much about opera. As a natural extension of my interest in singing, I have been dragging my husband to see a few performances in the past couple of years, and I have been enjoying exploring this interest.

Since I do not have the qualifications to review a production from an educated standpoint, I can only give my impressions as a fledgling fan.

My husband asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. Since my birthday fell on the eve of my participation in the Westminster Choral Festival in Princeton, NJ, I searched online for something to do in Princeton. I found that there was an opera company there, Opera New Jersey and on the night of my birthday they would be performing Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti. I asked my husband to come down with me for the night and kick off my week at the choral festival by taking me to dinner and to see this opera.

This would be the fifth opera I would attend, and it was going to be the first one somewhere besides the Metropolitan Opera.

Up until now, I have been thoroughly preparing myself for each performance I was planning to attend. When paying the hefty prices for the Met, I have wanted to get the most out of the experience that I could. So, I would obtain a recording of the opera and listen so that I would know the music. I would study the libretto and the commentary on the opera along with its history. I would read about the singers whom I was going to hear, and also listen to some of the arias by various singers on youtube.

This time, however, I was so busy preparing for my trip, studying the Mozart Requiem score, entertaining friends, packing up my daughter for her week away at Grandma and Grandpa's, that I only had time to read a brief synopsis of Don Pasquale, and by the time we got there, I didn't know much about it at all and had never heard any of the music.

I found out that there is such a thing as an opera you don't have to "prepare" for and can just sit back and relax and enjoy. Opera NJ made this possible for me by their absolutely wonderful production. The opera, Don Pasquale is a perfect one to have this experience with because it is just a lighthearted very fun comedy that almost seems like a funny musical theater piece. Of course the beautiful music and the highly developed singing voices take it a step way above that.

It's not so much that I would like to tell you about the opera itself in that I wanted to exclaim how wonderful a job Opera NJ did on the performance. I told you above that this was my fifth time at the opera and I liked this experience way more than I did my experiences at the Met.

For one thing, the house, McCarter Theater, which is just steps away from the Princeton Train Station, is elegant, charming, and intimate. I felt really comfortable just being in the place. A man on line for the men's room at intermission -- who came across as being much more experienced opera-goer -- told my husband that this theater experience was more like what it feels like in the many small opera houses of Europe. I loved the deep rich colors of the seating and curtains, and the cozy feeling of sitting together with all the audience. It felt like we were all friends who had just had a nice dinner together and had moved to the drawing room for an evening of pleasurable entertainment provided by our host.

Another thing I loved was that the orchestra was so present in front of me, and I could watch the instrumentalists. I could observe every draw of the violin bow, and watch the conductor preside over the experience.

The voices of the performers were of a high quality. I enjoyed the voices more in this intimate setting than I did at the Met. At the Met, even with very good seats pretty close to the stage, everyone still seemed smaller. Here, I couldn't believe how clear the voices were even though there was a substantial orchestra so close between me and the singers.

To be honest, I had expected, going in to the performance, that the voices I would hear in this smaller company might be less masterful or beautiful than some of the famous names at the Met, and I learned that this is a wrong prejudice to have had. I probably just picked up this notion from the marketing and the way our culture dictates what is supposed to be good. It filled me with great pleasure to hear really fine singing at this little production, singing that I felt was every bit as good, if not better even, than what I had heard on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

And it was not just I who thought this. At the choir festival later that week, I ran into a woman who had seen Opera New Jersey's production of Don Giovanni that same weekend, and she had a similar story to tell. She also thought the production was more enjoyable than ones she had attended in Manhattan. In fact, she told me that she had stopped going to the Met altogether.

The sets were really wonderful. I was aware that they were not quite as "grand" as what I had seen at the Met, but they were so well-suited to the space and were as charming as the theater itself. In fact, this performance seemed to integrate so well and match the setting and feel of the entire theater space. And I felt that was part of what was so well done about this production -- the opera knew it's space and knew who it was as a performance piece in that space.

I was incredibly impressed with the acting of the singers. They told the story with their bodies as well as their voices. There was a lot of visual joking and I felt that children would enjoy this performance, should they not even understand a word.

I also enjoyed the performance of the chorus. Each and every choral member had a distinct personality and character and the acting of even these "lesser" roles contributed to the story and helped us understand exactly what was going on, and what it was like to be employed under these circumstances in the household of Don Pasquale. In one scene where they were singing about the new activities of Don Pasquale's new wife, it was clear that some of the servants, the younger ones, viewed all the hustle and bustle with breathless glee, and that some of the older ones thought the whole thing a great nuisance. Each singer portrayed a character who would react to the happenings in a unique way and not all the same, while maintaining a unity of ensemble. I thought it was perfect and that these lesser cast members were very talented.

All the lead roles had marvelous voices and wonderful acting interpretations of their roles. I could write paragraphs of how much I enjoyed each one of them so I hope that I am not insulting by focusing on just one lead in particular. I was enchanted by Ava Pine, who played Norina. She pulled off the authority, mischievousness, lovableness, humor of her character so well. As I sat back and enjoyed her performance and singing, I thought of the times I'd fantasized about being an opera singer, and I knew that there was no way I would be able to capture all the nuances of a character as well as this singer did, at least not without many more year of study and experience, and perhaps never at all. She was sophisticated, clever, sparkly, and very lovable and her singing was strong and beautiful.

I also loved the way the stage actions were incorporated into the interpretation of the music. I'm trying to remember a specific after two weeks, and there is one point I remember where Norina was singing a particular phrase and pouring herself a glass of lemonade at the same time. While singing the phrase, she raised the pitcher so that the stream of lemonade into the glass matched the music she was producing. The thing that was great about it was that it was not gimmicky or extraneous to what was going on, nor put in as a mere cheap trick to delight the audience. The action helped establish the playfulness of her personality -- a gesture that brought us far along getting to know her -- and was musically appropriate. It was also executed so naturally that it looked easy, but I was aware that to sing the difficult passage, and perform the lemonade pouring accompaniment was no easy feat just to pull off, much less look as natural as it would be in real life. Ms. Pine accomplished it masterfully. She made it look simple and easy.

Another example of the type of place where the action was integrated with the music was where the fluttering feather duster of the maid dusting off the bookcase seemed a natural illustration of the fluttering of the violins (a tremolo? -- sorry to lack a better musical vocabulary to describe). It happened in a way where it was hard to say if the music had suggested the action, or if Donizetti himself had been inspired by such an action to convert into music. At any rate, the interpretation of it was delightful.

These are just a couple examples of many such actions that were incorporated with the music throughout the entire production. Each one of these actions brought out the musical phrases and the appreciation for Donizetti's music, and I applaud the insight of the stage director and conductor, Michael Scarola and Mark Laycock for incorporating these little touches.

Besides these little actions that so helped me appreciate the music, there was another great scene where Ernesto was wandering forlornly through a park, singing about his lost love, and there was present on stage with him a street musician, playing the trumpet. The music being played by the horn player in the park was actually being played by the horn player in the orchestra, but it was accomplished in such a way that the horn player on stage looked very much like it was his music we heard.

The horn player acted as a sympathetic "listener," and musical partner to Ernesto's aria, reminiscent of that objective but sympathetic observer character such as Bert in Mary Poppins, or the fiddler on the roof who accompanies Tevye. I did not know this opera, so I did not know if it was a convention written in to the libretto, or if this was a unique interpretation of Opera NJ, but I had a feeling it was a unique interpretation, and in my very humble opinion, it worked really well.

To sum things up, I am definitely going to try to get over to see more performances by this little opera company. I felt there was something so right about the idea of this high quality intimate way of presenting opera in a community. How wonderful, I thought, for artists to spread themselves out in these little companies, bringing these kind of productions to the little communities of our country. It makes more sense to come together for theater this way, providing rich entertainment for each other on the weekends as we go about our daily lives. Something much better than the isolation of sitting home watching TV or on the Internet, and providing jobs for people who love to make music.

Afterglow: Westminster Choir Festival

2010-07-27T09:44:00.002-04:00

This is a quick post just to let you know that I'm exploding with stuff I want to talk about in the coming weeks after experiencing many wonderful new ideas and concepts at the Westminster Choral Festival at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ.

I attended this continuing education festival and took it for credit. As part of that I had to journal about my experience there, so I will be taking from my journal and picking out stuff I think other avocational singers out there might be interested to read about.

I was exposed to some new concepts, such as "count singing," and a few other ideas about choral voicing and sound, but I would like to have time to do a little google research so I can better talk about these things with you.

All in all, I came off this choral festival week more excited about choral singing than I ever have been before. I think one of the main reasons is because of the exciting, vibrant, creative choral director, Dr. Joe Miler.

What I loved the most about working with Dr. Miller was how free and healthy he wanted the voices to be, and how, even though he was directing a group, he somehow imparted great care and respect for the individual voice and was able to somehow guide the individual so aptly while leading a giant group. There was space for everyone in his choir -- "big" voices, "little voices," "pingy" voices, "breathy" voices, etc... He knew what to do with all those sounds and colors and make them work together.

It was possible for me, as a "big-voiced" singer to feel great freedom while singing in a choir, something that I usually don't experience. I often feel like I am sitting in a little confined box, holding myself back in order to blend. There are definitely many things I've learned with this "holding back" kind of singing. It has been a challenge over the years to find ways to master my voice so that I could sing in that little box in a healthy way, and it has not been without value to try to do so.

However, the experience of being able to feel less confined while singing with a group, and the feeling of my own free resonances melding with the other resonances in the room was really wonderful and left me renewed and invigorated about choral singing.

In the next few posts I'm probably going to be recapping some ways I've grown after this choral festival. I hope you will join me in the days to come as I share some of my experience with you.

Reporting from the Westminster Choir Festival

2010-07-20T21:31:00.000-04:00

I don't have much time to blog right now, because I'm being kept very busy participating in the Westminster Choir Festival, which I wrote about in my previous post.

I am enjoying myself immensely. There is so much singing and so much talk about music. For a person with a music degree, who studied in music school, this might be all "ho-hum" and "yawn." But for an avocational singer who has not experienced this level of choral study, it is dreamy.

Now, the description of this festival did not indicate that one had to have any particular credentials. It is, of course, considered "adult continuing education," so there may have been a presumption that applicants to the festival work in the field of music and desire further knowledge and study within their fields. However, although I didn't really have an idea who to expect would be at this festival, I had not quite realized that I would be the least credentialed person in the choir.

I am surrounded by music teachers of all level from primary school to university level, and by many people who conduct their own choirs and who have come to learn from our conductor, Joe Miller.

Whether I "belong" here or not, I am having the time of my life and learning gobs and gobs, just soaking it all in. I am getting to observe and hear the intricacies of choir directing and conducting on a deep level. There are conducting master classes and discussions about choices made in assembling and working with a choir. Today we had a fantastic explanation of how Mr. Miller voices a choir, complete with examples -- provided by the members of the Westminster Chamber Choir -- of how he "hears" voices and seats the choir into a formation where the overtones and undertones, partials and various other whats-its -- the many frequencies produced by the human singing voice -- are enhanced and complemented and reinforced in a way that optimizes the sound.

This is very exciting for me, and, although I had doubts in the beginning about my ability to keep up with the intense pace, it seems I've reached just a good enough level to stay in the race, if barely. But enough so that I can enjoy the experience and feel relatively competent while participating.

At the end of this exciting week, we are having a concert. The Westminster Chamber Choir will perform an intense work by David Lang, "The Little Match Girl Passion" and the festival choir will perform Mozart's Requiem.

If you are in the Princeton, NJ area you can hear this wonderful concert. It will be performed Friday, July 23 from 7:30 - 10:30 pm at Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall on the Princeton University campus. (Wow, a 3-hour concert. That's a big one!)

Athleticism and Music

2010-07-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

Way back when I first began to learn about how the world works, I never connected music with athleticism. Not only did I not connect them, they each seemed to belong in totally separate compartments, and in fact, one even at times seemed to preclude the other.

In high school, I belonged to the social status group that had been dubbed the "band squirrels." Band squirrels hung out down the "band hall." The band hall door was locked when we first arrived at school in the morning, but we sat down on the floor together outside the band hall door and fooled around until the music teacher arrived and opened up the door. By the time he arrived, there was only a few minutes left before the bell rang and we had to all get to our homerooms, but nevertheless, we spent those few remaining minutes -- every single morning -- "down the bandhall."

Most of my elective high school classes and extracurricular activities centered on music. I was in concert band, marching band, jazz band, chorus, and any other musical activity that came about. Most of my friends were into music as well, and -- as I recall -- most of them did not seem very athletic to me.

For one thing, being involved with sports conflicted with musical activities. We had marching band practice outdoors in the Fall and would not have been able to play soccer or field hockey. Then in the spring was school musical rehearsals, and there was no way I was going to jeopardize having a part in the school musical -- no siree -- by belonging to some extracurricular sports team.

There were a few students who juggled sports and music, but they were not really considered "band squirrels." They were kind of well-rounded kids who were doing a little bit of everything, but one could see they had a conflict of loyalties and they would miss practices and not really feel like one of the regulars. They also usually didn't play their instruments on as high a level as the "band squirrels" did.

Overall, the "jocks" were a completely separate world of people from the band squirrels, and it appeared as if one precluded the other.

I remember, however, when I first branched off to explore some athleticism. It was toward the end of my junior year of high school that I started thinking that perhaps it might be a good idea I should explore a sport. I decided to join the track team.

It's not that I had not been athletic at all. No, that was not the case because athleticism was highly valued by my parents and we had been encouraged in every way to develop various sides to our athletic natures. I was an avid and accomplished golfer, the junior champ down at our country club. Our family took regular family bike rides together. We had all been given extensive swimming lessons and I was a strong swimmer, and had even enjoyed perfecting some beginning diving. We had all studied gymnastics in grade school and I had basic gymnastic skills -- cartwheels, limbers, splits, walkovers, back walkovers.

But I think because music was a stronger interest, I just did not go out for teams. I was also really afraid of ball sports, and didn't think very fast on my feet, so I did not fare well in group sports.

I'm not sure why I chose the track team, but I think it was because my dad had been a big track star in high school, and my younger sisters were following in his footsteps and making a name for themselves on the track team.

Well, there are a lot of directions I could go with this. I could get sidetracked and start talking about all my adventures in learning about track, but I will save that for my new blog Barefoot Fresca, and stick to the point I am getting at here regarding athleticism and being a musician.

Track introduced me to running and running introduced me to the cross country team where I developed more into a runner. This seemed to be a separate part of me from my musician side. In fact, being on the cross country team did make it more stressful to be in marching band that year. I had to run from one practice to the other and my plate was definitely full my senior year.

But they still seemed like separate lives. My athletic/running life -- and -- my musical life.

In recent years, however, I made a big connection between athleticism and singing. It was on the day that the realization hit me, "Oh my gosh! singing is athletic. It's athletic! That means I can develop it!" that I really began to find my way as a singer.

But still, for a while after that realization, singing seemed like it's own separate form of athleticism, still a bit disconnected from other athleticism in my mind. It was athletic because it involved muscles, exercising, strengthening, flexing, coordinating muscles that took practice and developed along the same kinds of principles as other athletic activities. But I still didn't understand that my entire instrument was athletic and that other kinds of athleticism would feed into and be essential for developing my full potential as a singer.

The first connection to other athleticism was the thought that doing ab exercises might help me master breath management needed for singing.

I did a little research, asked some singers, and most seemed to think that separate ab development, overall, helped a singer. There were some people who protested that the ab activity of singing was particular and specific to singing, and that the only way to develop that ab capability was to sing -- which is true. Then there were a few voices who seemed to think separate ab development would be detrimental to singing if it created too tight muscles. But overall, it seemed logical to me that the stronger, healthier, more developed the ab muscles were, the better off I'd be, and I began to do some extra ab work as part of my training as a singer

Well, that was the beginning and this has led to my philosophy, which I have written about here a lot, that some kind of athletic training must be part of my development as a singer.

Now it seems that my interests from way back have come full circle and I participate on Facebook group called The Athletic Performer founded by my friend and fellow blogger, Robin, who also writes a blog by the same name. The group is full of singers and musicians who include athletic cross training as part of their singing life. The leader, Robin, seems to epitomize the ideal of the theory, because she is a highly evolved athlete -- marathoner and triathlete -- and a master of a gorgeous singing voice as well, who is progressing very well in her professional singing career right now.

Another member of the Athletic Performer Facebook group has written recently on her blog, The Liberated Voice, about how important it is for singers to pursue athletic disciplines in her article: The Vocal Athlete

I have started a new blog, Barefoot Fresca, to write about my parallel athletic pursuit of running, but there are times, because of how my singing is now linked with my running, where the topics will weave in and out from one another, and principles and philosophies gleaned from one discipline will apply to the other.

Don't be surprised if you see some weird barefoot running videos show up amongst the practice files in Frescamari's Practice Room as my two endeavors, athletics and music, start to come together and no longer be contained in separate compartments.

Continuing Education -- Mozart's Requiem

2010-07-02T14:16:00.000-04:00

Last year I wrote a couple of posts about how hard it was to decide what to spend my time on when growing my incompletely educated musical self.

In "An Incomplete Education -- What Should I Know About and Why Should I Know It" I talked about the way an avocational-singer, mother-at-home-type such as myself could get sidetracked and waste time when everything musical seems interesting and acquiring knowledge in a general way was so enjoyable. But I wondered if I couldn't be smarter about the acquisition of knowledge and specify it to better fit in with some of the goals for my musical life.

Then, after choosing a course in early music last summer -- which I enjoyed thoroughly -- I questioned whether I had spent time and money well enough based on my own goals and needs as an avocational singer. In the post "Ornamenting Handel and Bach, Rameau, Mozart and Monteverdi, Me?" I expressed fear that the way I spent time and money on continuing music education had not been well chosen. However, in the follow up post, "How Ornamentation Has Changed Me as a Musician" I conclude that, while perhaps this wasn't the most appropriate place for me to start furthering my musical education, something of value to my goals as a singer did come out of it anyway.

Well, this year, I have some time to explore another class over at Westminster Choir College and I think I've got it right this time -- I think I have chosen something that will grow me in just the way I need to grow next. I have signed up for the Westminster Choral Festival. The festival is a week-long program that, this year, will focus on the study and preparation of Mozart's Requiem. The brochure says this:

Festival participants enjoy a rigorous schedule that includes classes on pedagogy and performance practice, conducting master classes, round-table discussions with conducting faculty, observation of Westminster Chamber Choir rehearsals followed by question and answer sessions, and culminates in a performance of the major choral-orchestral work at Richardson Auditorium on the campus of Princeton University. It is an exciting opportunity for singers, conductors, and educators alike. No Audition Required.

Now that sounds just right! It has everything to stimulate my interest and enjoyment, and I believe it is enough of a challenge to help me become a better choral singer. I hate that my Cantigas Women's Choir breaks over the summer, and really miss singing with that group during summer, so this gives me a chance to continue singing somewhere. In addition, despite how much I love singing with treble voices, I have longed for the fuller experience of singing some SATB repertoire, something I have not done for many years. This festival provides for that musical longing and need. It also will be very exciting to sing with an orchestra.

I've been a little dumb about this, however. Last year, when I signed up for the Ornamentation Class, I wondered if there were any materials I might need. Too late I found out that people had selected and prepared solos to bring to the class. Everyone else seemed to know what to do, but the instructions had not been on the web site. I should have thought to call, but being inexperienced with this "going back to school" stuff, I fumbled around like someone with no clue.

So, remembering last year, I began to think about things a little earlier after having signed up for the festival. I wonder if they will provide the score? I wonder if I should purchase a score and learn this ahead of time? I wonder if there is stuff I should know, like last year, that I ought to call about.

Well -- remembering that -- this year I called a little later than probably the other participants did, but at least I was better than last year. I found out that I had to purchase the score for the Mozart's Requiem from the bookstore and that I had to come to the festival with all the music learned.

I also found out I needed a floor-length black skirt and white blouse for the performance at the end of the week.

I never foresaw the strange awkwardness that stepping back into something like going to school was going to bring, as I spent these past years raising my children and staying mainly in my home as my primary place of work. I had always planned to do something when the kids got older, but in my mind I slipped back to school or into the workplace simply and smoothly. It never occurred to me that it was going to be a little rough to transition to doing other things again. Even though I've seen it on television and read articles about it, the reality of it doesn't sink in until it starts to happen.

When we are young, we are not supposed to know too much or have too much experience, and many older/wiser people step in to mentor talented young people and help them along. Not always, but I remember people just reaching out to me when I was younger.

It seems that now that I am an adult, I am more on my own. I am expected to know things and think of things. Maybe other people are actually NOT expecting this of me, but I think they are and put this burden on myself. So, I think I appear foolish to not know.

So, stepping out to do these things after the years of being in the home is quite an experience and takes a small amount of courage. The courage to be seen as someone who doesn't understand or get it. The courage to allow people to see awkwardness and hesitancy. The courage to ask questions and be a newcomer.

The funny thing is, that the years just flew by -- the years of my children's childhoods -- and it didn't seem like that much time was passing. It seems like only yesterday I was that young student trying to find the classrooms on my first day of college.

So, I am very excited -- and a bit nervous and awkward and fearful as well -- about having the experience of this choral festival this summer. I know I will be updating my blog with posts about this experience. In Frescamari's Practice Room, there will probably be files of me practicing Mozart showing up.

I hope you will join along as I proceed on my summer journey.

First Steps Schubert Lieder -- Follow Up on "Date With A Pianist"

2010-06-29T15:21:00.000-04:00

I wrote here a couple of weeks ago about how excited I was to be getting together with our church organist to work on Bach's "Erbarme Dich." (See post "Date With A Pianist") This was an unexpected and welcome development in my avocational singer life, because, as I mentioned in the article, a pianist to collaborate with has been hard for me to come by thus far.

Well, I'm pleased to let you know that the "Erbarme Dich" practice session went very well, so well in fact, that we have commenced to meet once a week on a regular basis. There is an additional bonus to our little music sessions in that there are people gathering for a novena towards the end of the rehearsals, so I have the benefit now of a little audience to help me work on performance nerves. It really is quite a good opportunity for me to work in this way.

Not only that, after a couple of sessions together, the organist/pianist has suggested we do a 1/2 hour recital together. He told me that he loves Schubert. Did I know any Schubert? Thinking of the two dusty old pieces of Schubert lieder sitting on my music shelf at home which I had received from my first teacher 20 years ago but never learned, I responded quickly and eagerly "Oh, yes, I have some Schubert at home!"

(This reminds me of the way my mom responded when my father asked her -- on their first date, a blind date -- "Do you play golf?" and she -- thinking of the first couple of golf lessons she had recently taken -- responded rapidly, "Golf? Oh yes, I play golf!")

He said, "Good, then maybe we could do a few Schubert pieces, and there is a Russian composer, Glinka, whom I love. Do you know Glinka? We could do some of that. I can teach you to speak Russian."

Well, like all ideas and projects, I am keeping myself on an even keel. Sometimes things don't work out. A number of years ago another one of these church organists at another church was going to use me as a cantor and told me "I can't pay you, but I can provide you with opportunities for growth as a musical soloist." Sure! Right! He had given me music to look over, music composed by his friend. I got very excited about it. But there was a heartbreak when it didn't ever amount to anything. He got a little money in his budget, and found another singer. She was a professional and he could pay her! Hmmmph!

Okay, so now I'm older and wiser, so I'm going to just take everything in stride. I would love to do a recital, and this church is really great acoustically now. It used to be very poorly set up for music, but they renovated it last Fall and took out all the carpets and put in this great tile. They brought in a grand piano as an addition to the organ and made a raised platform for the choir. It's a modern setting in the round with lots of light. There is parking. Yes, it would be a lovely place for a little recital.

So ... yes ... where were we? Schubert lieder! I brought the subject up to my teacher the next day and asked her if there was a place I might start, she knowing my voice and all. I'm sure amongst the vast number of Schubert lieder pieces there are varying levels of difficulty, and I would need something manageable for a beginner. She suggested "An die musik" as a place to start.

I wasted no time in listening on youtube and finding and ordering a Schubert lieder anthology. Glinka, I've realized, is going to be slightly more difficult to find, but I'm planning to call up Glendower Jones (Classical Vocal Repertoire) to help me. This will be a challenge, because I hate to make phone calls, but one cannot order from this company online and so I shall need to place a call. I have heard they are very helpful there, so that's a next step for me.

Even if this all turns out to be a dead end, as some other "opportunities" have, I appreciate this new development because it gives me a direction. As an avocational singer, having a direction and focus and knowing where to head next can sometimes be difficult. So, if I follow the path over to Schubert lieder and some Russian compositions, I will be enriching my life and filling in some more gaps in my very incomplete musical knowledge. Oh, yes, I think my pianist friend mentioned Brahms too! That sounds nice.

In my practice room, I have put together a "soup-to-nuts" presentation of teaching myself my first Schubert lieder. I hope you will enjoy observing the process.

Does this mean I'm giving up my 24 Italian Aria project? No. I have been working on "Quella Fiamma" in the practice room too, and feel almost ready to add that to my Italian Aria collection in Frescamari's Performance Space. It's just that now I will move a little more slowly. I don't consider myself having "failed" at the 24 Arias in 24 Weeks Project. I consider it a big success because I picked a project and I set my foot on the path and now it has brought me to some new places. A project should be a vehicle to growth, and it has been. I will just change the shape and form of the project as new factors come to play.

More Barefoot Running

2010-06-24T10:21:00.000-04:00

I can't believe this, but I actually ran a whole mile barefoot yesterday.

This was not the way I had planned it.

Before I stepped out for my run, my plan had been to walk 1/4 mile as a warm-up, then run 1/2 mile barefoot, then put my minimalist Vibram Fivefingers shoes on and run the rest of the mile. But before I began -- forgetting how good it had felt on the other days -- the thought of going out there barefoot made me shudder a little, and I longed for the "comfort" of my expensive running shoes and socks. I turned to my husband just before I set out and said, "You know, I really don't want to become one of those fully barefoot runners. I am just doing this as an exercise to strengthen my feet and try to acquire better running form. I never plan to go more than 1/2 mile of my workouts barefoot each time!"

But -- lo and behold -- it felt so great and so right when I was out there! And when I got to the corner where I was supposed to -- where I had planned to -- put on my shoes, I just kept going and completed the entire run barefoot. It's almost as if with this barefoot thing there's another force -- some kind of destiny? -- pulling me along despite my intentions.

I've always been a little unconventional about some things. I try to tone it down because I do so want to fit in to regular society. But because I am open to non-conventional thought, and because I often stumble on out-of-the-mainstream information that makes sense to me, I often find myself following strange paths, much as I try not to.

I really do want to fit in. I don't want to be strange, and I don't want to do things differently merely to prove some kind of point.

Yet here I have -- once again -- commenced to explore an activity way off the beaten path. Running barefoot. And the great fear I've had for many years -- that I am a "character" -- and a destiny that I've tried to fight -- that I am a "character" -- seems to be fulfilling itself before my very eyes. For I surely must have appeared as such a character, a plus-sized woman dressed in men's running clothes because they don't make cute women's running clothes in her size, carrying a pair of weird looking Vibram Five fingers shoes, accompanied by a little dog with a doggie poop bag swinging from her hand as she waited to encounter a trash can.

As I ran along this way, feeling slightly self-conscious but trying to accept it all and drawing a small amount of attention from time to time, -- (One woman clipping her front hedges saw me coming and called out, "Watch out! There's clippings on the sidewalk! There's some thorns in there!") -- I wondered, "How on earth did I ever end up running like a strange character through the town barefoot?"

There are a couple of strands in the tapestry of my life that link barefoot running to my singing. One strand I've talked to you about, but I'll recap it here:

I came to believe that improving my fitness level would aid in developing the stamina and endurance I might need to tackle more ambitious works of vocal music. I also came to believe that fitness would be the best way for me to counter-effect the aging process, so that I could expand the number of years of healthful singing.
I chose running -- an athletic activity I loved as a youth -- and Kung Fu to be the vehicles I hoped would improve my fitness level eventually.
Despite a conservative approach, my attempt to get back to running resulted in a foot injury.
Trying to cure the foot injury lead to reading information about how our running form may have been altered to accommodate the design of modern running shoes and may be causing injuries.
Decided to incorporate some barefoot running in order to re-form myself as a runner and -- it is to be hoped -- minimize the occasion of injuries which can set-back my goals in this area.

Another strand to the barefoot running still originates from singing and goes something like this:

I was frustrated at one point at my failure to have mastered the skills required to sing more ambitious vocal works. I also longed for the camaraderie of others with my same passion for singing
My thought that other singers might be able to help me understand what I needed to do to achieve my dream led me to go hunting on the Internet for a place where people might be discussing the issues of singing. I found a message board community of singers and joined the online discussions
One of the corners of that message board had a place where singers discussed fitness and on that corner of the message board I heard about a blog called The Athletic Performer.
It was on that blog that I saw the recommendation for the book Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, where I was first exposed to the idea that running without my super-reinforced, scientifically formulated running shoes might benefit the healing of my injury.

Trying to learn to sing brings a person to all kinds of strange places. I think I am beginning to understand how following a certain passion in life can be the "path" that brings one through the entirety that is called one's life. And that all the lessons learned from the pursuit of this passion, and the principles that govern the development of skill in this passion will encompass, eventually one's whole life.

The more I read books and blogs by tennis players, golfers, runners, weavers, martial artists, professional organizers, etc.... the more I am learning that the same principals come to the fore and how the discipline one chooses reaches out into all aspects of life.

As it turns out, for me -- for the time being at least -- barefoot running is a way to better singing. But I would never tell a singer that in order to sing well he/she needed to run barefoot. I would never even tell a runner that in order to run well he/she needed to run barefoot. But what I would tell that runner or that singer is that he/she is unique and has a unique path and that each body and person is different and different things are going to work for different people and that part of the fun and adventure of it all is the journey and finding out about one's self in the process.

Perhaps finding this blog and reading about my struggles/trials/reflections/adventures as an avocational singer has now become part of your singing journey?

"Anyone Can Whistle"

2010-06-14T16:51:00.002-04:00

Is this really true? Can anyone whistle if they want to?

Today I cannot whistle. I have tried many times to whistle, and I have not been able to figure out the coordination. I have put some mp3 files of me trying to whistle in my practice room, and if you listen you will hear my deficiency quite plainly.

However, what has my trying been?

I think the longest I've ever tried to figure out how to whistle has been about 20 minutes and then I gave up. Maybe 1/2 an hour. I try to whistle every once in a great while. Maybe three times a year, for about 20 minutes, I try again.

I think I figure because many many people can whistle so easily -- many small children being among them -- that if I can't get it in 20 minutes, then I probably am just ill-fated and have some kind of genetic predisposition that prohibits me from whistling.

But does that mean I can't whistle? Does that mean I can't ever whistle?

I don't have a really strong motivation to learn how to whistle. But if I did want to overcome it and learn how -- if I was determined -- it seems like I ought to be able to learn to whistle. After all, I have the equipment don't I? I have lips, like the people who can whistle have. I have some breath control, because I use it for singing. It seems that if I really set my mind to it I would be able to learn how to do it.

But it would take some time, effort, consistent practice, a few pointers from someone who knows how to do it, and dedication to the task.

(By the way, there are many many people on YouTube, I just found out, who would like to help poor people like me learn how to whistle. Most of them are trying to teach how to whistle with fingers, which I'm not that interested in. However, one girl, in this video -- How To Whistle Without Your Fingers -- offers her tips on how spare one's fingers all that saliva. She mentions that it would only take about five hours, perhaps, in one evening to learn to do it. That's more than I've tried, I confess.)

Sometimes when we say we "can't" do something, it's because we can't on this day. Limitations exist in the here and now, but the limitations of today are not necessarily the same limitations of tomorrow.

Last year around this time, I was able to comfortably run/walk about 4 miles. But today I cannot go that far.

Today I have the energy to get my housework done, but tomorrow I may come down with the flu and be limited.

We have limitations, and we don't' have limitations, and limitations are fluid. That's why I don't believe in setting a limitation ahead of time. It has to be tested each day. It is different each day. It's counterproductive to decide what they are ahead of time.

Barefoot Running

2010-06-12T17:23:00.001-04:00

Today I'm going to talk about something different than singing. I'm going to talk about my first foray into running barefoot.

I think I wrote about my desire to try barefoot running in this blog at another time ("Singing With an Orchestra Running Barefoot"). I explained my belief that fitness and singing go hand-in-hand -- especially for the aging singer -- and how my first plan to get back into running -- something I loved many years ago -- ended in a big disappointing crash when I developed a debilitating case of plantar fasciitis.

When I was younger, I never had any running injuries. I ran miles and miles and was even blessed enough never to have encountered shin splints or any of the other bad running injuries. I wasn't very fast -- so maybe that was part of the reason, because I didn't push myself enough to get injuries -- but it also could be because I was young and involved in other activities and quite naturally flexible.

Many years have passed, and many an inactive person learns that these qualities of youth are short-lived and everything -- especially if one hasn't been paying attention during a long period of time -- gets stiff, creaky and more difficult.

Anyway, after several months of trying to bargain with the injury -- i.e. running more slowly, running less frequently, running shorter distance -- I finally admitted that in order to recover from my case of plantar fasciitis, I was going to have to just stop running for a while. This was very disappointing because I was so happy that I finally had taken the bull by the horns and committed myself to getting back out there, and was never more motivated than I had been in years, and the injury just threw me for a loop.

At first, I read all the conventional information about this type of injury and was self-treating with all that conventional wisdom. It has taken about six months to get my foot 90% better from this injury. For such a long time, I had terrible stabbing pain when taking that first twenty steps in the morning -- or when I had to stand for long periods of time -- or even walk the 15 minutes from the bus stop to my voice lesson, stand for an hour singing, and then walk back. I felt very demoralized by this pain, and also very frustrated that it kept me from proceeding with my plans to be a runner again -- or even a walker for that matter.

But due to having previously read a book (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen Race by Christopher McDougall) that had been recommended on a friend's blog, I had been made aware that there are theories out there about our running shoes actually contributing to these type of injuries -- injuries like plantar fasciitis. In Born to Run, I read that we change our running form when we run in the supportive running shoes in such a way as to make us more susceptible to the gamut of potential running injuries.

This kind of made sense to me, and I wondered if some of that information would help my plantar fasciitis.

And so I began to read about barefoot running. I began to want to try it, but I was worried about a lot of things. One thing I was worried about was my weight. I thought my feet might not be able to support all my weight, and that I would have to lose at least 40 pounds before I would even think of trying barefoot running. That meant I would have to wait quite a while. I also thought that I didn't dare try this while my plantar fasciits was still unresolved.

But then I read on one of the barefoot running blogs that overweight people could build the strength in their feet to support their bodies, but that they had to start slowly and build the strength up carefully.

And I also read that running barefoot had actually proved a cure for plantar fasciitis in some barefoot runners. This was all anecdotal, but very interesting.

But still -- the sidewalks are dirty -- and, well -- I am just so genteel (lol) -- so I couldn't picture running out there where I walk my dog and see all the other doggies walking around, and see all the cigarette smokers flicking their ashes, and see all the people (ugh) spitting on the sidewalk.

So, as a compromise, I bought a pair of minimalist running shoes (Vibram Five Fingers KSOs) and began to acclimate my feet to walking about without all the cushioning, support, framework and motion control they were accustomed to having from my state-of-the-art, scientifically-formulated running shoes.

For the past couple of months, I have been loving the Vibrams and my feet have been growing gradually stronger in them and I have worked up to being able to run a mile in them.

But then a book came out. A new book about barefoot running: Barefoot Running: How to Run Light and Free by Getting in Touch with the Earth, by Michael Sanlder. My pre-ordered copy arrived -- and -- I found out that the author of the book was holding a free barefoot running clinic in Central Park.

I attended the running clinic last week. We did arch-strengthening exercise. We ran on the grass and it felt so good. Amazingly good. I asked him some questions about barefoot running for people who were overweight and got some tips. But I still wasn't quite ready to get out there on the sidewalk with my bare feet.

Until today. I was reading once again about how one can do too much too soon running in minimalist shoes ("The Running Barefoot Blog: Beginning"), and that the real technique is learned in completely bare feet.

So ... I did it. I just went outside, walked up to the Boulevard, and ran about a quarter of a mile in my bare feet. It felt just wonderful. All the sensations from childhood came rushing back to me. I had a great feeling of everything being right.

One of the most amazing aspects of this switch to minimally supportive shoes and bare foot work, is that my plantar fasciitis has gone away almost completely. It definitely has not got a spec worse. I find this odd because much of the conventional medical advice about plantar fasciitis cautions a person suffering with PF to avoid going barefoot as much as possible. Could it be that the very act of going bare foot will be the right thing to strengthen the foot and help ease the stress that causes the injury?

I don't have answers at all. I find all the information about running bare foot very intriguing and I'm willing to cautiously experiment with it. My very beginning into experimenting with it are going very well so I am going to continue. My feet feel strong and happy, and even my knee and hip joints feel way less stress. But, as in all things, I will keep my finger on the pulse of the information out there, and if I should learn of anything that would cause me to think this would be harmful in any way I would cease. But my gut is telling me that all this is very good.

I really do plan to continue to use my minimalist shoes, but there is definitely going to be time spent getting my form down right in bare feet.
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If you liked this post, check out the new blog I made later on: Barefoot Fresca
Also the follow up post: "More Barefoot Running"

Date With a Pianist

2010-06-07T18:25:00.002-04:00

I have a date tonight! With a collaborative pianist!

It occurred to me as I was getting ready, that in much the same way as woman, like Snow White, will dream "Some day my prince will come, " an avocational singer will dream "Some day my collaborative pianist will come!"

When I was growing up, one day my mother surprised me and told me she was sending me for guitar lessons. She was a pianist, and liked to sing herself, and she explained to me that it's hard to accompany one's self on the piano while singing, but it might be easier to do it with a guitar.

I was fortunate to have a pianist for a mother because I always had someone to play songs for me while I sang. I could grab her when I wanted to and I never knew what a luxury it was. I took it so for granted. As a singer, I have never had it so good since. Here we are c1989. Lucky me!

In recent years, I have approached a couple of friends who are fabulous pianists, with overtures of forming a little collaboration together. This has mostly met with a lack of success, mostly due to the fact that schedules are very difficult to coordinate.

Whenever I hear that famous question -- "What would you do if you won the lottery?" -- the main thing I could think of is that I would buy a really great piano and hire a pianist to come every day to my house for the rest of my days. I read a book written by Enrico Caruso's vocal coach and accompanist for a time, Salvatore Fucito (Caruso and the Art of Singing, Including Caruso's Vocal Exercises and His Practical Advice to Students and Teachers of Singing). In the book I read about how they worked together every day, and what singer could not long for such a luxurious benefit.

Mr. Salvatore, says in his preface that it was the greatest honor of his life, when "my distinguished friend Enrico Caruso called me to New York to be his coach and accompanist."

Well, as an avocational singer, there is no one waiting and excited for me to call them to come be my accompanist. I have to chase them down, like ambulances. I forget that, as much as I want to work with fine musicians, they do as well, and I may not be an exciting prospect for them.

Mr. Salvatore goes on to say that he "always eagerly awaited Caruso's arrival in Berlin," (where they often worked together) "because it was an inspiration and a musical education to work with the great master of song."

Dreamy sigh!

All these years of dreaming and fantasizing about working with a pianist, it never occurred to me that when I finally had a chance to work with someone good, I might not be worthy of the experience, or that it wouldn't be less than dreamy. I did -- last year a few times -- get together to try to sing "Erbarme Dich" with a high level pianist. However, my decision to do this was premature, and I did not have the technical ability to sing the song properly, and she had a hard time sensing my pulse and putting it together with me.

Since then, I have been dedicating myself to achieving better results with "Erbarme Dich," and recently I have gotten a handle on it. (You can hear it in Frescamari's Practice Room: "Finally, A Halfway Decent Erbarme Dich")

I think I am ready now to work with a pianist, and -- lo and behold -- an opportunity has snuck up on me. Remember in a blog post when I told you that I was "Singing Tenor?"

Well, the organist for that quartet I was in happens to love Bach, and I happened to mention that I was working on "Erbarme Dich" and he happened to be interested, and he has offered to collaborate with me on it, just for fun, and at no charge.

And that is with whom I am meeting tonight in just a few minutes.

Off I go!

(Psst!. I have made an extra copy of "Quella fiamma", the most recent of the 24 Italian Arias I am learning, to bring along just in case things go well and it seems right.)

When "Wrong" is Right

2010-06-06T20:50:00.000-04:00

I've been wrestling with the performance anxiety alligator for many years now, ever since it first reared it's ugly head in my youthful days and frightened me half to death!

Today some enlightenment came in an unexpected way.

I thought we were done singing at church for the year. I thought I had heard the organist/choral leader tell us that from this point on and over the summer we could just show up and sing hymns if we wanted to. Since this weekend was my son's high school graduation and I had a houseful of company, I was glad to just saunter into church today and sit with my family.

But I saw some of the other choir members sitting in the chairs over in the choir section, and I began to wonder if I had made a mistake, and was supposed to show up for something. With a flushed face, I kind of tiptoed around the back and tapped my choir friend on the shoulder and asked her. She said that I was right that I didn't have to show, but they were doing that song we had worked on for Corpus Christi and they could use my help. They looked happy to see me and eager for another voice.

I was relieved to find out that I hadn't messed up after all, and that I had not committed to being there without remembering. Since I was with my family, I told her that I was going to stick with my original plan to be in the congregation.

As I sat in the pew through the mass, I reconsidered, "oh, well, maybe I can slip over there when they sing the song and just help sing along. I'll sneak around the back and sit behind my friend and just contribute in an unobtrusive way."

When I did just that, at communion time, the choir members startled me by standing up and walking over to the microphone and the podium. Oh no, I'm not dressed to stand at the podium! I have my casual outfit on and flip flops. Well, it was too late now. I just stood behind the other three.

Next, I had my book turned to the wrong page. The song started and I just started to laugh. I looked on my friend's book and read along, and now I had to really wing it because they weren't doing the song she told me they were doing.

What happened that was good, however, was that I began to feel very relaxed and enjoy singing up there. The absurdity of my position made me realize the joy that was in making music up there, and that all the constrictions and stipulations and requirements I had imposed on singing up in front of people were just big monsters that I had made up. Instead of feeling horror at the situation, as I would have so many times in the past, I felt a sense of utter delight and amusement.

Everything was wrong. It was wrong that I was not dressed right. It was wrong that I was winging it in front of people and not prepared. It was wrong that I was on the wrong page. It was wrong that I wasn't taking it all much more seriously up there. And most of all it was wrong that all of this was happening in front of a large group of people.

And yet I never felt more right in my life at last. I really really hope that I can hold on to this!

Finally -- a Little Help With Gesturing

2010-06-01T07:31:00.001-04:00

Over the years I have wondered what to do with my hands and body while singing. It is somewhat easy when I'm singing a solo in front of a choir, oratorio style, and can hold my book. But when I'm just out there by myself, it is very difficult to know what is "right."

I actually have scoured books and the Internet looking for some kind of recommendations/guidelines regarding gesturing. The best help I've been able to find thus far is to merely study singers -- watching them on youtube and live -- trying to figure out who is effective and who is distracting and why.

I have noticed some things that look nice and that I like both for the hands at rest, and for the hands while gesturing, and I have tried to mimic them -- but I have not been satisfied with mere copying, because it has always seemed that gesturing should be motivated from within, and I have not been able to access that part of the singing.

The trouble I've had with figuring out gesturing is where and when and how much to gesture exactly. Whenever there are choices -- and with gesturing it seems like the choices are numerous -- it can be hard to decide, and many times I have wished someone else would just choreograph it for me and let me try to connect the choreography to some kind of meaning.

What I've settled on for now is to start with my hands in an attractive resting position and observing where I want to move naturally while singing. Then I take the natural movements and make some deliberate choices and give them a little more shape, in a similar way to how one improvises little cadenzas, but then takes the improvisations and writes them down and has them "planned" and worked out and standardized for performance, trying to make the planned and prepared flourishes seem as spontaneous as possible, all while striving to re-create the moment when those movements had sprung forth more organically.

Well, at last I have found some helpful information on gesturing. On the blog Helping You Harmonize, in her post "Gesturing and Song," conductor Liza Garnett gives some philosophies and understanding of where gesturing should come from while singing. The most helpful idea I gleaned from her article is that singers often gesture to emphasize small musical units rather than the gesture growing out of larger musical idea. When singers gesture with the small musical units, they make those units seem like separate thoughts as opposed to being part of a whole musical idea.

Gestures can be thought of just like musical phrases themselves, beginning in a seed form, then having a growth point. They are natural to us, and will make sense if we allow them to grow from an organic place that is connected to the larger musical ideas being expressed.

I am so excited to have found a little something that makes sense to me about gesturing at long last. I guess it makes sense that a conductor would be thinking deeply about gesturing like this, and I'm going to work with these ideas. In fact, it might be a useful exercise to take a class in conducting, or even read up a little on conducting. Ms. Garnett has published a book about conducting (Choral Conducting and the Construction of Meaning). Perhaps I shall be able to check it out at some point, although while looking up a link for the book to post I see that it is a pretty expensive book Maybe there will be a copy of it in a music library somewhere.

What are your thoughts on gesturing? Have you had any "aha" moments where an approach to gesturing made sense all of a sudden? How have you solved this?

Recovering From My Foolish Marathon

2010-05-31T20:01:00.000-04:00

Well, I told you yesterday that I overdid it a bit with my 24 Italian Aria Marathon. I did do it on impulse. It felt so good to be going through the songs that I just sang and sang through them.

It was a lot of singing -- way too much -- and I did have a blast.

But ... today I can feel a slight vocal strain. And I must rest now. My speaking voice feels the strain, so I'm even talking as little as possible. This is sad because I would really like to sing some more today -- as well as talk -- and did try to sing a little -- and talk a little -- but deep down inside the warning voice was saying, "Stop singing (and talking!) and rest!"

I am heeding that voice. Especially since tomorrow I have a voice lesson. Based on the way it feels, I am sure it will be recovered by tomorrow.

I do not regret trying out a little marathon like that on impulse. Once in a while you have to let loose and have a little fun.

What I did is not unlike what a casual and careful runner might do. Take a runner who has been training intelligently and with respect for his/her body. The runner has built a foundation and then has been in the process of gradually increasing his mileage and challenges, such as speed-work and hills.

All of a sudden, one day, the runner is outside, feels great; it's a beautiful day and the runner decides to throw all care to the wind and just run and run and have a great time and ends up running miles and miles over her limit.

Well, the next day she might pay for it, but as long as she is not injured, she should be all right.

Oddly enough, on this day of silence, I have come across an article on active.com about running and recovery (Breaking It Down: Physiology, Running, and Recovery)

I'm reading about the degeneration-regeneration cycle of muscles, and how after they are stressed, there is a breakdown. The article explains:

"Muscles are among the most metabolically active tissues in our body. They are always trying to tailor their structural and functional properties to the level and type of use they experience. However, when the amount of use or level of stress on a muscle is too great, the fibers that make up the muscle are damaged. When this happens, the cells that make up muscle fibers degenerate and are replaced by new muscle cells."

I think that yesterday, when I sang so much in my middle voice all those arias, I may have stressed the vocal muscles to the point of a little damage. I am imagining right now as I sit typing this blog post, that the degenerated vocal muscles are being replaced with new cells.

The article speaks of a "proliferative" phase of the degeneration-regeneration cycle. These little muscle satellite cells line up and get ready to become new muscle-fiber proteins. Ooh, I can picture that happening right now, or at least I hope that is what is happening. (I pray that is what is happening!)

The thing is that the kind of trauma needed to stimulate this growth is not a great deal of trauma when it comes to small, delicate vocal muscles. To load them the right kind of way would merely take small amounts of practicing of music that is difficult each day. The amount of this "trauma" might increase a bit over time, but I have a feeling that most opera singers, even, would not have recommended beating up my vocal cords to the extent that I did yesterday, and for so long as I did yesterday. One does not need to traumatize the muscles that much in order to get some kind of healthy growth.

However, I know from past experience and other foolish moments of my life that once these muscles have proliferated again, I'm going to feel some benefits -- just as long as I don't stress them additionally while they are healing, and give them the time and rest they need. I almost didn't do that because I wanted to do some more singing this morning. But I did stop myself.

The article goes on to say:

"The benefits of this complex process are numerous. When looking at muscle-cell regrowth in sedentary muscles, the muscle fibers seem to regenerate in a random orientation and remain relatively immature.

However, if the muscle fibers are cyclically exposed to various loads of stress and tension, they become well aligned, take up greater amounts of amino acids and synthesize more proteins. Other physiological benefits to training include an increase in intracellular mitochondria (the powerhouses of the cell), the number of capillaries, total blood flow and total oxygen-consumption capacity, leading to a profound rise in muscle metabolic activity. These increases yield a more well-developed and fatigue-resistant muscle."

A "fatigue-resistant muscle!" That would mean that I could sing more often and for longer in the future. More of my favorite activity!

But the article warns:

"Although muscle breakdown is needed in order to improve overall muscle fitness, it is important to remember that too much muscle trauma can have a negative effect, especially early in your training program."

So, in the long run, consistent, cyclical, variable practice sessions done in the right amount are what really builds the muscles and overloading them to the degree I did yesterday is not really the way to go!

Luckily, today is a holiday and my husband grilled some grass-fed beef burgers, which we had on 100% whole wheat buns. This is a very good thing to eat while the muscles are repairing themselves, because, as the article recommends for the recovery period:

"Mix Carbs and Protein: Studies show that the addition of protein to a carbohydrate-rich recovery supplement enhances insulin release in the blood, leading to an increased carbohydrate uptake by your muscle cells and a subsequent increase in glycogen manufacturing."

So, with good nutrition, lots of water, and some rest today, I should be good to go tomorrow for my lesson! And in the meantime, hope I learned a lesson and will be more prudent next time I feel like getting carried away.

Sunday Night 24 Italian Song Marathon

2010-05-30T23:12:00.000-04:00

Some followers of this blog may have been wondering what became of my 24 Italian Arias in 24 Weeks project in the event of my having had the little blog crisis (written about in the post Avocational Singer -- MIA)

Well, I'm sorry to say that at the time the blog flew out the window, the 24 Arias project kind of went with it.

It was a very sad thing for me, because, as you know, I was very attached to that project and very excited about it. In fact, my pursuit of vocal arts was on the verge, for the first time in over 25 years, of being completely abandoned.

I let myself get out of vocal shape over several weeks, and could not even look at a song. I could barely sing in choir. It was a real crisis.

However, I did pick myself up and begin the discipline again of my daily practice. It took a while to get my vocal cords responding well again -- a few weeks. Once they were back in balance, I could resume my progress.

However, I couldn't bring myself to look at one of the 24 until this week.

Tonight, I decided to revisit the 9 songs I learned over those nine weeks when I was intensely working on the project. I just sang through the songs to see if new vocal insights about breath pressure made a difference. I have also had a breakthrough in understanding about vowel formation when the guest conductor for our choir -- Leonardo San Juan -- modeled the positions in a way that finally got through to me. (see post about working with a living composer) With the combination the the new awareness of regulating the breath along with this new insight about forming vowels, I am headed in new directions and I'm excited about it.

Once I got going singing through the songs tonight, I decided to just keep going and I had a little mini-marathon. I took out some of the other of the 24 that I had worked on over the years before I started this 24 Arias in 24 Weeks project.

By the time I got finished, my voice was pretty shot -- heh heh!

I'm laughing because even though I probably oversang tonight, I had a LOT of fun and I can feel that everything will be all right in the morning.

My cords are pretty strong. I think I was ready for a marathon like this. In fact, some of the last few songs I did -- Caro mio ben, Se florindo, Nel cor, O del mio dolce ardor -- were actually sounding better than when I started.

There are so many wonderful musical advantages to knowing these 16 songs, but one of the best, I have been realizing, is that I have a set of pieces that I can take out and work and re-work as I discover new vocal ideas. It is fantastic -- simply fantastic. If I'm working on my "Eh" vowel, for example (written about in last post, "From "Ay" to "Eh"), I can whip out one of the learned songs and play around with the new ideas. They are almost like song templates or something, where all the issue and problems of singing can be figured, configured, and reconfigured.

I can explain this to you in words, but it is an experiential thing, and one has to experience getting to know so many of these songs intimately to really understand what it is like to have them as tools in the background of one's singing life.

I could do well with these 16 songs. Really, there's enough there to take me through so much. However, I cam going to proceed with my project and learn the rest of the songs. I may not do one a week. I may go faster, or I may proceed more slowly, but I shall continue to familiarize myself with this wonderful set of teething rings for singers! Stay with me for more.

In the meantime, you can hear all 16 songs I sang through tonight (if you can stand it) in Frescamari's Practice Room if you care to: Click here for the Sunday Night 24 Italian Song Marathon

Moving from "Ay" to "Eh"

2010-05-29T15:47:00.003-04:00

Today, while practicing singing, I became much more strongly aware that my failure to habitualize singing the "e" sound in Italian as a more open "eh" as opposed to my natural "ay" sound was of greater importance than I had realized.

Up until now, when teachers and mentors have corrected this faulty tendency to sing "e" like "ay" I have dutifully complied in the moment, and made a mental note to be more careful and make sure I do it.

However, I have not taken the drastic step of spending concentrated practice time with the specific goal to correct this problem of mine. My approach thus far has been less focused, just trying to correct it if I think of it, or leaving it up to chance almost that it was going to fix itself eventually.

But as I discover more and more and am moving into more advanced territory with my singing, I am beginning to see how this more open "eh" shape is needed to facilitate the better singing.

In that book I mentioned yesterday, The Inner Athlete: Realizing Your Fullest Potential, by Dan Millman, he talks about the need for preparation and laying a good foundation. If we don't prepare, he says, we risk developing bad or compensatory habits. Mr. Millman says, in fact, that "nearly every difficulty we face in our chosen form of training can be traced to skippnig steps in the past -- to weakness in our foundation. [emphasis mine]"

Today I came to recognize one of these weaknesses in my foundation, and before I proceed further, I want to tend to it. I have come to realize today that a failure on my part to improve my faulty "e" vowel could lead to such a development of compensatory habits as I move into more advanced singing. I decided to take some considerable time and effort today to work on the "e" problem.

Mr. Millman has quoted an anonymous person as having said,

"Champions in any field have made a habit of doing what others find boring or uncomfortable."

Although I'm not exactly ready to describe myself as a "champion", the work I did today on the "e" vowel today was tedious, boring, and uncomfortable. It took a lot of patience. I put the recordings of my work up in the practice room, but most people will probably find them as boring and tedious to listen to as they were to execute and will not bother to continue to listen after a few seconds.

However, this is the work that is building the right foundation, and after I was done, the good stuff that it did to my singing is undeniable. So the time and patience it took to belabor the "e" was worth while. There is a payoff, and once the student recognizes that payoff, the motivation to get through the tedious steps becomes much greater and patience increases!

After having worked this way today, I have come to the conclusion that correcting this "e" is not a mere cosmetic or aesthetic correction. The more open "eh" sound is actually foundational, physically, to getting the instrument working properly. A better "eh" shape helps the vocal line and the flow of air, and is important in lining up the whole technique.

Here is the manner in which I proceeded: First, I went through the text of the song and wrote "eh" above every place there was an "e" vowel. I decided to do this because my physical reaction to seeing the "e" vowel on a page was to connect with my habitual regional more closed "ay" sound, so I had to break the visual-physical hold that was so strong. By writing "eh" I had a new visual to connect with. I had hoped to reprogram myself to respond to the written "e" in a new physical way, but it obviously wasn't happening. In humility, I realized I needed to help myself by writing "eh" over and over again.

What better song for this then the very first of the 24 Italian songs I've worked on recently, Sebben crudele?

The next thing I did was read through the words, exaggerating the places where there was an "eh."

And finally, I sang through the songs with this new "eh" awareness. Besides Sebben crudele, I used O cessate di piagarmi, and also Pieta Signore. It was very fortunate that I have learned these songs, because I now find I have vehicles for these kinds of exercises all ready for work.

In the past, I have skipped over many foundational basics, but from now on I shall keep the following of Mr. Millman's words in mind as I approach the work of mastering singing:

"... Few of us act on the basis of our understanding in our haste to achieve flashy skills, because preparation isn't as exciting, or because we don't understand how to build a foundation ..."

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Click here to observe and listen to "e" vowel work in Frescamari's Practice Room: (working on "Eh" vowel shape)
Click here for an interesting research paper on vowel formation in singers: "An Investigation of the Acoustic Vowel Space of Singing" by Evan Bradley
Click here to read a subsequent post with evolved understanding of the [e] vowel: "The Tongue and the [e] Vowel"

Me and High Notes

2010-05-29T00:40:00.000-04:00

No matter what you imagine your limitations to be -- no matter what your body looks or feels like now, even if you've been in a slump for a year -- if you're willing to undergo the initiation necessary to develop your talent, you will become a natural athlete. All the qualities are within you native to you. You may have to direct more energy and time than someone else in order to bring out the proper qualities, but you certainly have the capacity to do it.

Dan Millman

from the book The Inner Athlete: Realizing Your Fullest Potential

When I read that quote this morning from the book mentioned above, I definitely thought of my quest to develop the higher range of my voice.

It has taken me a long long time to be able to sing anything like a high note.

And it is taking me even longer, now that I can make some noise "up there" to create any kind of sound that is at all musical.

My relationship with high notes has been complex. Originally, they were a great mystery to me. As a child, I would open my mouth and try to sing a high note and a kind of ugly squawk would come out. I just didn't get it at all. I didn't even know how to begin. I decided that it was simply something that was not in my repertoire of things I could do.

But when I first started taking voice lessons over 25 years ago, my teacher said that I was a soprano. Well, as they say, you could have blowed me over with a feather! Me? A soprano?

But how could she possibly say that when I couldn't sing any high notes? She just didn't seem to notice that I couldn't sing any high notes. Aren't sopranoes supposed to sing high notes?

So, for a while, I tried to believe that I was going to be able to sing high notes.

After a time of having little success with this, however, I did reach a point where I finally decided I just did not have the physiology for it, and resigned myself to the limited voice I had been endowed with by nature.

Now here, however, is an example where vocal science and a little knowledge of physiology can contribute to the development of a singer. When I studied the way the whole thing worked, it seemed to me that based on what I was understanding -- based on the way the thing was designed, and based on the way muscles worked -- that I ought to be able to develop high notes. So, I became determined to find out, once and for all, whether I indeed could or not sing high notes. I made a decision to dedicate myself to the project of developing the higher range of my voice. Something inside me believed that my inability with high notes was not a natural physical limitation, but something else, and I wanted to find out.

In the same book mentioned above -- The Inner Athlete: Realizing Your Fullest Potential, by Dan Millman -- the author tells the story of his friend's 4-year-old daughter who looked at the birds flying and decided she might be able to do that. His friend allowed his daughter to repeatedly jump off the couch flapping her arms, trying and trying to fly. The author asked his friend why he just didn't save her all that time and trouble and tell her that humans couldn't fly and the friend said that he didn't want to tell her that humans couldn't fly because he might be wrong. The father of the little girl had the wisdom to allow her to explore her abilities and discover the natural limitations of her physical powers on her own.

Sometimes in my quest to develop high notes, I have wondered if I am, like the little girl, trying to learn to do something that is not possible for me. I have wondered if I will waste a lot of time working to develop a skill that I don't necessarily need, and that in the end I will find out that it was something that I never was going to be able to do after all.

Yet, this journey of believing that it is possible and that I will be able to do it is so interesting and wonderful. I have made more progress than I would have believed before I started. And as long as I am still making progress, I must continue. I will continue until it is very clear to me that I am limited in this way and just will not be able to do it. Until that day comes, I must keep trying.

Some motivation came my way in recent months. It was a beautiful piece of music. Maybe -- just maybe --this is the best motivation of all to inspire one to acquire better skill. The desire to put voice to a beautiful vocal line. A vocal line that beckons to be sung.

In our recent choir concert, we performed the premier of the Magnificat of Argentinian composer, Leonardo San Juan. The Et Misericordia that he wrote as a solo for a soprano is one of the most beautiful songs that I have ever heard. There is one line in particular that soars up to a high A and tumbles back down again in such a graceful manner and it tugs at my heartstrings and makes me want to experience it in my voice.

Yet, alas, the tessitura is beyond my reach. When I took a look at the song in my practice studio, and attempted to sing the lines, the tension and discomfort was unbelievable. And it sounded as bad as it felt.

Still, I made a little challenge for myself to try to use the song as an exercise -- to see if I couldn't get it to the point where I could sing it.

Well, I've been singing this Et Misericordia for weeks. There has been progress and little incremental improvements, but overall, it was not anything fit for consumption. In fact, a few times I wanted to post the work I did on it in my practice room, but withdrew it from embarrassment.

Until today. I had a little breakthrough with my understanding today of the way I was using breath pressure. I realized something that freed it up a little bit and I think I'm on to something that is going to payoff before too long. I managed to catch the moment on one of my recordings and I'll post it in Frescamari's Practice Room a little later.

If things go the way I would like, and you stick with me on this journey, you may yet get to hear me do "a little something" with high notes before the end of my blogging days. I shall definitely keep you posted.

Working With a Living Composer

2010-05-24T13:11:00.001-04:00

This week my choir has been engaged in the very exciting experience of premiering in North America a gorgeous piece of music by a contemporary Argentinian composer. We are presenting Magnificat, by Leonardo San Juan.

When it was announced that this composer was going to come here from his native land to conduct our choir, it sounded like a good thing, but I did not realize how special the experience would be.

The way that the composer knows the music seems very deep to me, because it originated within him. There is something about that connection, being at the source, that makes the music feel alive for me in a way that I did not foresee or expect. If I may make a weak analogy, it is something like the difference between having a bottle of spring water, and taking a canteen and dipping it right into the spring where the water comes from. Not exactly ... but a little like that.

We have already had our first very successful concert event -- this past Saturday in Hoboken, NJ -- and will have another one in Manhattan this Wednesday, May 26. For details you can click the link on the sidebar of this blog or click here: Cantigas Women's Choir.

I hope some of you will be able to come, because this Magnificat is very beautiful and you will be enriched by it as I have been.

"Rose-in-the-Teeth Panache"

2010-05-20T13:35:00.001-04:00

While reviewing the many pieces of music we are preparing for our choir's impending concert, I got distracted by reading some very lengthy instruction notes in the front of our score for the huapango-styled song Las Amarillas.by Stephen Hatfield.

I came to this instruction:

"Keep in mind that the most important thing about the words in Las Amarillas is the rose-in-your-teeth panache of the diction"

Now I was not sure what "rose-in-your-teeth panache" was exactly. In a vague kind of way I knew what the editor meant, but the phrase stimulated my curiosity to know precisely, so I decided to google the phrase to deepen my understanding of the meaning of the notion of "rose- in-the-teeth panache."

I found all kinds of curious things.

The first site to lay out a definition of the expression was a line of bras called Panache Bras.

Panache Bras had this to say:

"The dictionary defines "panache" as "flamboyant, stylish elegance." There could be no more appropriate description for the line of Panache bras about to be laid at your feet, so to speak. Add to those wonderful attributes those of comfort, support, and an indefinable something. You'll soon realize you don't need a dictionary to describe magic in lingerie."

"You'll want to dance the night away in the Panache Tango Plunge Bra. Slip a rose between your teeth and discover the true meaning of "flamboyant" when you slip on this bra."

Next stop was a site selling some sheet music for "Habanera" from Carmen. The description of the sheet music read:

"Played with panache, this transcription of Carmen’s opening aria will stop any show – especially with the addition of some simple costuming or a rose in your teeth."

Next, I found a kindred soul-seeker asking profoundly on yahoo answers:

"Why is putting a rose in your teeth considered sexy?"

Evidently this question was resolved two years ago when the asker posted the best answer:

"Actually that shite [sic] is only in the movies. Man can you imagune [sic] the thorns ripping your lips up if you did it for real. LMAO"

Ah, the wisdom that is out there in cyberspace, if only we knew how to find it!!

Getting a bit more academic, on Wikipedia I learned that "panache" is a French word that "carries the connotation of a flamboyant manner and reckless courage." The literal meaning is "plume," like the kind worn in a helmet or hat. It used to have an unfavorable meaning, but the french poet and dramatist, Edmond Rostand used it in such a way in his playCyrano de Bergerac as to give it from thenceforth a virtuous connotation. Panache is now used to describe someone who has a dashing confidence of style, or shows a certain flamboyance and courage

And finally, the online dictionary states simply:

"Dash; verve"
"a dashing manner; style; swagger"
"distinctive and stylish elegance"

The rose in the teeth? Well, we all have seen that in the Tango. In a forum where I think there were dancers asking questions, it sounds like the best answer is that the rose in the teeth originated with Rudolph Valentino, and that it became a cliche that "northeners" liked, but that Argentinians thought a ridiculous caricature

All right, all right, all right! I understand the directive from the choral music now.

I figure the best chance of mustering up any "panache" with which to sing is to know the song really really well. So, you will find in Frescamari's practice room a recording of me practicing for fluency and doing my best to achieve some -- ahem -- "panache" with the diction.

Then, of course there is the trick to apply it to the music. There sure ain't going to be much "panache" without a secure knowledge of the music.

In the end, I'm not sure how much "rose-in-the-teeth panache" I was able to achieve. Maybe the real secret would be to get me one of those Panache Tango Plunge Bras mentioned above and wear it to the concert!!
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To hear diction practice for the words of Las Amarillas click here and to hear me feebly struggle to achieve some alto "rose-in-the-teeth panache": "Las Amarillas Diction Practice"

To find out more about Cantigas Women's Choir performance this Saturday in Hoboken or Wednesday, May 26 in Manhattan, click here: Cantigas Women's Choir

Singing Tenor

2010-04-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

Well, I never thought I'd see this day, but it has arrived. I am singing tenor.

The choir at my church is a very small group of churchgoers who love to sing together. Every year, for the past 12 years, I have watched them try to recruit new members, and every year the same little group with the same people sits over in the choir chairs, unchanged. One of the new members they have succeeded to recruit has been me, but only partly successfully. For I have been a very haphazard and on-again off-again addition to their group. This is partly because of the demands of raising a family and the way the church has the CCD program set up so that the choir mass is not the one that is convenient if one is participating in the program, but some of it has also been because I have conflicting feelings about participating when the repertoire is less than challenging and even some of it unattractive to me.

I have a conflict inside about this part of me that requires to be challenged by the musical group I join and whether I should seriously commit to our church group. On the one hand, the challenge -- the actual musical challenge -- and hard work is what fulfills and gratifies me. Yet there are many other reasons to sing, and many other joys that can be found in singing in all kinds of situations and all kinds of ways. So, it has seemed a bit haughty or proud to brush off a group because it doesn't take on challenging repertoire. And "haughty and proud" doesn't quite fit in with my idea of what church is supposed to be for. Or even singing, for that matter.

And besides all that, "haughty and proud" is completely uncalled for considering that it may be based on a complete over-estimation of my abilities anyway.

In contrast to this, there is the ideal of "service" and sharing one's gifts with one's spiritual community. This is a strong recommendation to sing with the little choir in one's place of worship.

And thus it has been -- back and forth -- in again, out again -- on again, off again -- singing when there's something in it for me, i.e., a solo, or a chance to substitute cantor -- or else at other times putting aside self-gratification, committing to the year, regardless, and singing as a gift of self.

Until I have got to the point now where the organist approached me and asked me if I would sing tenor for an Easter cantata.

The Easter cantata went over so well, that now the choir director has asked the four of us who sang it if we will be a regular little quartet. He is excited because now he can do some pieces he would like to, and he can write some arrangements.

And I said yes to being this little quartet's tenor.

And after last night's rehearsal I can say that there have been some little moments of surprise in it for me.

For one thing, singing tenor is very easy for me because I do not have the stress or fatigue of navigating the stresses and pressures of the higher voice and passage notes. For another, there is a little challenge because of having sung alto for so many years, my vocal "center" finds it interesting to be placed differently, and even reading the music is a little challenging. I had not realized that I had developed an "alto alphabet" that made my reading in the alto range somewhat automatic of a response, so switching down to tenor keeps me on my toes, because it is a different set of reading, and it is less "automatic," It is almost as if reading the tenor line is like reading another language altogether, a different set of blending and listening skills are required.

Another thing is that, for me, the tenor line is completely at the service of the ensemble. There is no temptation to want to be heard above any others, and the crucial aspects of ensemble singing such as listening carefully, matching tones and blending are exercised better for me than when I am singing alto.

All-in-all, what I had considered to be somewhat of a "demotion" is turning out to be of great value to me as a musician.

Avocational Singer -- MIA

2010-04-19T17:24:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends of my blog,

Anyone paying attention may have noticed that this blog disappeared suddenly and without a word.

I am very sorry if anyone who enjoyed reading my ramblings was puzzled by this.

It's very hard to explain what happened, but I had a little "blog crisis" moment.

This whole thing may best be explained by telling a little story.

When I was in fifth grade, a weird writing incident happened which may have something to do with why I became suddenly hesitant about continuing my blog.

We were given an assignment to write a paragraph or two using a topic sentence. The teacher had provided five topic sentences to choose from, and as I sat down in the evening to approach the assignment, I found myself completely uninspired by any of the topics. I decided to choose the topic, "Why I Like Stamp Collecting." I thought that this would be quite a creative challenge and lots of fun for me because, being that I did not collect stamps at all, I would have to be extremely creative to make up what I wanted to say about it. I would have to imagine myself a stamp collector and imagine what that would feel like and write about it.

Up until this point in my life, I had been engaging in creative writing like this in order to make my homework more fun and interesting for a long time. And for a long time up to this point, I had considered my creative writing a special experience between me and my teacher. In second and third grades, when we had been given a list of ten words to use in ten sentences, for example, I amused myself by making a little story out of the ten sentences. These writing amusements of mine were for the teachers' eyes only. I do not recall any of my teachers every saying anything to me about it. They usually handed back the assignments with the grade: a 10 out of 10, or a big check-mark that indicated I had completed the assignment. So, whether the teacher was sitting there smiling as she read my little story and thinking of how clever her student was, or if she didn't even notice there was a story there at all, I really do not know. I remember being aware that I was "performing" and that there was someone, the teacher, on the receiving end of that performance, and that in some way I was providing the teacher with a little gift. A little gift to amuse her, perhaps. Although no word was ever exchanged about it, it made me feel connected to the teacher in an odd little way.

So, having been writing creatively like this for the teacher in my school assignments, this little essay about "Why I Like Stamp Collecting" in fifth grade was to me, just more of the same.

However, when I got to school the next day, the fifth grade teacher announced that we were going to read our essays aloud to the class. I began to panic, my palms getting hot and sweaty. "No!" I thought. "Had I known about this I surely would have picked another topic and written something entirely different. I would have written something much more safe."

She called on me to go first. I clammed up. I was almost crying. I told her I just could not read my paragraphs aloud.

"All right," the teacher said kindly, "someone else can go first."

After a couple of students finished reading their essays, the teacher, most likely expecting that I would be more relaxed knowing that the other students were in the same boat and had read their paragraphs, returned to me and asked me to read mine. I absolutely refused.

The entire class began to argue with me. "Mine is stupid too," they exclaimed. Pretty soon they started to become angry with me as I refused to give in. Persuasive arguments turned to jeers and even threats. One boy, a very popular and smart boy, snatched the paper out of my hands and began to read out loud in a singsong voice:

"Why .. I ... Like ... Stamp ... Collecting."

In a state of confused horror, I jumped from my desk, grabbed the paper from his hands, crumpled it into a ball and threw it out the window from the third floor of the school building.

Well, there's a lot more after that ... about how the whole class got punished and had to pay back the time we had lost arguing over my paragraphs. About how everyone thought I was so weird and glowered at me when they were doing the chores to pay back the lost class time. It is a horrible memory for me.

Something like this happened with me and my blog. It was being more and more widely read, and getting more and more hits. One day, something happened to make it real for me that someone out there was actually reading what I had to say. Just like in fifth grade, when this realization took hold, I panicked, crumpled my blog up into a wad and threw it out the window.

This time, however, unlike the lost "Why I Like Stamp Collecting" Essay, I have, after several weeks of reflection, gone down to the schoolyard, found the crumpled blog, carefully unfolded the paper and put it back up.

I have decided to try to work through this "issue" and continue with this blog.

Thank you to anyone who has been reading my scribblings and scrawling up until now. There may be some ups and downs as I work through having a "voice" in this blog of mine, and I may not be posting frequently for a while, but I've at least put what I've done so far back up for anyone to find and read.

Friday Cyberspace Recitals - Lasciatemi Morire - The Best I Can Do

2010-02-19T22:58:00.001-05:00

There's not too much to write about this week's selection from the Italian 24, "Lasciatemi morire." I decided the main point of this piece is the expression of desolation. The technical aspects were not too difficult, although the ascending line and the high note at the end is still eluding my grasp. There wasn't a big endurance issue to contend with as some of the recent pieces have presented.

So, it seemed that it would be a good week to continue to add the element of emotional expression to the mix. Without technique, the emotional expression becomes frustrated. But one has to start somewhere. Since emotional expression is married with the technique, it needs to be tended to a bit while technique is growing. Otherwise there's an imbalance later on when a singer tries to be expressive. It all has to grow up together, even when one has limitations.

I've kind of been putting aside a bit the emotional or artistic expression of the "24 songs" as I've gone along learning them week by week. I think I've explained over and over again that the purpose of this little project I've embarked upon is not to produce a finished product in a week, but to gain some basic musical and vocal skills from learning and getting them into my voice.

But sometimes the expression helps the technique along a bit, so it seemed like a good week to work on that with this song, "Lasciatemi morire." I did that by trying to get connected to the communication core in my body -- by trying to hook up that deep physical response that happens when one lets out a moan of emotion. (Frescamari's Practice Room post: "First Times Through Lasciatemi morire")

All along, I've been making about three recordings on Cyberspace Fridays, and then choosing the one that came out best. In a live presentation, a singer doesn't have the luxury of a re-take and must go with what happened in the moment. But for the purposes of posting my project -- work in progress as it is -- I have figured I could make several recordings to choose from.

This week, I made 5 files. I was having trouble choosing one. It was interesting to listen to them one after another and try to decide which one to put in Frescamari's Performance Space.

I couldn't improve much from the first time through the song to the fifth. This is an example of how we really are as good as we are on any given day. If the singer has a performance, for example, there is probably not going to be some magical experience that is suddenly going to jack a singer up to a much higher level than the singer has achieved thus far.

But as I listened to the five files, I decided to take little notes on what I heard, and that eventually grew into this little chart:

The numbers on the chart are a rough 1-5 scale based on the best I'm able to achieve right now (5) to the farthest away I can be from how well I can do right now (1) The numbers really are arbitrarily assigned in a way to just let me know where I think I'm not as good on the tapes.

I forgot to bring the music to "Lasciatemi morire" to my singing lesson this week, so I didn't get the outside help on this song that I usually plan to get when I'm learning these. I think my teacher could have helped me with the high notes and the ending a bit.

Since I left out a column for "Expression" I put little "E"s by the numbers of the files. You can see that I thought the expression was the best I could do for now in all the recordings.

In the end I selected file number 3. It seemed to have the best score. But to tell you the truth, they all sounded pretty close to the same to me.

(FYI I have posted Files 1,2, 4 and 5 in Frescamari's Practice Room in case you are interested in checking out my evaluation.)

It made me think of how hard it must be to audition singers, or ejudicate a competition. Once the musical moment passes, it can be hard to recall what one has heard. It is such a live experience. Also, comparing them by hearing them in a row is tricky. By the time one gets to file number 5, one has forgotten what's in file number 1 and has only the notes and numbers to go by.
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To hear this week's Friday Cyberspace Recital selection, click here: Lasciatemi morire!
To hear the discarded files 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Frescamari's Practice Room, click here: "The Ones I Didn't Use"

The Enchanted Pig

2010-02-13T15:04:00.001-05:00

I attended an "opera" for children last night at the New Victory Theater called The Enchanted Pig (presented by The Opera Group/ROH2 at the Royal Opera House/Young Vic) It was a wonderful, symbolic, whimsical expression of the story of a princess and her quest for real love.When I woke up this morning, however, I realized that I had inadvertently been exposed to a tale that can also serve to illuminate the quest of a singer to find her real voice.

In the story, a young princess finds herself in the fatalistic and nightmarish circumstance of having to be wed to a smelly pig. The story proceeds as one might predict. He takes her back to his palace and makes her wallow in the mud and even give him a reluctant kiss. After her despair settles down some, she manages to notice the pig's eyes and how beautiful they are. She sees something in them and wonders how she could not have noticed it before Then, at night, in the moonlight, he transforms to a King, a prospect of a husband she can much better deal with.

However, in the daytime, her King transforms back into The Pig. He tells her to have love, trust, and patience, and that this love, trust and patience is key to breaking the spell over him, and helping him remain the King who has visited her in the night.

The princess, however, does not have patience. She wants to find a way to speed the process. She wants to help him transform sooner back into his true self. She wants to find a power greater than love that can change him back. She wants to find a power greater than trust to help him transform. She wants to find a power greater than patience.

An old woman, who is of course really a witch, sees this impatience and banks on it. She tells the princess she has a powerful spell which can change the pig back into a man faster, a magical cord that she can tie around him when he is the King at night. This is a trick, of course, and the cord serves to bind the princess's husband and make him the possession of the witch, who takes him away from the princess's sight.

"If only you had trusted and had patience," exclaims her husband, "If you had stayed with me three full nights, the spell would have been completely broken."

Now, he tells her that she will see him again, but she must wear out three pairs of iron shoes searching the entire world for him. Because she had failed to believe in the power of love, patience, and trust, her task was going to be much more difficult now.

The reason I think this can serve as an allegory of the quest of a singer is because the powers of love, patience, and trust are the ones that will develop the voice to the higher and masterful stages of singing. When we try to rush or force the process, or find some speedier way, there is a potential to mess up our voices, and then we end up in vocal trouble, never having achieved our goal, and having to begin all over again -- this time with the greater task of undoing the damage we have done by forcing things too soon.

I see the unrefined voice that we start out with as "The Pig." We want it to sound nicer, but it may need to "wallow in the mud" to discover itself. The princess in the story is surprised that wallowing in the mud had been more enjoyable than she had expected it to be. For me, wallowing in the mud with one's voice is just allowing one's self to experience the pure essence of the sound one can make. To play around with it and discover it in the playground of pure phonation itself. Stretch it and mush it and just see what it can do.

Looking into the eyes of "The Pig" and seeing something there, something beautiful, is like being sensitive to the core sound a person can make. I believe that all voice teachers should have the ability to look into the eyes of "the pig" and recognize beauty there. Not mere potential. But the beauty of what truly IS there. When I listen to a singer, I strip away, in my mind, faulty technique, lack of development and strength, even lack of pitch or musicality, and I hear that core sound. That is why sometimes I think an unrefined voice is beautiful and my husband -- or whomever friend is with me -- will puzzle over what it is I am hearing when I remark what a beautiful voice the singer has. I am hearing the quality of the sound that the person possess on the most fundamental of levels. This is why I love to listen to avocational singers. Maybe I am destined to teach someday.

As a singer enters into the relationship of cultivating the voice, the voice may appear in moments like the "King" that it really is. When these developmental moments occur, the singer is given a glimpse of what will be possible. But these moments, in the beginning last a short time. The singer may try to grasp at these moments and make them stay, only to have them slip through the fingers.

I had such a moment this morning. I opened my mouth to sing and the fruit of some of the work I've been doing made itself apparent to me. It took me by surprise, and was a delight. My first impulse was to "capitalize" on this, pounce on it and run away with it. I wanted to take that glimpse of beauty and extend it, make it more than it was. I was so taken by the gain, that I was greedy and wanted more. Can I make this more beautiful right now? Can I have the next stage as well? Can I make it come today? But past experience with this -- and the message of patience from the Enchanted Pig story still swirling through my mind -- made me realize that I had to proceed with care and just enjoy the new gains to the extent that they will allow for this day.

The witch, offering a better and faster way to free the "King," is like some secret vocal method or tricks that are going to give you the "secret" faster. A singer may fall for this. A singer may not be willing to wait, or have despaired of waiting, or lost faith in waiting, and try to force the transformation. Sometimes this can lead to the devastating situation of having developed improperly and therefore have limits and issues and problems with the voice that imprison it, just as the princess's King was imprisoned.

To free the voice once it has become a captive, a slave to these imbalances and problems, the journey might then become something like walking with the iron shoes around the world. It can be done and, if undertaken, this journey may even end, as it does in the story, with a deeper and happier knowledge of the nature of things than if the princess had not taken this misstep. What she learns about love and patience and trust in the end brings her a deeper version of love than she imagined or guessed at when she began her story.

Below is a youtube preview of The Enchanted Pig. There is still time to go see it. Although an excellent vehicle to introduce children to this kind of sung story, don't think you have to have a child in order to go and enjoy it. There is much in this production that can satisfy the soul of an adult as well, humor and allusions to things about love that an adult will enjoy and appreciate.

Friday Cyberspace Recitals - Alma del core - or What is Meant By a Learning Plateau?

2010-02-12T15:12:00.001-05:00

When I first set out on this project to acquaint myself with all 24 of the Italian Songs and Arias in my student songbook, I expected that along the way I would encounter, develop and practice -- once and for all, I hoped -- the various basic skills I needed to have in place to be able to sing proficiently. Little basic skills that all singers need.

In addition, I hoped that by using the version of the book that was in a little higher key and that had a higher tessitura than was comfortable for me (the book for "medium-high" voice), I might over the weeks gain more strength, ability, and ease in this new area of my voice. ("Challenging Vocal Comfort Levels")

I was surprised at the rapid gains I encountered in the first weeks of the project. It seemed that each week built happily upon another and I was on my way to great improvement.

But this week, what appeared to be a snag in the forward momentum presented itself to me. It did not become easier this week to sing the next song, "Alma del core," in this new tessitura. It felt the same -- as difficult and labored as it ever had been -- to sing in this range, and it seemed as if my progress had come to a standstill. It seemed as if I had reached some kind of plateau.

What, no more improvement this week? Panic started to set in. Maybe it wasn't just no improvement this week, but no improvement now forever!!! Whatever shall I do? My plan was to develop mastery and expertise. My dream is to develop top efficiency! Is this going to be it -- all I will be able to accomplish?

So dramatic.

This would, perhaps, be the way many people might react to coming up against a learning plateau.

I told my voice teacher that I didn't think the files in Frescamari's Practice Room would be as interesting or fun, since they would now start sounding the same and show less progress than the ones had up until now.

My teacher respectfully disagreed that the files would not be interesting. She told me that I had come to a new place in my voice and that this would be a time of settling in to that new place.

I decided to hunt around and see if I could dig up any information about the pattern of learning a skill. I recalled a conversation I once had with my sister, the golf-pro. She told me that she could bring anyone from being an almost non-golfer to about a 10 handicap, but the progress after that -- the progress from that level of skill to becoming a master of the skill -- was a much more difficult task, and the gains being achieved from there-on-in were much smaller and more subtle.

So, with this in mind, I went on a hunt, and came up with just the exact article on the subject I needed: Increasing Human Efficiency in Business: The Rate of Improvement of Efficiency by Walter Dill Scott.

In the article I read about what happens when a person trying to develop a skill reaches a plateau. It seems that in the beginning days of acquiring a new skill, rapid initial progress is made -- often astounding progress. These periods of improvement are followed by stages of stagnation or retrogression called "plateaus." Not only that, these "plateaus" were a necessary part of the learning process, and played an important role in the assimilation of smaller skills up to that point of progress.

What happens is that after all easy improvements have been made, and at the point where problems outside the experience of the learner presents themselves, the plateau will be encountered.

A plateau is a period of "incubation" where new habits under formation may have time to develop. This reminds me of what my voice teacher said about a "settling-in" time. According to Mr. Scott's Efficiency article

"Time must be taken out to allow the formation of a habit or the organization of this new knowledge or skill"

The writer uses a beautiful example from nature to demonstrate this process of rapid growth followed by a plateau:

"All trees and plants have periods of growth followed by periods of little or no growth. In May and June the leaves and branches shoot forth very repidly, but the new growth is pulpy and tender. During succeeding days or months, these tender shoots are filled in and developed. In learning and in habit formation a similar sequence is lived through. We have days of swift advancement followed by days in which the new stage or method of thinking and acting takes time to become organized and solidified. The nervous system has to adjust itself to the new demands, and such adjusting requires time."

Although it is true that each individual will arrive at some time to his/her personal peak or maximum efficiency, it is important to realize that one has not yet necessarily reached that personal peak just because a plateau has been encountered. A certain amount of trust, faith, and patience should be mustered up to continue, even if it appears no further progress is being made for the moment.

I think it is very important and comforting for someone working to master a skill to reflect on these concepts, and learn about the psychology of acquiring skill. After the initial period of enthusiasm for the project wears off and the novelty is gone and all easy improvements have been made, the learner must find ways to keep going. Knowing that one has not necessarily reached the end of one's ability to improve when one hits a plateau can be part of keeping on track. The reward for staying the course will be the acquisition of automatic skill and efficiency.
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Click here to listen to this week's selection from 24 Italian Songs and Arias: "Alma del core"

Who Does an Avocational Singer Sing For?

2010-02-11T12:55:00.001-05:00

In the classical singer message forum I have mentioned on this blog, The New Forum for Classical Singers, a poster asked the question, of aspiring professional singers:

"Who do you perform for?"

I did not participate in this particular message thread because I am not a professional, but the question spurred many reflections about my own singing.

Sometimes I feel that avocational singers are like these flowers growing on the other side of the mountain out in the wilderness somewhere. They aren't in the mainstream view. They are singing in their living rooms, and in their local choirs. They are getting little solos here and there.

As an avocational singer, I want to say that there are fewer performance moments than there would be for singers who are pursuing this professionally, but this is not necessarily so, depending on one's circumstances and path. I have observed some avocational singers who seem like they are almost semi-professional. There are many varied levels and degrees of being an avocational singer, and many decisions one can make about how aggressively one is going to pursue performance venues. I guess I am thinking about avocational singers at a level such as my own.

For me there is always the fantasy. The living room fantasy. As an avocational singer there are many times that I am singing for "them." No, this isn't some kind of psychotic thing where I am schizophrenic and seeing the "people" in my living room. But there is a sense of that imaginary audience at times.

Now that I have decided to open up my practice room and extend it to the Internet, I have a greater sense of "them." Even if no one is listening.

I have become fascinated by this youtube video I have found of Leonie Rysanek at a 25th anniversary performance at the Met. In the video, they show a scene of a huge crowd engaged in prolonged applause and they are throwing flowers on the stage that are hitting her in the head and there is an outpouring of love and affection.

As an avocational singer, such a moment as a response to one's singing seems almost incomprehensible. The very few times I have sung solo in public, there has been some applause. A couple of compliments afterwards. Sometimes the choir has gone through the formality of purchasing a flower bouquet to hand to the soloist, but certainly the audience members did not stop to buy flowers that they could throw at the end. There is something about singing, and singing at the top levels, that induces people to get all excited about it and actually come prepared with flowers to throw.

I am not seeking that kind of experience as a singer. In fact, I often think that one reason I remain an avocational singer is because I actually enjoy the work that goes into getting a piece of music from ground-zero to performance-ready better than I like the actual performance. Performances are pretty nerve-wracking. Plus performances pass so swiftly and then they are over. And additionally, performances open the singer up to the potential of criticism. But the work behind constructing a piece of art is extended much further into time and space, and the various levels of seeing it come together are so fulfilling and gratifying.

At this point in time, however, I have decided that I am mainly performing for myself. Maybe when I was young teenager I would have day-dreamed of some kind of public appreciation of the sort in the Leonie Rysanek video above, but over the years, learning and reflecting on what life was really about, ongoing soul-searching and making decisions about my personal philosophies of life, I was able to dig inside and find the core of that love of singing that does not necessarily depend on whether anyone hears or appreciates it or not. And one must not forget that the level of expertise one has been able to accomplish plays a big role in determining these decisions as well.

And yet, there does remain some kind of need for a singer to be heard in some way or another. Singing makes a noise. It comes from the communication center of the body, and that communication seems to imply a listener. Sound waves go out, ear drums are designed to receive them and the body of the listener is designed to process them.

So, I think that it is for myself and that hypothetical listener that I sing.

It seems that electronic technology, the Internet, and youtube have given the avocational singer a plethora of tools to seek out that hypothetical listener.

When I go out for listening jaunts on youtube, I have become interested in these "flowers" that grow on the other side of the mountain, these avocational singers. I have been taking a little time to listen and pay attention to what they have put up there on the Internet. I am lending myself to be their audience. They are avocational singer kindred souls.

As I've been browsing around, I have found a "passionate hobbyist" singer who produces youtube videos in his garage. Many of his songs are from the 24 Italian Songs and Arias.

Here he is singing, in countertenor style, the piece I am working on this week, "Alma del core"

I just love this guy. I should write to him. Why is he singing in his garage? Is it because the acoustics are good there?

There are so many other passionate hobbyists out there who demonstrate that intense need to produce a finished song, even when it is just a hobby. Sometimes I admire just the purity of their phonation. They have not developed into full classical singers for one reason or another, but I love just listening to the potential in voices. This girl is an example:

There are many who make fun of amateurs who post their singing in public forums like this, but I think the Internet is a great extension of the amateur's hobby. It fills that little missing gap, the one seeks out that hypothetical listener, and can be a great extension of one's passion, fulfilling that need to perform in some way.

Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid as Voice Teacher

2010-02-10T13:47:00.002-05:00

"Repetition is the mother of all skills," my Kung Fu sifu often says to us.

My voice teacher has recently assigned me some vocal exercises to practice. This morning, it dawned on me that the vocal exercises like these were accomplishing a purpose for me in singing similar to muscular tasks assigned to the young karate student in the movie The Karate Kid.

By practicing a trio of exercises using the [ni] and [ia] positions back and forth, I am training the articulatory muscles to adeptly move in a certain pattern. This motion and pattern of the tongue and other articulators will become more automatic as I practice the exercises and then will be available to me when I sing a song.

This is something like what happened in the the Karate Kid movie. Mr. Miyagi, the mysterious teacher, assigns the kid, Daniel, these chores that cause him to move his muscles a certain way.

For those who have not seen the movie, here are some of the chores:

"Wax On - Wax Off"

"Sand the Floor"

and
"Paint the Fence"

These exercises develop the muscles that Daniel will need to use when he learns karate.

I feel that the exercises (chores) my teacher assigns me work in the same way. They are not vowels and consonants, but muscular actions that are being trained and strengthened. And it is not just the muscles of articulation being trained, but also the vocal muscles that are changing the pitches as well, and the breathing muscles that are controlling the airflow.

In the movie, the boy Daniel, after becoming a bit impatient with all these "chores," wants to know when he's going to be able to do karate. This is like the singer who is anxious to sing the arias.

In the famous scene from the movie, Mr. Miyagi reveals what has been happening while the boy has been performing the chores. He shows how the muscles have learned something, become strong, and can automatically respond to the tasks of karate based on what they have "learned" during the tedious repetition of the exercises:

The other day, I was listening to Met Radio in my car and heard a song that I responded to. For some reason, I felt like I could sing the song. I believe that my body responded to the song because it recognized some of the same actions it had been practicing in the trio of exercises from my teacher. I have explained this a little more in Frescamari's Practice Room where I have posted the trio of exercises and shown how I was able to apply them to the song. Like Mr. Miyagi applying the muscular "knowledge" learned from repeating the chores to the karate form, I was able to apply the muscular "knowledge" learned from practicing the exercises from my lesson to the form of the song, "Deh vieni."

One last thing I want to add. I am the type of student who did not question my teachers years ago. In the present I have become an advocate of questioning and understanding why exercises are being assigned. Years ago, I was a student like Daniel, doing what was asked of me, but never really knowing why I was being asked to do things, nor understanding where I might be headed. I trusted that the teacher had the knowledge and that I was headed somewhere fantastic.

If the teacher had been like the fictional Mr. Miyagi, maybe there is a point in blindly obeying without questioning. It seemed to work out well for Daniel in the movie.

So, I have mixed feelings about the trust issue with teachers. I believe in questioning in order to understand better, but sometimes the questions have to stop and the student has to just "do" and "repeat" because they are gaining something that will be understood by experience, and the questions are getting in the way of proceeding and having that experience. In the ideal situation, where the teacher really really knows what he/she is doing, the non-questioning style could work.

There is not a simple answer. Judgment and discernment are required, and sometimes young people (or many people of any age) are lacking in experience with this ability to discern when to ask and when to shut up and "do."
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To listen to the set of three exercises and hear them applied to "Deh vieni" click here:
"Set of 3 [ni]-[ia] Exercises Applied to "Deh Vieni"
Link to film mentioned in this blog post: The Karate Kid (Special Edition)

Friday Cyberspace Recital - Nina - and Learning to Make a Style Sheet

2010-02-05T13:17:00.002-05:00

I have sitting on my lap here a book I'm very interested in called Song: A Guide to Art Song Style and Literature, by Carol Kimball. I had no idea what I would find inside this book, but something that is right in the beginning is of great interest to me and I am excited to begin learning about it. The book is introducing me to information about "Style." The author starts everything off with a discussion of the components of style, and then there is a section that shows a singer how she can make a "style sheet" for a song she is studying.

(By the way, I choose the pronoun "she" often when talking about "a singer" because I think typing "he/she" is cumbersome, and so I have chosen my own self, a female, as the model every-singer, and thus use "she." Once in a while I'll throw a "he" in there for variety, and when it is not cumbersome, I will use "he/she")

Excited by this new idea of making a style sheet, I had a grand and ambitious plan for today's Friday Cyberspace Recital. I would study the chapters in the book Song, then apply my new knowledge about style toward making a style sheet for this week's selected Italian Song, "Nina."

Well, it took me a great deal of time to only begin to learn about one of the first components of style discussed in the book: MELODY. There was so much information packed in just a few short paragraphs, that it took me a while to digest what I was reading.

So, it appears that the study of style is going to take more than a morning! (Hmmm, why couldn't I foresee that?) I really didn't expect to learn everything about style in one morning, I hope you realize. In fact I didn't even think I was going to learn everything about style from just a few paragraphs in one little book from one little person.

However, I thought I would get an overview that might get me started, and I would be able to make a rough draft of what a style sheet might look like.

What I have discovered this morning is that I have some knowledge of style already, but I didn't know it. There have been "things" I've been noticing about music all along as I've studied songs. I might not have been able to articulate these "things," but I observe and am aware of all kinds of "things." I sometimes don't see "things" right off the bat, but little traits and characteristics and components of style have been there, revealing themselves to me, making themselves known to me just by their mere presence. I just didn't have names for them.

What I have lacked is clear conscious definition of these little musical "things." What I have lacked is vocabulary and language -- vocabulary and language in which to speak about style.

This book, Song, in its opening paragraphs about the components of MELODY, is giving me some basic vocabulary with which to start off. This morning, taking out of the paragraphs of the book, I wrote out a melody vocabulary list for myself, words I can now use to explain the musical "thingies" that I see and hear.

I made it into a little picture to make it more interesting than just a boring list.

Just like I was talking about the language of vocal science yesterday, studying a vocabulary of style will help me analyze my songs better, helping me to understand what is important, which will then guide my choices. (As my singing technique develops, I will have more expressive choices!)

Since it has taken me so long this morning only to just begin to grasp the idea of the components of melody, I have decided to begin my style sheet for "Nina" with solely the "Melody" part filled out. What I have done is grabbed a few of these vocabulary words and tried to use some of them to describe the melody of Nina.

Please remember that even though I am a middle-aged woman, my music level is like that of a young music student who doesn't know too much and is taking a class at school and learning about all this cool music stuff. My first attempt to try to describe the melodic style may be very immature. On top of it, I am "homeschooling" and have no professor to look over my work.

Still, I place it here as an example of how much we can still attempt to learn on our own, even without formal schooling.

To go along with this, I have posted "Nina" in Frescamari's Performance Space. I was worried, due to the issue of stamina, that this was going to be the first week that I would have to put one of the 24 songs up in two halves. However, even in just this week and a half, my stamina for this song has improved enough that I was able to post it all in one piece.

For next week, I've gotten a head start on "Alma del core" Maybe I will be able to go further in a style sheet for that song by next week.
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To hear this week's selection of the 24 in 24 project, click here: "Nina"
To hear beginning work on next week's selection, click here: "Alma del core"
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Bonus: Is "Nina" like "Lazy Mary?" Italian, but from a different time period and a very different STYLE? I'm a little bit afraid that poor Nina might be dead, but in case she's just lazy, here's her friend, Lazy Mary (have to listen to two verses to get to the "Lazy Mary" verse:

The Language of Vocal Pedagogy -- or - Why is it so Hard to Talk About Singing?

2010-02-04T13:41:00.001-05:00

It has been really hard for me to figure out exactly what direction I wanted to take with this post. In the end, what I want to talk about is a little complex, so this may end up being a long post.

At first, I thought I might give my opinions of the book Head First: The Language of the Head Voice: A Concise Study of Learning to Sing in the Head Voice by Denes Striny. But that was proving to be a bit difficult for reasons I'll explain below. So next I thought maybe I would like to talk about what is meant by "head voice" and "chest voice." However, for some of the same reasons I was finding it difficult to talk about the Head First book, I changed my mind again and decided that maybe it would be better write about how hard it is to talk about singing because of how vague the language can be, and how studying vocal science might help us come up with more objective descriptions of what is happening so we can communicate better about it. Still, another thought was to lay Mr. Striny's book alongside another one I have been reading, Resonance in Singing: Voice Building through Acoustic Feedback, by Donald Gray Miller, PhD, and compare the different ways in which each author uses language to express pedagogical concepts.

In the end, I have settled on writing something about how hard it is to understand what different people are saying about voice, for different reasons.

Giving an opinion of Mr. Striny's book has proved to be a much more difficult and complex task than I ever thought it would be. One of the reasons it was hard for me was because I wasn't sure I understood exactly what he was talking about, nor -- even after reading the entire book -- exactly what he meant by the term "head voice." In order to be fair, before I could give my opinion, I felt I owed it to the author to work hard to really understand what he was truly trying to say. Since it wasn't clear to me what he was trying to say the first time I read the book, I decided to read it a second time -- this time studying it slowly and carefully -- making a full effort to figure out what he meant when he used certain terms and tried to describe different vocal experiences.

After the second reading, it still wasn't 100% clear to me what he meant by "head voice," even though the appealing title of the book seemed to promise that this was going to be explained to me.

Next, at the recommendation of a singer on the New Forum for Classical Singing (NFCS) message board, I purchased a book, Resonance in Singing, by Donald Gray Miller, PhD, and thought that this book might help me decipher and explain the experiences Mr. Striny was trying to describe in his book. Perhaps if I knew a little more about the physiological reality behind the singing concepts he was trying to describe, I could match up Mr. Striny's language with the science.

Well, reading Mr. Miller's book and figuring out what he was talking about was as difficult and complex as Mr. Striny's but for very different reasons. I will have to study Mr. Miller's book slowly and carefully as well, in order to understand what he means.

These two different books represent two very different approaches to talk about singing. One approach is to make up a language in which to describe the experience of singing and what it feels like. The other approach is to understand the science behind what is happening and describe with accurate language objective observations about singing.

It is obvious that Mr. Striny has had revelatory personal vocal experiences that have led to his being able to sing in a way that is giving him much joy. It is clear that he is very excited about this and would like to share his revelations with other singers so that they also, may have this joy. The problem is that he does not exactly have a language with which to speak of these experiences, so he kind of makes up his own way of describing what he knows. To a certain extent, this works, but in other ways it can be confusing if you can't figure out exactly what he means.

Mr. Miller comes from the angle of using technological equipment to measure and study the properties of voices that are producing this wonderful sound we love. The patterns of the harmonics are broken down and measured with equipment that can graph what is happening and be studied. EGGs measure the resistance in the vocal muscles to give objective information about what is happening during phonation. This information and these measurements can help the singer understand how a better sound can be produced. Terminology is defined and given more precise meaning, pointing to measurable muscular and acoustic actualities.

Yet, whichever terminology is used, the singer who wants to learn to sing better is still left in a state of confusion and still left to wondering: "How?"

Both Striny and Miller preface their books with admissions of this difficulty.

Miller says that singing is "a complex coordination that words cannot adequately capture, even for the simplest manifestation of voice."

Striny says, "In discussing this topic, we have a terminology problem. The words mean different things to people who have not had the experience."

Miller says: "key concepts of singers' language ... do not capture a widely shared experience, but rather comprise a set of privately understood terms for processes that are felt to be important, even crucial, but which refuse to be laid out for all to see."

Striny says that when singers finally find their "Total Vocal Potential" they will "own it ... understand it .. but unfortunately, they will not be able to converse on any real level with others who do not sing in this way."

However, whereas Striny does not seem to think there is a need to study the phenomena behind these vocal experiences, Miller advocates using the science of what is occurring to help make clear what these terms really mean. While Striny gropes for a language in which to describe his discoveries, Miller makes an effort to specifically define terms and recommends the vocal community come together and make an effort to clarify what the pedagogical words point to physiologically.

There are so many vocal terms that cause confusion, such as "appoggio," "cover," "placement," "open throat," etc, but because I purchased Striny's book in the hopes of understanding merely one term, "head voice" more deeply, I will mostly stick to that term, along with the corresponding "chest voice" and "registers" to explore why these terms are confusing. It took me a few hours to gather quotes and compare a little from these two books. To speak on a broad scope and in depth, as opposed to giving a bit of a sample, would be extremely time consuming and end up being a dissertation of sorts.

So, from my point of view, Denes Striny is an example of someone who comes from the experience of voice. He mentions in his book that he thinks the attempts to understand the science behind how the voice works has harmed people's ability to learn how to sing. So, he prefers not to try to explain the phenomena behind the experience that he calls "head voice" in his book.

Mr. Striny, the one I say comes from the realm of personal experience, as opposed to objective science, decides to use the word "texture" to describe the experience of "head voice" and "chest voice." He says that there are two different vocal "textures" that can be felt, and that one of these "textures" is more suited to opera singing. He uses the word "texture" over and over again, as if he is, indeed, groping for a word to describe what he wants to say. Perhaps by repeating this word enough he thought it might just cause the reader to catch on to what he was trying to say about these two different modes in the singing voice.

Mr. Miller, on the other hand, describes "head voice" and "chest voice" as two different "modes of vibration" of the vocal cords, and by describing what is happening physically when producing each. "Chest voice" is produced by vibrating thicker, shorter cords in deep contact with each other, and "head voice" is produced by vibrating longer, thinner cords that are in shallower contact with each other.

What Mr. Striny might call "Texture A and Texture B," Miller might call "Vibratory Mode A or Vibratory Mode B"

Whichever language and description a singer reads, they still don't know how to do it after reading the language. As a beginning singer I had always been aware of two different sensations I could feel when singing -- a heavier kind of strong feeling and sound I had when I sang low notes, and a lighter, breathy, weaker feeling I had when when I sang high. If I had read Mr. Striny's book when I was young, I might have nodded my head when he presented the idea of two different "textures" based on my experience and figured out what he was talking about and started calling my strong low voice my "chest" voice and my higher, weaker voice my "head voice." On the other hand, I might have gotten confused and thought he was talking about some experience altogether different than the one I had and one I must strive yet to discover. It wouldn't be completely clear.

But if I had read Mr. Miller's book, I might have said, "Oh, that's what's happening when I feel those two different feelings. My cords are thicker and shorter and touching in more places when I sing low, and they are longer and thinner and making less surface contact when I sing higher." Or, I might have said to myself, "I'm not sure I'm doing that. How can I tell the difference between the two modes of vibration? What do they feel like?" Still confused.

Throughout Mr. Striny's book, Head First, I wondered if he was talking about this vibratory pattern of the vocal cords when he spoke of "head voice."

Yet, in other places in the book he talks about the "language of the head voice" and how certain vowels were part of the "language of the head voice" and I then think maybe he's not discussing phonation at all, but describing, rather, the acoustic properties of the head voice.

In the Miller book, Resonance in Singing, these phenomena are described in such language as "formant tuning," and "harmonics," and "tracking."

So, is Mr. Striny talking about formant tuning when he talks about "head voice." Or is it both?

I personally prefer the more scientific explanations. It bothers me to have someone make up a word to describe what is happening. I would like to know exactly what is happening. What does "texture" mean??? But this may be a matter of temperament. I have read very good reviews of Mr. Striny's book on Amazon.com and in those reviews the singers claim to be singing much better from having read his book. Perhaps these singers are of another temperament than mine.

In my all time favorite (so far) vocal book, Discover Your Voice, by Oren Brown, he includes a chapter with the science in it for "the kind of teacher and student who want to have scientific explanation." I feel very validated that he acknowledges that there is this kind of person, and that it's not "wrong" to want to know what is happening physically when people use ambiguous vocal language.

I wanted to dismiss Denes Striny's book after the first reading because it didn't use the language that I am trying to become conversant with, the language of science. But later -- and this is due to the fact that I am studying with a voice teacher who uses a lot of her own personal language to get these concepts across to me and it is working well -- I thought again that perhaps there is a need for a person to stand between the two worlds of scientific terminology and experiential terminology and find a way to bridge the gap. When she says "zip up the cords" does she mean "medial compression?" Or something else? Is it worth the effort to try to figure out what it all means?

It takes a lot of time and effort, to study and learn what is happening physically when we sing. To bother to take the time to study these things is a lot of work. Learning to sing is enough work as it is, especially when you are an avocational singer, picking up tidbits of it here and there as you can squeeze in between tasks of taking care of a family. And yet, doing the work of learning some objective language to describe singing can help the whole vocal world be able to talk about it with each other by defining terms everyone can understand. Learning a new language does take time and effort, but it can bring people to more of an agreement about what is healthy, and perhaps aid in developing some great voices for us all to hear.

Singing With an Orchestra Running Barefoot

2010-01-31T02:09:00.000-05:00

In my strange Avocational Singer mind, there is a connection between singing with an orchestra and running barefoot.

You've seen me make connections between singing and other subjects, and this one may seem like a stretch, but if your mind operated by the same sort of unusual logic that mine does, you would be able to make a connection between singing with an orchestra and running barefoot too.

Here's how my logic has connected the two:

I would love to sing with an orchestra some day. It has always been a fantasy of mine. I came close to that experience a few years ago when I sang the Pergolesi Stabat Mater with Cantigas Women's Choir. We had a little "orchestra" for that: A couple of violins, a double bass cello, an organ, and maybe a couple of other instruments. It was modest, but it was enough for me to get the feel of what a wonderful experience it was to sing with an instrumental ensemble. I have never forgotten how wonderful it was to have that experience, and, of course, I would hope to have it again.

I also wrote about my fantasy of this in a post a while back "Anatomy of a Dream."

If I was a young singer in my early 20s, to have a dream to sing something with an orchestra would seem like a reasonably attainable goal, something that might be accomplished without too much struggle. However, to have this as a goal for myself, at age 48, seems a more formidable task. Especially to have this as a goal at age 48 without having quite yet learned how to sing -- one little detail that seems a bit important to the quest -- well, that does seem to make it seem all the more out of reach.

Nevertheless, not believing that one should rule out possibilities, no matter what the obstacle may appear, I still carry a hope within my heart that I may accomplish this fantasy in some way or another.

Now, here's where I had to stop and take stock and figure out what need to happen in order for me to be able to sing with an orchestra. Here's where I had to look at strengths, limitations, realities, and come up with a plan.

First things first, of course, I would definitely need to be able to sing. I have not given up hope of finally figuring my voice out, even at this late stage of the game. So, lessons are a must, and an absolute dedication to daily training is a must. I cannot predict what success will come of that, but it seems to be heading in the right direction and I can only hope for the best as far as developing a voice with a good technique that can even be heard while singing with an orchestra.

But another thing I decided would be of great advantage was some sort of "fountain of youth." Yes, a "fountain of youth" would come in very handy indeed. You see, in order to avail myself of any opportunity to sing something with an orchestra, I might find myself in the position of having to compete for a spot with someone youthful, and youth could edge me out of any such opportunity. Unless I should come by a fortune from which I could hire myself an orchestra, it seems desirable to find some way to stem the tide of my own aging as I wait for my vocal technique to establish itself.

I looked around, and the closest I could come to finding a "fountain of youth" was exercise. An athletic opera singer friend of mine, Robin Flynn ("The Athletic Perfomer") just referred me today to an article in the New York Times on "How Exercising Keeps Our Cells Young", so incorporating an exercise plan seems like a reasonable move for a singer concerned with her age to include in her training regimen.

I was already working at Kung Fu, but I felt that I needed something aerobic. They say that if you are going to stick with an exercise program, you'll have more success if you find something you love to do.

Well, I've mentioned here that I love to run, so, after many many years of intending to get back to running, I had decided during this past year to begin again. To help myself along, I signed up for a 1/2 marathon. As I embarked on my 1/2 marathon training plan, I seemed to be well on my way to stemming the detrimental effects of aging, and keeping some of these effects somewhat at bay.

But a villain arrived on the scene -- the villain of an injury that has blocked me from my fountain -- plantar fasciitis. I was unable to complete my training for the 1/2 marathon, and am now in the process of healing this injury so that I can begin anew.

In my quest to find a way to heal my injury, I have stumbled upon information about running barefoot. (A favorite new blog: Running Barefoot) The people that run barefoot claim that our running injuries increased when we put on fancy running shoes that immobilize our feet. The theory makes sense to me that by putting on these running shoes, we deprived ourselves of the sensory nerve feedback from our bare feet, which is necessary in order to learn how to run with a form that protects us from injury.

I have read anecdotes of people using barefoot running to recover from plantar fasciitis, or at least find a way of running that prevents the injury from coming bak. I am dying to try this out. And I have made a resolution that I will give barefoot running a try soon.

So, to put it all together: I've decided that I really want to try barefoot running, so that I can begin training again for next year's race, so that I may preserve some aspects of youth, so that I may one day compete for a spot to sing with some orchestra somewhere in the future of my life.

That is really nutty logic, and some of the assumptions I've got in the train of thought have just got to be faulty, especially since there is no limit to what possibilities exist, and it can't predicted how or why or where I might have an opportunity to sing with an orchestra.

I mean, after all, isn't it hard enough just to learn to sing, without adding all these extra burdens?

But today, I think I may have found a way, finally, to have the experience of singing with an orchestra. I have discovered opera and oratorio karaoke! I have been having a blast downloading a few files from the itunes store today, and singing with real orchestral accompaniments.

I have been deeply moved by the experience of singing with these accompaniments. I am thinking that this may just satisfy my need to sing with an orchestra after all. Or at least, should I never arrive at an opportunity to sing with live instruments, I have something to cut the edge off any kind of disappointment about not being able to do this. It may just be the next best thing.

I still plan, as soon as my foot is a little better, to try out all the barefoot running stuff. But maybe not in order to have a "fountain of youth" after all, but just because I love running and the stuff I read about barefoot running is appealing to me. No pressure. Let singing be singing, and running be running.

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Visit Frescamari's Practice Room to hear me singing some Opera Karaoke: "On a New Karaoke Kick: "Stride la vampa" -- "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix" -- and "Voi che sapete"

Friday Cyberspace Recital -- More Than I Could Have Hoped For

2010-01-29T14:31:00.001-05:00

Little did I know -- when I impulsively thought up the idea of this singing project for myself of learning 24 Italian Songs and Arias in 24 Weeks -- how deeply involved I would become in this project and what a source of learning, development, and joy it was about to bring to my life.

I had no idea -- I simply had no idea how musically enriched I would become by exploring these songs. I had no idea how much it would develop my singing, what would happen to my pronunciation of the Italian language, or even something like how my flipped and rolled [r]s would improve. I had no idea how musical phrases would begin to tell me things that I had not known about music before. It's almost as if my voice has been waiting for me to do this, so it could reveal it's secrets to me. Each day, as I take up the song and find progress on it, I am amazed. My voice is almost like a child who says, "Watch me, mother! I couldn't do this yesterday, but look at me today!! See, I grew a little stronger and taller over night, and I figured it out and now I can do it! Look at me!"

Nowadays, when my eyes fall upon my Italian songbook, I feel the way a golfer might feel when he lays eyes on his set of clubs propped against the wall in the garage, or a runner feels when she spies her running shoes lying on the mat by the back door, or a chef feels when he approaches his block of sharp and shiny stainless steel knives on the counter. When I pick the book up, or put it into my lesson bag, I have a sense of love and respect for what is contained within.

This week's lesson is about how much less time I need to pick up a song and learn it. In fact, things were moving along so well on "Non posso disperar" by the time I brought it to my lesson on Tuesday that my voice teacher suggested I start on the next song as well, "Nina." So, I am well into learning that song, slated for next Friday, and will probably start another one over the weekend. I am getting ahead of myself. That is really exciting!

I am finally healed from the ravages of that head cold I had a couple of weeks back. It is great to have the voice back and return to its continued development. I am very happy that I seem to have been able to resume progress right where I left off before catching the head cold. In fact, it seems like progress was made even during the cold, so I think it was worth the bit of practicing I did while conditions were less than ideal.

My Cs, Ds, and E5s are feeling much more effortless, and I am beginning to find release and space for my F and G5s. In "Non posso disperar" I had to reach up and just lightly touch G5, but in "Nina" I have to sustain G5. Two different tasks, and I am grateful to have a smart voice teacher who knows that one task best came before the other.
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Click here to be transported to Frescamari's Performance Space and listen to this week's offering from the 24 Italian Songs and Arias: "Non posso disperar."
Clck here to listen to work on "Nina"

Friday Cyberspace Recital -- Do You Have Something to Say?

2010-01-22T13:54:00.004-05:00

I have been considering a question over and over again for the past couple of weeks, and it seems as if it is cropping up everywhere: Do I have something to say? Do I have something to say to the world?

Not only that, do I have something to say with my singing? Am I holding back my emotional truth for when my technique is good enough to finally say something? Do I need to wait to say something, or can I begin to start saying something now, even when the singing is flawed, even when the dream of what I would like to say does not match the reality of what comes out?

As I write this blog, and read books and articles about how to develop my writing abilities, the topic of whether I have anything to say, what I will choose to say, and how I will say it is very frequently on my mind. So it seems obvious that a writer has to think about what he or she might want to say.

But does a singer have to think about what he or she might want to say?

The judges of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions seems to think this is important. In a television documentary about this event, The Audition, which I watched on PBS recently, one of the judges tells us that this is something they look for in a singer -- someone who has something to say.

This message also popped out of the pages of a book I'm currently reading, The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear, by Ralph Keyes. He confirms that, yes, everyone has something to say, and what we have to say is important, but the most important thing we have to say, and what we would really like to say, is often very scary to expose to an audience. The real things we would like to say are often mortifying.

At first glance, the 24 Italian Songs and Arias appear to be "saying" the same things over and over again in different ways. The poetry is mostly about love and basic emotional fundamentals surrounding the human experience of falling in love: Unrequited love. Hope for love returned. The pursuance of love. The hopes for romance. The torture and teasing of love. The vulnerability of love. The deep pain of love. On the surface, we think immediately of classic situations: "I liked this boy in high school and I thought he was noticing me but I found out he didn't even know who I was" -- or, "We were going to be married, but then he met her" -- or, "He left me after many years of marriage. He said he never loved me." Yeah, yeah, yeah -- unrequited love. Been there; done that. I can sing that.

As I've looked at the song "Tu lo sai" I have gone through the usual tasks of examining the language and figuring out what the poet of the song has to say. As I've examined the music, I have tried to understand what the composer has to say. This is what I usually do with a song, and I have to admit that I have often hid behind expressing what the song is trying to say, but not thinking too much about what I want to say with the song.

But, bearing in mind the words I heard from the Metropolitan Opera judge, I have begun to realize that as a singer I must -- just as I do when I write -- figure out what I want to say as well. Just as writing can be murky when the writer is not sure of what he wants to say, a singer's performance of a song can be "murky" if the singer is not clear about what she would like to say. So I must look at the poetry and music of "Tu lo sai" with new eyes. Can I use this song to express something about me, something I would like to say?

In this case, the answer is yes. There is a way I could use this song. I have been struggling with something that is painful to me and I realized today that this song can help me say what I would like to say about it. For the purposes of learning about this aspect of preparing a song, I'll tell you a little bit (but not too much) about that "something."

I had taken the risk of having made overtures for a friendship with someone I admired greatly. At first I experienced joy as I saw the promise of a response from this person, but my joy turned to pain and disappointment when later my overtures were completely rejected, and to make matters worse, this person will, in a short time, be absent from my life almost completely, so a deep sense of loss is being added to the mix as well. I have been trying to resolve these feelings, but have not yet been able to work it out emotionally within myself and find resolution and peace. Perhaps "saying something" with a song would be useful in this process.

The language and sentiments -- musical and verbal -- of "Tu lo sai" match up somewhat with this personal event of mine. It is not exact, but it works with my personal experience, and I think I may be able to use this song to "tell" this person how I feel.

You know how much I loved you

you know it, cruel one!

I wish no other mercy

than that you remember me

and then despise me an unfaithful one!

Usually, a singer would not need to explain the personal experience behind her song. In fact, it would be safer not to, because when they know, people might listen more critically. This motivation may now be scrutinized. Is the singer succeeding to express her intention?

I think it is preferable to privately use the personal experience to feed the poetry and the music and the voice. However, I have used it as an example in this blog for the purpose of discussing and illustrating this aspect of a singer's calling and work.

In the above-mentioned book The Courage to Write the author says he would rather read something honest from someone who had something to say even if the writing was not technically up to snuff.

The more I read, and write, the more convinced I am that good writing has less to do with acquired technique than with inner conviction. The assurance that you have something to say that the world needs to hear counts for more than literary skill. Those writers who hold their readers' attention are the ones who grab them by the lapel and say, "You've got to listen to what I'm about to tell you." It's hard to be that passionate. It means you must put your whole poke on the table. Yet this very go-for-broke quality grabs and holds a reader far more surely than any mastery of technique.

I might tend to agree with that up to a certain extent, but it doesn't address that there is a limitation that comes with lack of technique. The technique is what gives you the freedom to really portray what you're trying to say. Technique gives the ability to say something more accurately and eloquently.

Imagine the frustration of a child who knows what she has in mind, and would like to show you her idea of a tree, but cannot draw it. The mother looks at the drawing and says, "Oh, is that a monster?" The child is disappointed because the mother does not see a tree there.

An explanation like this of not having enough technique to say what I want to say could be a way of backing away from my emotional truth. Do I lack courage? And do I disguise that lack of courage by claiming I don't have the technique yet? Do I only give you a little generalized version of the story of my painful incident because I am embarrassed by it?

Mr. Keys says of writers, but true of singers as well:

We all have secrets locked tightly in an inner safe. Writers must unlock that safe and risk letting its contents creep onto the page ... Exposing that life takes courage

Aspiring writers are often driven to write because there are things deep inside them they wnat to get out. But after they peer deeply within, few remain sure that they want anyone else to konw the most interesting things they see.

Well, a singer might have to do a similar thing if they want to "say" something with a song. But maybe singing and a song (and acting and theater) are amazing tools for being able to express the very real and honest experience of a person while keeping a safe and protected distance from the specifics of that private experience. Can we express our pain as artists without anyone having to know the details?

In the movie The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers, there is a scene where the character of Eowyn sings at the funeral of her brother, Theoden, and she lets out a crying lament, where her inner pain is definitely present in the sound. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06f2-IuGJyA) High levels of vocal technique are not there, but there is enough ability with singing to be able to connect voice with that wail that is born of pain.

I feel that this scene from the The Two Towers is very "honest" even though it is scripted and we are not using the actress's actual experience. Yet, we guess that she knows what this kind of pain feels like. We can tell because she is able to "say" it to us through her character.

I can tell by that the way the vocal line works in "Tu lo sai," when my voice is finally free and can use the line the way it wants to, that this is a great piece to tell "my story" about rejection in friendship. It is also a vehicle that will allow me to express my feelings to the individual, since I'm not in a situation where it would be appropriate to address the person directly and discuss these things. Singing the song can work the same way writing a letter to a person does, a technique a psychotherapist might use to help people resolve emotional issues.

Therefore, I conclude that this song, "Tu lo sai" can help me say something I want to say, something I need to say. Just like multiple revisions of a letter that I am trying to get just right, each time I sing a song, each time I develop a next detail of the song, I come closer to the message I want to send -- to that person, to myself, to the heavens, to the people around me, and to the world.

"Tu lo sai" this week in Frescamari's Performance Space, is a working copy of a letter I'm writing. It's been through a few revisions but is not in it's final state yet. Nothing is ever perfect, but the writer/singer will know when it is doing a good job of expressing the feeling. The writer/singer will know when it's "ready, and time to send it off, time to click "publish post" or "send."
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Much progress made, but still stamina issues that cause the end of the song to deteriorate. Yet I will post this one, since it was the chosen song of the week and I did not prepare another. Took my very best stab at "saying something with the song," although by the end of the song had to scrap "saying someting," and merely survive. But that's so okay! Click to to go Frescamari's Performance Space: Tu lo sai

Not Knowing

2010-01-21T13:50:00.008-05:00

I was very inspired by a Tai Chi blog I read this morning, Dan Wujifa's "Why it's better not to know." I thought this post could apply very much to my understanding of singing and some of the things I was talking about singing in the passaggio yesterday.

In the "why it's beter not to know" blog post, which I encourage you to read, the blog author talks about the difference between "bracing" and "internal strength:"

... Now, the brace idea is basically locking your body into the strongest possible linear structure in opposition to a force, whereas true internal strength has much more freedom and flexibility inherent in it. Brace is strong, but tends toward rigidity.

This applies to some singing concepts in several ways. One way is the kind of strength needed to withstand greater wind pressure when one is singing higher tessituras. I mentioned this in yesterday's post at the point where I talked about how the muscles that stabilize the larynx need to be strong so that the larynx doesn't rise when the breath pressure increases. However, I did not mean the muscles should be rigid or tense, such as what might happen, for example, to a singer who is trying to keep the larynx in a low position at all costs, and tries to lock it into a certain position while singing. It needs to be much more free and flexible than that.

The same thing goes for the deep internal breath support muscles which must be very strong to tend to the changing breath pressure needs of the singing voice above. To maintain a little "tuck" in the lower abs, and "brace" one's self so that the muscles of inspiration and expiration can do their work does not mean to be rigid, but rather to be strong and free and flexible.

Yet another example of this, from a singer's point of view, can be at the point of the actual valve controlling the opening at the glottis within the larynx itself. The muscles closing the gap can be so tense because the singer is afraid of losing the seal. There can be too much closure because the singer wants a clear efficient tone so badly. Yet what the laryngeal muscles really need is this other kind of "internal strength" that is very flexible and can keep the valve closed enough while letting just the right amount of air through. What is optimal is to keep the valve closed without squeezing it shut, but in a relaxed but very strong way. It actually takes more strength to do this than to squeeze and press tightly..

Another Tai Chi blog, Wujiman Taiji blog -- which is the one that referred me to the blog with the above quote -- gave an example of how "relaxed" this state of internal strength can be:

I had a glimpse of internal strength when I paid a visit to Rick of Wujifa a few months back. We were on his deck and he stood up, got on one leg, lifted up one arm in a “ward off” posture and told me to push him. I used both hands and *really* pushed him. He did not budge and was able to ground my push pretty easily...

What surprised me even more was during the push, Rick told me to touch his forearm and bicep. To my surprise, both muscles were relaxed! I noticed that when I tried to do the same demonstration, with both feet on the ground, my bicep would often feel tense. Connected. Relax. Not Limp

This is a great illustration of the kind of strength that will be exhibited when the best singing is done. These are ideals to work toward and to look forward to. There is strength, but not tension. There is connection, but relaxation.

But back to Dan's Wujifa blog, however and why "knowing" can interfere with achieving this state. He explains that

my partner is showing what happens when "I know" starts to creep in. As soon as you commit rigidly to one way of doing something, as soon as you say "I know" and stop paying attention, you get stuck. This is when brace shows up. Saying "I know" locks you in.

So, the mental component of the task is part of the whole picture. Just like resonance can have an effect on phonation and phonation can in turn affect resonance, the relationship between mental approach and physical are interdependent as well.

My singing journey only began when I first decided that I didn't know anything about singing. I hear this "knowing" mentality when I hear singers insist that one way to support is "the way." "You must push out." "You must pull in." As soon as the singer decides that they "know," further exploration and discovery get cut off, and then that is the way they do it. The rigid way. The same type of thing can happen when a singer decides they know where to "place" the voice, or even if they believe they are phonating correctly, or have fallen in love with a certain way to sound.

The idea of "I do not know" can open the singer up to flexibility and internal strength and the ability to find and discover. Sometimes, when I am claiming in this way that "I do not know," a friend will say to me, after I have said something that sounds knowledgeable to them, "See, you do know something." But I fear beginning to think I know something, and I run away from this affirmation, no matter how well intended. I always get into trouble when I think I've got it all figured out. I love living in this state of "not knowing" so much better, because it has opened me up to many exciting vocal adventures.
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A quote from Barefoot Ken Bob:

"And keep in mind that we often read what we already believe we know, into what isn’t written."

Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals will now be Friday Cyberspace Recitals

2010-01-20T11:43:00.004-05:00

Today would usually be the day for me to put up one of the 24 Italian Songs and Arias after having spent the week familiarizing myself with it. However, there is going to be a change this week. I have decided to shift the Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals over to Fridays and I would like to explain why.

I have my voice lessons on Tuesdays, and very often, like this week, my teacher gives me some great technical assistance after I have tried to figure things out on my own. If I continue the analogy of the young reporter learning to write by having to submit two newspaper articles a day, then this would be like that reporter, after having wrestled with the article he is writing, bringing it to his editor for suggestions and help. Once the editor had made suggestions, the writer would bring his piece back to the drawing board and re-write, incorporating the advice of the more experienced person.

Vocal changes take time. My teacher does not give me quick fixes. She gives me an approach that I can play around with to discover where these positions are in my own physical instrument. Once the positions are "found" it takes time to develop the muscles specificity and strength of these positions, develop facility with them, and then repeat them enough to make them an automatic part of my singing. (As my Kung Fu Sifu repeats to us all the time: "Repetition is the mother of all skills.") I would like to have a little more time to work with the ideas my teacher gives me for the songs I'm learning each week before I post the songs up in Frescamari's Performance Space. Shifting the cyberspace recitals over to Friday will allow me to have a couple of days to work with the stuff my voice teacher gives me.

Specifically, this week I have been working on "Tu lo sai." I soon discovered that this piece is hard to sing when vocal cords are just recovering from a head cold and cough. I also discovered that this piece is hard to sing period, and if you have been following along in Frescamari's Practice Room, you know that I've been struggling with strength and stamina.

Well, when I got to my voice lesson yesterday, my teacher confirmed that "Tu lo sai" is indeed a hard one to sing, despite how simple it looks and sounds. It is one of the more difficult of the 24 Italian Songs and Arias. The key it is in, the key of E, is very difficult because it sits in the passaggio. Even many experienced singers might choose, when they perform the piece, to sing it a half step lower, in the key of Eflat.

Before writing this post today, I tried to study up on this "second" passaggio area, the part of the voice between D5 and G5, but most of the writing on passaggio issues that I've found in a short amount of time has been of the one lower in the voice, and the various passaggio issues of tenors.

I have been trying to figure out exactly why is is so hard to sing when a song sits so long between D5 and G5. The best I can figure with my limited knowledge is that there is a whole lot going on in this part of the range that must be strengthened and coordinated. For one thing, the laryngeal muscles have to find a good position while there is an increased airflow. All the little laryngeal muscles that are controlling pitch, approximating the vocal folds and cords have to be in just the right position, stretch, thickness and closure, using just the right amount of strength without becoming tense. The surrounding muscles that are stabilizing the larynx, and that help keep it from rising, must also be firm and strong, but not tense. The whole mechanism must "brace" itself in a flexible, not rigid way, for the increased wind energy that is coming, not unlike the way we might have to use more strength to keep good posture while standing outside when it is very windy out.

Yet the "wind energy" must be a regulated and mastered wind. The support muscles that are regulating the breath energy and airflow have to work harder when singing in the passaggio, especially because the greater demand for air does not mean to let loose without control. These muscles must regulate the air pressure enough to get a generous stream of air flowing evenly, but not overwhelm the laryngeal muscles. It's not a matter of using all of one's strength, but using just the right amount of one's strength, which can actually require more strength in a weird kind of way than using all of one's strength. I picture a child who is going to blow out the birthday candles on his cake, and he inhales very deeply and blows with all his might. Yet, he does not know that there is a way to blow out the candles with using his strength in a controlled way, with a steady stream of strong air.

And on top of all this, the muscles of articulation must sustain postions without strain that are favorable to the activity occurring during phonation. In fact, the work to keep space for the larynx to do its thing, and also maintain a space that keep conditions of the air currents and sound waves free and moving is a very taxing job.

That is the best explanation I can come up with for why it is so demanding to sing "Tu lo sai," which is mostly sitting between D5 and G5.

In the blog Bonne Chanson, the writer explains this difficulty well in her post "Writing for Voice". In that post, she explains that a song that appears to be a simple ballad can sometimes be very taxing for the singer. It has to do where the song "sits" in the voice, and how much sustained singing without a rest is required. She gives a good example as an illustration of why it is harder to stay singing in the passaggio than to move up and down through one's vocal range:

Waving one's arms up and down in a 180-degree arc for two minutes is less tiring than holding them outstretched at 90 degrees the same length of time.

I told my teacher about how I had worked phrase by phrase (See "Tu lo sai: Practicing Chip Shots") and we both were pleased how this work improved my singing of the song in just one day (perhaps I will be able to post the file of me singing "Tu lo sai" during my voice lesson later on today). But my teacher had some excellent suggestions for another way to work which would show my voice just how much play it really has in a region that feels so cramped and tense for me. She suggested taking "Tu lo sai" phrase by phrase, as I had done, but changing the keys as I repeated the phrase. This would show me where the space was surrounding those phrases and help me to free them in the key of E.

She also suggested adding some ornamentation the second time through. The ornamentation can also act as a freeing mechanism to keep the muscles from getting too fixed when they are in that state of tension. It can loosen things up and keep the static nature of holding the tone from making the voice too frigid. (These words are my own interpretation of what my teacher told me to do.)

This called to mind another passage I read on the Bonne Chanson blog on the same subject called "Cadenza Workout" In this post, the author speculates that ornamentation in baroque music served the purpose of freeing up the voice and eliminating the tension that can build up when singing in the passaggio area:

Perhaps this is why ornamentation, fioriture, trills and other devices that keep the voice on the move (with a high ratio of vowels to consonants) are so characteristic of baroque arias and nineteenth-century bel cantooperas. This type of vocal writing ensures that no single set of muscles gets to carry the burden for too long and that the voice is allowed to flow freely without constant interruption by consonants.

I ought to be able to figure out some of my own, based on the face that I got an A in that ornamentation class I took this past summer. (post on baroque ornamentation class) Perhaps now would be the time to dig through my notes from that class and see if I can apply some of what I learned there (Why is this scary for me?)

So, rather than posting "Tu lo sai" today, I will work for the next two days in the ways my teacher has suggested, and post this work in Frescamari's Practice Room for any who are interested. Then I will add "Tu lo sai" to the growing list of 24 Italian Songs and Arias in Frescamari's Performance Space on Friday, the new Cyberspace Recital Day.
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Recordngs of the work my teacher gave me to do:
Tu lo sai phrases in 3 keys I
Tu lo sai phrases in 3 keys II

The "Dark" Side

2010-01-17T01:39:00.000-05:00

Over in the right hand column of this blog, I tell you that I've been trying to learn to sing well for over 25 years and I'm not giving up.

That is true.

But over the years there have been many painful moments. There have been times of giving up. There have been times when I didn't sing for months.

But I always come back to it.

Because I just can't stop wanting to know how to do "it." Make that beautiful sound. When I hear "it," coming from, you know, the legendary voices, it inspires me and I simply must figure out how to do that.

I may never achieve this. I've had so much trouble. But I cannot lay aside the quest.

Does it really matter? Who cares if a stay-at-home mom living in her obscure little life ever makes a beautiful sound like that?

The only thing I can say is that it matters to me. It is very very important to me and I have to keep trying.

Is it the most important thing? No, my family is way more important. My faith, and my values, loving others, and caring about what happens to us all living on this planet earth is way more important than whether I figure out this singing stuff, and if there was ever a moment that this "quest" of mine threatened that, it would be over in a heartbeat.

However, next to what is REALLY most important, this is the most important thing to me in my life. I will not stop trying.

But that does not mean that I don't almost throw in the towel many times over.

Tonight I had a moment like that. Usually a place I rush to each day, I avoided my practice room today. I didn't get there until 9:00 pm. I had a plan, to warm up, and to work on certain things, specifically to use that run/walk method with "Tu lo sai" as I posted in Frescamari's Practice Room yesterday. ("Using Run/Walk for Stamina")

However, when I got to my practice spot, I "avoided" singing by sitting down to play the piano instead. I worked on the piano accompaniment to that Faure piece, "Cantique de Jean Racine," which I've written about here ("On Being Ready"), and practiced here (Faure piano post in Frescamari's Practice Room).

After playing along for awhile, I decided to use this "Cantique de Jean Racine" to warmup vocally. Furthermore, since I've recently been enjoying toying around with the soprano lines from our choir music -- as I wrote about here (Frescamari singing both parts of Nigra Sum with herself) and here ("How Could Anyone?") -- it popped into my mind that I might like to learn the soprano part of this beautiful piece and perhaps eventually record myself singing both parts. Maybe, I thought, I could record the accompaniment as well. That would be a fun project.

But soon after singing through a couple phrases of the soprano line, I came to a difficult part, and I felt discouragement set in immediately. The familiar discomfort and tightness of that tessitura set in, that lifelong difficulty I've always had of sustaining lines in the upper middle voice. I have been all along so certain that I will be able to develop ease singing in that part of the voice. But now that certainty was faltering. Maybe I will just never get it.

To feel that old familiar tightness on these pitches -- to encounter the same "struggle" once again -- disheartened me. Maybe I should forget about developing that part of my voice! Maybe I should go back to singing mezzo, and just stay in a certain range and just pop up and say "hi" to those pitches once in a while, here and there, in this song and that.

But more than that, I began to think as my spirits drooped lower, maybe I should just give up singing altogether. I'm old to be doing this. I don't want a career. It takes a lot of time and commitment. What's it all for?

But then what happens every time happened again. A gritty determination rose within me. Where this determination comes from I have no idea, but I think it has something to do with love and passion. I simply cannot abandon the task.

So, I lifted myself up and began to work on that soprano line in the Faure piece again. I put my focus on the lower ab muscles and the strength that I needed to recruit from that core place. As I renewed my attempt to sing the difficult line -- the one that had moments before oppressed me -- with no pressure on my voice, I felt those core muscles kick in -- the same deep interior muscles that felt that pain while I was in labor giving birth to my children.

I occurred to me in this moment what I would need to do.

Earlier in the day I had returned to Kung Fu class after about a 5 week absense. A bit unhappy about it, I knew that I would have lost some ground I had gained physically, but was ready to work from where I was at. When we got to the crunches, there were indeed two physical "losses." One "loss" was in strength for the individual crunch -- that I wasn't able to contract the ab muscles as strongly and do as full a crunch as I had been doing when I left off. The other "loss" was in stamina -- the number of crunches I could complete before my form fell apart, that is, the point at which I start feeling the muscles in my neck and chin pulling me up in place of the failing abs. I was very patient with this process, and stopped to rest when I felt the neck muscles kick in and then began a new "set" of crunches as soon as I got the form back (this is like the run/walk method for crunches.) I accepted my own pace and didn't try to "prove" anything.

I realized that I needed to do this same kind of work with the line from the Faure piece, that I had to use this difficult line as a workout like the sets of crunches, and sing a "set" of that line, activating the deep interior support muscles. I had to approach it like the crunches from Kung Fu. I must commit myself to work on lines that work these muscles. I'll take it in little bursts, and go back to it several times a day. For starters, I did a set of 5 times through a difficult line. I've posted it in Frescamari's Practice Room (or at least I will tomorrow -- check back if I don't get to it tonight)

People might say that I'm not supposed to be able to sing in this tessitura. They might say that I have the "equipment" to be a mezzo, and that I should be what I am and that I may get nowhere doing this work. That may be true and I have no problem with that. But I have this kind of stubborn belief that I can't shake that I'm going to be able to get this. I think those deep interior support muscles that I feel working are the key and that they can get stronger and that I must not give up the quest.

None of this matters to anyone but me, but that's enough.

Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals -- Amarilli

2010-01-13T23:23:00.001-05:00

Well, I'll tell you, I thought I was going to have to postpone another Wednesday Cyberspace Recital. But -- and you can see that I am getting this in very late tonight -- just in the nick of time I finished "learning" Amarilli and am so happy to put it up in Frescamari's Performance Space in time to have completed my 5th week of learning 24 Italian Songs in 24 Weeks.

The big obstacle I had to face over the last couple of weeks was getting a really bad head cold. Maybe it was even more than that, because at times I felt flu-like, but I just let it run its course. In the midst of this cold, I took a trip to Florida, where it was absolutely freezing. I brought my music with me, but did not really get around to working on music while I was there.

Now, here's where my trip converges a little with what is going on vocally. Last year, around this time, I signed up to run the Disney 1/2 marathon, which was this past weekend. I enthusiastically began my training, but ended up with an injury. I was very disappointed as the weeks of the injury getting worse revealed to me that I would not be able to achieve this goal I had set out to achieve, and would not be participating in the Disney 1/2 marathon after all.

I was very disappointed because I had originally planned to run this 1/2 marathon with all three of my sisters. Facing this trip down just to watch the marathon was a little bit hard for me, because of how I was feeling.

Yet, when I got down there, I heard and saw and learned many things that caused me to understand that everything was really okay. For one thing, chatting with people revealed that this is something that happens to athletes all the time. They are training for a race and they develop an injury or a setback, or a sickness, and they have to "drop out" of the race.

It has even happened to my own sisters, who are veterans in the race circuit for many years. All I have been aware of over the years, watching and admiring from afar, was their having run multiple marathons and 1/2 marathons and relay races over the years, but I found out that it took them several tries sometimes to finally get through certain races. Each time an injury changed their plans, they took the time off to get over the injury, and then began the process of getting in shape again, and then choosing a new goal.

This is what happened to me during my 1/2 marathon training, and it is also what happened to me as I set out on my project to learn 24 Italian Arias in 24 Weeks. I have had a setback over the past couple of weeks with illness, and now it is time to "journey back" from this cold, and rehabilitate my voice from the damage the coughing has done to the vocal cords. Just like the runners go through their training cycles, the singers go through their cycles too. It's all part of it.

So, on this, my first day of rehabilitation and a new singer training cycle, I have posted the next in our series, Amarilli.

I have also posted the files of the process that I used today to get Amarilli in fair enough shape to make a recording tonight. You will hear that my singing in the morning did not appear to be what would get the job done, but a little work throughout the day, and I was able to produce something by nightfall. That's really something for me. It has only taken 5 weeks to learn what I need to do to get a song into my voice. I was able to do some of that throughout the day. I feel pretty darned good about that.
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To listen to this week's Aria: "24 Italian Arias -- Amarilli"
To hear this morning's work on Amarilli: "The Journey Back After a Cold -- Adventures in Amarilli"
To hear it shape up in the evening: "Amarilli in the Evening -- Diction Lesson and First Hoarse Run-Through"

Never Get Away From Basic Fundamentals

2010-01-11T23:43:00.053-05:00

I've been on a vacation for the past several days and I have been reconnecting with my sisters. It's not often that we get a chance to all four of us be together, so this has been a special time. One sister, who is a PGA golf professional started talking about teaching golf and I rapidly began taking notes, because everything she was saying to me was teaching me more about singing.

The first thing she told me about was how she tells new students that they should be pleased with just making contact with the ball. This is the fundamental muscular task of golf -- to just hit the ball -- and it is where everyone must first place their focus.

She says that the "just hit it" muscles get confused by the "hit it far and high" muscles so she likes to take everyone back to the beginning and get them reviewing the basic fundamentals.

I recognized that this is what happened with my singing over the years. I did not understand how important it was to achieve good phonation ("just make contact with the ball") and the muscles of basic good old phonation got confused with the "I want to sing resonantly and powerfully" muscles (the "I want to hit it far and high muscles"). So, even though it seemed like I was developing the ability to sing more challenging music, I actually had lost my ability to just sing "Happy Birthday" along with everyone in just a basic everyday way.

My golfing sister then began to talk about how she'll give her students drills to make solid contact. They keep their feet together and they don't take a full powerful swing. She would like them to make 10 solid shots in a row, but she knows they will not have the patience for that, so she settles for them making solid contact with the ball this way 5 out of 10 times.

"You're not ready to separate your feet and make the full motion," she will say to them. "But I want to take a full swing," the student will protest. But my sister explains that the muscle memory is not there for the fundamentals and they will not be able to maintain the full swing for a full round of golf.

The student will complain, "This is boring. I know how to do this. I did this when I first picked up a golf club." But in reality, sometimes the golfer has lost the ability to do this fundamental drill because he/she tried for too much and tried to maintain too much and that golfer lost the basic fundamentals and must go back and drill them.

I wonder how many singers have got into this predicament. They do not return to the fundamentals because they think they are beyond this and they go on to sing impressively and powerfully and make resonant sounds, but in actuality they have lost their ability to merely phonate well, or they never really got it down right to begin with before they "advanced." The ability to sing a simple line in a small voice well has become lost in the desires to be more advanced? I know this happened to me, and it is a humbling experience to take one's self back to the beginning and review and drill the fundamentals.

I had a teacher who recognized an imbalance in my phonation and took me back to this fundamental task. I had to spend a couple of months at least just opening my mouth and making a small sound that was horribly unimpressive. It was boring to a person who thought her new teacher was going to show her how to sing arias and opera, and it was painful for me to face that kind of work on my voice after years of studying voice and believing I had been making progress. I wanted to cry each time I walked in to the practice room. It was difficult and frustrating and I barely could make myself do the exercises. Yet, I trusted in this teacher's expertise and believed that this is what I indeed needed to be doing, so I proceeded with it.

So, where am I now, at 48 years of age, and having taken singing lessons more than 25 years? Why, I'm singing in the middle voice, learning the 24 Italian Songs and Arias. How can this be? Shouldn't I finally, at long last, be singing arias? Not without the fundamentals in place! If I move on before they are in place, then I will only have to come back to them again later. This takes time and patience. Each person will learn at his/her own rate.

My sister will guarantee her students that those really good golfers are spending lots of time working on these "boring" drills. They are making sure their basic skills are in tip top shape and they have the humility to work on these tasks and never take them for granted. They know their sport and their bodies well enough to realize that these fundamentals can get lost and confused and must be revisited and drilled and trained.

My sister says that when she gets a new student, sometimes there are so many flaws in their golf swing and technique that, rather than fix each flaw one-by-one, it is often easier to start at the beginning. People don't like this. They want to get to the fancy stuff.

But in the end it's the big question that my sister asks her students when they have their first golf lesson with her that must be answered:

"Why are you here? Do you really want to be a good golfer?"

This is the question that must be faced by the singer too. If the answer is that I really want to be a good singer, then if the way to do that is to give up impressive sounds and power and fancy arias, and accept that I don't have something basic quite right yet, then that is what I must do, and that is what I will do.

Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals -- "Le violette" Postponed

2010-01-06T10:26:00.003-05:00

Dear friends of my blog,

I had been preparing the song "Le violette" this week as part of my project to Learn 24 Italian Songs in 24 Weeks, as you may know if you are one of the readers who regularly pops in to Frescamari's Practice Room just to see what's going on there. However, I came down with a doozy of a head cold this week and it looks like I am going to have to postpone putting up this fourth of the 24 songs I am learning.

I could just go ahead and sing it today. After all, the purpose of this project is not to perfect the pieces in one week. This is an exercise that is to benefit my singing. To remind you, or to let newcomers know, I had read in a book about how to become a good writer that a writer who got a job at a newspaper and had to write two or three articles a day would, over a six month period, develop many skills that a writer needs, and learn to solve many problems that writers need to work out. I had been inspired by this idea, and decided that there might be a way to rework the idea for a singer that might bring about similar benefits, and came up with the project for myself of learning the standard 24 Songs and Arias in 24 Weeks.

If you remember, the specific idea from the advice to writers that I wanted to apply to singing was that you "learn to write[sing] by writing[singing]" and "the only way to learn to write[sing] is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words[songs] on a regular basis."

The idea of the writer[singer] having to force himself to write[sing] those two or three articles[songs] a day[week] was not that he was going to be a better writer[singer] after six months, or that the writer[singer] would necessarily be writing[singing] well; the writer's[singer's] style might still be full of clutter and cliches. But that the writer would be exercising his/her powers of putting the English language on paper [singer would be exercising powers of putting song language into the voice], gaining confidence, and identifying the most common problems. (See my post referencing William Zinsser's book On Writing Well)

So, keeping in mind the intent of this project, and knowing that the product, at this point, does not have to be polished, I could just go ahead and record it while singing with the remnants of my cold, provided that it does not hurt my voice.

I am going to test it out a little later today and decide whether to just go ahead and record it or wait.

(Update: 1/7/10, I still had the head cold, but the voice was serviceable the next day, so Le violette is now posted in Frescamari's Performance Space)

In the meantime, I'll let you know that my blog may be a little slow over the next week because I am going on a little trip. I am going to bring my netbook with me, and perhaps I will get a chance to put up a post while I'm away. I'm also planning to bring my little roll-up piano, along with my Edirol digital recorder and do a little practicing in the hotel room (Frescamari's Portable Practice Room), so perhaps I may even be able to update the practice room while away and talk a little bit about practicing singing while traveling. But it is likely that I may not have time to get stuff up on the blog until I return from my trip.

I have several blog posts in mind for the next few weeks. For one thing, I have finished reading that book Head First: The Language of the Head Voice: A Concise Study of Learning to Sing in the Head Voice by Denes Striny, and I would like to write out my impressions of what Denes Striny has to say in the book.

Another topic I am researching a bit is that of larynx position, high, "neutral," and low and I would like to share with you what I am learning and finding.

I would also like to write out some thoughts I have about learning the language of vocal science and why I think it is worth the effort to become conversant in that terminology when you are a person who wants to talk about singing with others.

Another idea I have coming up is writing about how to manage fear as a singer. I am reading a book called The Courage to Write: How Writer's Transcend Fear, by Ralph Keyes, and -- surprise, surprise -- I am gaining insights that apply across the board about how to work with fear in general.

So, there will be a lot of ideas being explored by Avocational Singer blog in this new year and I look forward to my return from this trip so that we may delve into them.
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Follow Up 1/7/10: I still had the head cold, but the voice was serviceable the next day, so Le violette was posted in Frescamari's Performance Space the next day, on the day she was supposed to be packing for her trip in the afternoon.)

Loving One's Voice Means to Be Happy With It

2010-01-03T13:56:00.000-05:00

This is something I think about all the time when it comes to my voice, and now I'm going to share it here in my blog with all of you. It often enlightens me when I take time to think of my voice as a living being, in a way, like one of my children, or even like my own "inner child." I often think of how the "rules" about how to treat a living being apply to how I treat my voice. I often also think about how the "rules" of being a good parent apply to "raising my voice" to maturity.

I have heard repeated and quoted this notion that Leontyne Price has said she is in love with her voice. Some people "get" this and admire it, others think it is a little weird. But I think it is profound and there are many ways of looking at it.

For one thing, there is a saying "Love your neighbor as your self." All the psychologists remind us all the time of our tendency to overlook the "love your self" part of the equation and tell us that we have failed to understand what that part means. You hear it over and over again, the inverse of this saying: "You can't love others until you love yourself, so you better learn how to love yourself."

At first, this sounds really great. I have permission to love myself. Cool! I can't wait to just focus on me and me and me. Now I can make myself happy and forget all about this pleasing others stuff.

Loving one's self, however, is not all wine and roses. Loving yourself is hard work. It is rolling up your sleeves and taking responsibility for the needs of the loved one. Loving yourself means taking the time out for love. Love means going to a bit of trouble. Loving one's self means toiling a little bit. When I love myself, I take care of myself. I make sure that I eat right. That's part of loving myself. I make sure that I get rest. That's part of loving myself. I make sure that I am bathed and groomed. I make sure I don't do things that can harm me. I make sure I listen to myself and don't make myself do things that are against my conscience. I don't speak harshly to myself, I encourage myself, I challenge myself, I help myself to be the best me I can, I support my self's passions and dreams, etc...

Then, once I know how to love myself, I move on to loving others, and I hope I can do the same thing for others that I am doing for myself. I learn how to love others by learning how to love myself. I can go on to love a partner, and extend that to loving my children, and doing all those things listed above for my children. In fact, I think that the way I have learned and practiced loving myself is going to be the way I love my children. If I am harsh and critical of myself, I will tend to be harsh and critical of my children (and of my voice). If I am impatient with myself, I will tend to be impatient of my children (and of my voice). If I have no tolerance for human flaws in my self, I will not tolerate flaws in my children (and my voice).

Well, I think that loving one's voice, like loving one's children, is an extension of loving one's self. Again, it's not all wine and roses. It's not a narcissistic kind of love I'm talking about either (because narcissism is really self loathing in disguise). I am talking about a respect for one's voice. Eating right, resting, not abusing one's voice, but treating it gently. Not placing too many demands on the voice, giving it space so that it doesn't get stressed. Listening to the voice when it tells you you are not treating it right. Listening to the voice when it tells you it doesn't want to sing the way you are trying to make it sing. It also means having a little faith. Just like we have to have faith in ourselves, we have to have a little faith in our voices. We have to believe that it's all going to work out.

Another part of loving your voice is accepting your voice as it is. You may want to improve your voice and help it to achieve it's potential, but you must also accept your voice simply in the state you find it. That's part of love too. There is a book by Barry Kaufman called Love is to Be Happy With. This is an example of one of those titles that kind of says it all. Loving one's voice means to be happy with it.

Now the part for the voice being like one's child. We parents have this way of developing expectations for our children. In the same way we can develop expectations for our voices. When our children fail to live up to these expectations, we can feel disappointment. Our children can sense this disappointment and they can tend to get discouraged or give up. That can happen to our voices as well.

The best thing to do with our children, with our voices, and with ourselves is to provide what they need to be healthy and strong, and then step back and give them the space to find their way. Give them the space to explore. Give them the space to discover, without any pressure, who and what they were truly meant to be. We have to allow our selves to find our own greatness. We have to allow our children to find their own greatness. We have to allow our voices to find their own greatnesses.

Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals -- O cessate di piagarmi -- or, Learning Vocal "Make-Do"

2009-12-30T14:03:00.002-05:00

Well, folks, I didn't think I was going to make this recital today. If you have been following along in Frescamari's Practice Room at all, you will know that weird things started happening to my voice on Monday and I came down with a cold and sore throat yesterday. I decided to use the time to figure out how my voice works under less than optimal conditions.

It reminded me of having a bad hair day. When faced with a bad hair day, a girl has a couple of choices to make. She can just decide not to go out altogether, and wait until the hair springs back. Or she can figure out a few "tricks" on how to make herself look good even when her hair is not at its most cooperative. Based on this, I figured a singer ought to learn how to do the best with her voice even when it is not in its most fabulous shape.

Or maybe it's also like making dinner when you're just "making do" with the things you happen to have in the house, rather than a refrigerator full of the freshest ingredients. You sing with what you've got that day.

I just remembered something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago that illustrates this. I had a guest coming to the house and I had absolutely nothing to offer him to eat while he was here. I scrambled around and found a couple of bruised apples, some cheese, a pack of graham crackers, and some hard-boiled eggs. Not much to work with.

Now, when I was a young bride, I would have planned some elegant and sophisticated snack to have for the visitor. I would have fretted that everything be perfect. (Isn't this like the young singer who must have her recital come out perfectly in every way?)

But, here I was now, stranded in the position I was in, and I had to make do with what I had. I quickly sliced the apples, sprinkled them with cinnamon, and fanned them attractively on a china platter, discarding the bruised parts. I used my cheese knife to thinly sliver the cheese, carefully broke the graham crackers into their quarters and arranged them around the peeled and halved hardboiled eggs. (It's in moments like these that one steps back and begins to feel like one has been quite "clever.")

What a strange assortment of food items! But it actually worked and the plate was empty by the time the guest left. It worked because over the years I had developed some quick-thinking habits and knowledge about presentation that came in handy in a pinch.

Well, this is what all those O cessate audio files were about in Frescamari's Practice Room over the past couple of days. I was playing around with the voice I had, trying to see if there was some way to make it presentable by Wednesday under these vocal conditions. In the practice room you will find all the "bruised" apple sections I had to discard.

The result is that today, dear readers and listeners, I am serving you up a platter of this week's "O cessate di piagarmi," accompanied by myself on piano in Frescamari's Performance Space. I hope you enjoy this addition to the growing list of 24 Songs and Arias.

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Other posts in this series:
"24 Italian Arias in 24 Weeks"
"Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals -- Per la gloria d'adorarvi"
"Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals -- Sebben, crudele"

Challenging Vocal Comfort Levels

2009-12-27T15:29:00.001-05:00

As I am going about studying the 24 Italian Songs and Arias, I am using the book for medium high voice. For many years I avoided singing in this range. I found it way too difficult and I didn't like the way I sounded. I didn't understand the value of singing something challenging, and it was hard for me to imagine improvement. But I was very wrong about this.

I was like a kid who thinks it would be fun to try something and then just drops it when he experiences that it is not easy. I was not willing to sacrifice the experience of being gratified by the sounds of my own singing. But now, as I discover greater and greater ease singing in this range, I realize how stupid I was, and that all those years I was frustrated and sitting around wondering why I wasn't developing as a singer, the means of that development was sitting in my music cabinet all along, but I didn't know how to use it.

The medium-high-voice book is the one that my first voice teacher began with when I started voice lessons over 20 years ago. She most likely knew that this was the area of my voice that was inexperienced and needed to be developed and strengthened. However, I did not feel comfortable singing the songs in those keys. And so, after struggling painfully for several months, I asked my teacher if I could learn them in the lower key. She simply said, "yes," and granted me "permission" to go out and purchased the songbook in the lower key.

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but my memory of this is that, originally, she had provided me with the medium-high-voice Italian song book, but when I wanted to sing in the lower key, I was on my own as far as obtaining the book. My teacher pointed me toward where the book could be purchased -- Patelson's Music House, behind Carnegie Hall (it looks like they have closed their business now) -- and I undertook an expedition to this new location in New York City, beyond my usual trails, something that was scary for me.

Even scarier for me, once I was in the store, I had to ask the clerk where to find the book, since I was faced with row upon row of music books and had no idea how everything was organized. This is a place where real singers shop, I thought. He will be able to tell that I am not a real singer. I remember the clerk being kind and helpful and showing me an edition that came with an accompaniment cassette. I happily thought, "that might be useful to practice with," and chose that edition.

I remember, at the time, wondering why -- if the answer was as simple as just switching books -- and why -- if it seemed not to matter that much -- just why had she not just started me out in the lower key to begin with, and why -- if she was a voice teacher who worked with all kinds of voices -- didn't she recognize that this is the key I sing well in? But I never asked about these wonderings and whys. Partly because I didn't realize I could, and partly because these wonderings were not at the top of my consciousness. They were kind of little naggings below the surface that I didn't recognize in their fullness.

This would happen again and again. My voice teacher started me learning songs in one key, and I would feel very uncomfortable and ask for lower and lower keys.

What was happening? Why was I uncomfortable? Why did I ask for a lower key? Why did she say "yes."

Something I wrote today in Frescamari's Practice Room gave me a clue. I observed that these lower keys where I was comfortable and familiar were in the area of my speaking voice. This place in the range of my speaking voice is my vocal "home." When she asked me to sing a little higher, my voice teacher was bringing me to a new and unfamiliar vocal place, and I resisted.

But the reason the "home" place was so navigable for me was because it was the place where I had practiced the most, and memorized and drilled, and dug grooves. It was where I felt safe and where I had invested my vocal time. If I would try to build a second home in this new higher place, say a new summer home, after some time I would have become familiar with the pathways in this second home too. But I did not know that. I had never experienced this.

The need to cling to what is familiar -- to stay safe by sticking to known paths -- is very strong in me. I am not comfortable being an adult and being out in the world. The world seemed like such a scary place, so as soon as I could, I develop little patterns and routines that made me feel secure and like I could handle everything. When I drive somewhere on a highway, I use a certain lane, travel a certain speed, and pass cars a certain way. I have my rules. When it is time to change lanes and exit the highway, I change lanes in the same spot every time, or at least one of several spots. My car practically knows the way itself, and barely needs me to drive it because of how I cling to this safety of predictability and familiarity.

This desire for safety has become more encrusted as I have aged. The more years that pass, the less adventurous I have become, and the harder it is for me to stray away from comfort and routine.

I believe that this overall personality trait has kept me in home territory with my singing for many years, without my quite realizing it.

It doesn't have to be either/or about going into new territory. There are other options for stretching one's horizons. For example, instead of facing new territory alone, a friendly and experienced mentor or guide can be of great assistance. I don't know why that first voice teacher gave in so easily when I expressed resistance to the new territory. It may be the reluctance of a kind-hearted person to push another into a place of discomfort. Sometimes we respect the comfort of another so much, and so much believe that we should wait until they are ready to challenge themselves, that we don't communicate well all the reasons why that person should forge ahead. We don't insist. We say, "okay, I'm not going to force you."

In the voice teacher/voice student relationship, there can be many assumptions made about the why the other is behaving as she does. Good communication, like in marriage, is needed so badly. Maybe that first teacher could have prodded more to find out why I wanted to switch to the lower key. Maybe I could have asked her why she ever thought the medium high key would be right for me. We should have talked.

Had I stuck with the medium high key, I would have learned about a territory of my voice that scared me and seemed unnavigable. With her as a guide, reassuring me, and "showing me the ropes," maybe I could have set up a good camp there, from whence to spring to even further adventures.

Since it is never too late to grow, I shall have to do this now.
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In Frescamari's Practice Room: Exploring unfamiliar territory -- Onsetting on D5

All I Need to Celebrate My Holiday -- Christmas!

2009-12-25T20:45:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of things that help me experience my favorite holiday the way I think it should be experienced, with renewed feelings of hope and joy.

The very first thing I need, is my spirituality. I don't think that I could celebrate a holiday from the outside in. I need to have a reason that starts deep within me. I reflect on who and what I think God is, and what my relationship to God is, and what, if anything, I should do about that in my life. Reflection, silence, meditation, prayer, and keying in on why I'm here, what I believe, and what is important to me must be the starting place. From these reflections comes a set of principles I want to live by, my personal code, and I remind myself of them, revise them if need be, and I renew my commitment to sticking to these principles

The next thing I need is connection to my family and friends and all of humanity. A holiday will not make much sense to me if it is celebrated in isolation. I need to spend time thinking about the people I love, why I love them, and why I want to keep on loving them. I need to spend some time making sure these others that surround me know I love them in various ways.

After these first two big holiday needs, then I can get to the "trappings." For me, the trappings are very simple. I need a great big Christmas tree, and I need music. Especially, I must sing the holidays, which I think I have done in Frescamari's Practice Room as my own holiday of Christmas has approached. The most happy I can be as an avocational singer is when I have an opportunity to sing solo on Christmas Eve.

Last night, at midnight mass, I had my music. The church does a little extra, and hires some musicians, and the organist lines up a few soloists. It felt joyful to be part of the festivities at our church last night singing a solo part in an arrangement of "O Holy Night" our organist had made for two of us singers from the parish.

I had meant to bring my digital tape recorder and get a recording of the arrangement of "O Holy Night" that I sang with another female singer from the church. However, coming right from a great big Italian Christmas Eve feast at my husband's cousin's house, the idea of recording kind of got lost in the merriment.

I drank a lot of coffee to keep myself awake until about 12:30 a.m., when our "O Holy Night" was sung during the communion time.

They say never to try a new recipe when you are having company -- to stick with the tried and true -- however, I have been reading a book about head voice (Head First: The Language of the Head Voice: A Concise Study of Larning to Sing in the Head Voice by Denes Striny), and I felt very strongly that from this moment forward, I must not put pressure on my cords anymore. (See post "Warming up with O Holy Night -- going for less constriction" in Frescamari's Practice Room.)

So, I used all the congregational hymn singing and other mass parts to "warm up" by singing without a feeling of constriction. The hired musical instruments were loud, with a blaring trumpet, and there were other "loud" singers in the choir singing in my ear, and the temptation to press and feel my own voice and to feel powerful in some way was great. But I focused very intensely on a non-constricted and free production, even though I could not hear myself except on a couple of high notes.

When the time came to sing the solo, I wanted the crutch of feeling like I was doing something -- something like muscling the sound, but I allowed it to remain free and unrestricted. The voice kind of did what it wanted to, and I had to trust, rather than control.

I probably shouldn't have taken a chance like that, but people were very pleased with the solo, so it worked, although there were many little things I'm dying to take into the practice room to learn how to manage them while singing this way. I'll be able to use my 24 Italian Songs in 24 Weeks project to accomplish this task. In fact, I've already started using this week's song, "O cessate di piagarmi", for this purpose.

Performing is different than practicing. There are different body dynamics to work out. I do not get a lot of chances to perform, and I think I should seek them out because the only way to work out all the issues is to face them over and over again. The more the better. My Kung Fu sifu tells us all the time, "Repetition is the Mother of All Skills."

I think this holiday worked the way it's supposed to in my life. I have ended a cycle of work and striving, and will begin anew now, with more concepts to conquer and explore. I hope you will keep with me in the practice room and this blog as I find out what's next! Merry Christmas to you all and Happy New Year!

Wednesday Cyberspace Recital -- Per la gloria d'adorarvi

2009-12-23T16:18:00.003-05:00

This is part of a project I am working on to learn 24 Italian Songs and Arias in 24 Weeks. This is week 2, and I have completed "Per la gloria d'adorarvi."

In just two weeks of tackling this project, I am discovering a new way to work with a voice teacher.

In the past, I usually arrived at my lesson an empty vessel, waiting for the voice teacher to pour into me all the wisdom and vocal knowledge that he/she could. Now that I have chosen this project of learning these 24 songs, taking one each week, I am developing a completely different idea of how to use my teacher as a resource.

My teacher remarked to me that by sharing my singing journey publicly in a blog like this I was "teaching." At first, the comment caused me to wonder, because I have not set out to teach. How could I, since there is so much I don't know?

As I pondered this, I asked myself just what it was I was doing in Frescamari's Practice Room then? I realized that what I was doing is teaching myself. And I am letting all of you observe me learn how to teach myself.

A few years ago, I was without funds for my voice lessons. I was pretty desperate, because it was a bad time for me to be without a teacher, as I had not got even near a clue about how to sing yet. In the midst of despair, I came up with the consoling notion that perhaps I knew enough now to teach myself. Maybe there were books out there about singing I could buy and figure out what to do. I had been participating in an online forum to discuss another interest of mine, scrapbooking. Perhaps there was a similar type forum where there were singers discussing their voice lessons.

I began to hunt and dig for information. Somehow, I stumbled upon a web site of a voice teacher who lived far away. I can't remember who this was now. I e-mailed him a question. I asked him if it was possible for a singer to teach herself?

I received a basic short e-mail reply: No it was not possible for a singer to teach his/her self. A voice teacher was necessary.

I was a bit crushed by this answer, but I proceeded with my hunt for information. Perhaps he was wrong. After all, somebody had to figure out how to sing the very first time, didn't they? Someone, once, had to do it without a teacher.

Well, after a long search, and much gathering of information, I found out what most classical singers already know, that a teacher is absolutely essential.

However, in these past weeks, I believe that I am using the teacher in a much more productive way than I ever have in the past. With my 24 in 24 project, I have chosen my own path. I take the entire week to teach myself the song, the language, and try to work out what problems I can. At the end of the week, I take the unsolved problems to my teacher. It is amazing how this different way of working is growing me. I see my teacher as my main resource as I proceed to teach myself. I am able to come to the lesson not as an empty vessel, waiting to be filled, but with a jugful of many questions and issues, so many that I hardly know where to start. Instead of coming just to take, I bring something to my lesson.

It is a wonderful experience.
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Click here to listen to this week's "performance" of Per la gloria d'adorarvi in Frescamari's Performance Space.

Also, if anyone out there can instruct me in how to make the Italian diacriticals in html, please send me an e-mail. I have tried the ò-type commands, but I'm obviously leaving something out.
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Other Wednesday Cyberspace Recitals:
Week 01 - Sebben, crudele
Week 03 - O cessate di piagarmi