Reflections on Summer Goals

June 1! Officially two weeks till my birthday.

When I was younger, everything after May 15 and before June 30 was related to how close it was to my birthday.

That’s less of a big deal now.

But I do see June 1 as the unofficial beginning of summer and a new year (for me) and a time to evaluate what to do during the time “off.” (Although after 15 months of a pandemic, what’s different?)

I have a few goals for this summer:

Watch all of the Marvel movies in chronological order (I’m paying for Disney+ for more than just Hamilton at this point).
Re-watch WandaVision after #1 so that the stuff I missed will make sense to me.
Learn two new arias for my WNO audition in September, which I hope to coach with a friend of mine, Shannon Coates (she doesn’t know this yet because I haven’t asked her).
Successfully host What To Know/What I Wish I’d Known About College Auditions on June 30 at 6pm.
Plan and implement a new membership program for serious vocal students for the 2021-2022 season
Write some new cabaret shows!
Lose the 8# that I gained back since the beginning of the year (still 17# down, but I’m trying to avoid the slippery slope).

All of these goals are, hopefully, achievable over the next three months, which is what goals should be. Not pie-in-the-sky goals, but ones you can get done. (Oooh, maybe I shouldn’t be talking about pie right now…. see #7..)

If you’d like to see another point of view about goal setting and re-evaluating them well after the New Year (which is when we usually set goals), here’s a great article from the website Stage Agent. What I really like about this article is the acknowledgement that goals shift and it’s okay for them to do so. Lord knows mine have!

****************
Do you have goals for the summer? What are they? Drop them in the comments and we can talk about them!
If one of your goals is to audition for college next year, check out the June 30 panel discussion.
More info and registration can be found HERE.

What To Know/What I WISH I’d Known About College Auditions

Because it’s been over a month since World Voice Weekend and I need another project….

But what could I do that would offer the same kind of benefit (if not quite the scope of that project because it was exhausting) to people. And then I thought, hey, where can people get information about college auditions all in one place?

Things have changed a lot since I was preparing students for college auditions from 2006-2013, as I discovered this past year when I prepared someone for college auditions for the first time since I moved to Baltimore. In some respects, it’s easier because many of the schools now have standardized audition requirements and people submit their applications and prescreen videos through Acceptd, You don’t have to prepare a completely separate set of audition packages for multiple colleges anymore.

But more schools are requiring prescreen videos just to get an audition, and this past year, with the pandemic, many schools didn’t even have in-person auditions. Either they were online, or they used the prescreen videos to make their decisions.

And with musical theater, there’s the “wild card” audition submission. That was something I didn’t hear about till last summer – it certainly wasn’t a thing 8 years ago! And what’s going to happen this year? Will auditions still be online? Will they be in-person? Will there be some kind of hybrid option?

So on June 30, at 6pm, I will be hosting a panel discussion called

What To Know/What I Wish I’d Known About College Auditions

I’ve put together a panel discussion of university/conservatory voice teachers from both the classical and musical theater world to discuss the audition process, plus three young singers who navigated the 2020-2021 audition season and were accepted to programs for Fall 2021. The panelists are:

Elizabeth Futral, Professor of Voice, Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
Andrew Ryker, Assistant Professor of Opera/Voice, Director of Opera, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
Karla Hughes, Associate Professor of Voice, Theatre and Music Theatre, Viterbo University, LaCrosse, Wisconsin
Matt Edwards, Associate Professor, Voice/Coordinator of Musical Theatre Voice/Artistic Director, CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute, Shenandoah Conservatory, Winchester, Virginia
Iyana Johnson, future freshman in classical voice at Baldwin-Wallace, student of Alyssa Amber Cox, Annapolis, MD
Lauren Manna, future freshman in musical theater, Boston Conservatory-Berklee, student of Jerry Elsbernd, Minneapolis, MN
Olive DeVille, future freshman in musical theater, Long Island University, student of Christine Thomas-O’Meally (why, that’s me), Baltimore, MD

More info, including bios and headshots, will be forthcoming over the next few weeks. But believe me, these people are tops in their field and I’m so honored to have them!

The cost will be $25 and you can register here. Can’t make it on that day? The whole thing will be recorded and made available for replay (platform TBD) through August 31, so you can catch it later. Or watch it again later, if you want to refresh your memory.

Find out

- - What they want to hear
  - What they don’t want to hear
  - What a good pre-screen video should include
  - Video auditions vs. in-person auditions (will that even be a thing?): Advantages vs. disadvantages
  - How many schools should you audition for?
  - Other questions — input to be taken at registration*
  - Followed by a Q&A, as time permits

If you are planning to audition for college music/theater programs in the next year or two (or three), or you’re the parents of a student, or you’re a teacher preparing a student for upcoming auditions, this panel discussion is for you.

*Register HERE and fill out the intake form to have the opportunity
to add input to the panel discussion (I can always use ideas)

Re-Petition rather than Repetition

I am currently reading a book by Eric Maisel called The Power of Daily Practice: How Creative and Performing Artists (and Everyone Else) Can Finally Meet Their Goals. He offers a very specific approach to establishing a routine that is regular and rewarding, and can apply to various ways of self-improvement, career, personal, etc. The book is divided into three parts:

1. 1. The elements of practice (there are twenty!)
  2. The types of practices you can undertake
  3. The challenges to establishing a daily practice

Of the twenty elements of practice, some are lovely and fun and are what got you started on your practice in the first place, but a few are hard and take effort, and those are the ones that might result in your abandoning your practice because it’s just too much WORK.

The one that struck me was the element of repetition. This is a part of practice that is difficult for even the most dedicated practitioner. The act of repeating things over and over to make them better. It’s part of the whole “Practice makes Perfect” mindset, that you have to practice something over and over till you get it right (really, the better approach is to practice till you can’t get it wrong). But it’s tedious! It’s boring, and mind-numbing, and sucks the soul of my performing. I don’t wanna!

What if, instead of approaching our practice as having to do something over and over again, with the idea that there is an endpoint at which we’re going to perfect, we approach it as a new “ask.” As a petition, a request, an intention. So that when we run a passage over and over again, we are asking for something specific to happen as a result of this effort. For example:

Today, I will sing this passage in “Cruda sorte” and ask myself [or the coloratura gods] to find the phrasing I need to make this clear, reproduce-able, and musical. Tomorrow, I may ask to try that same passage at different tempi, both slower and faster, so that I can adapt to whatever tempo the audition pianist decides to play on a particular day.

This is not the first time I have hyphenated a word to find meaning in it (see my 2020 Word of the Year).

There are many things in this book about which I can write – but first I have to finish it. I admit I’m a little stuck right now because I realized, in part III, that the author has a few points of view regarding subjects such as ADD, ADHD, anxiety, and depression with which I vehemently disagree and it’s causing me to question everything he’s written up to this point. But he is considered one of the foremost creativity coaches in the world, so I’m going to overlook our disagreements so that I can take what I need – and leave the rest.

Does the idea of “re-petitioning” sound interesting to you? Or am I grasping at straws here? I don’t think so, but I’d love to know what your approach might be to keep things fresh, whether it’s yoga, singing, exercise, meditation, or whatever. Drop me a comment below and let’s hear what you think.

*************

Stay tuned for information on an upcoming panel discussion called “What To Know/What I WISH I’d Known About College Auditions,” coming up on June 30. You can find more information HERE
(and it’ll be the focus of Thursday’s blogpost)

Curiosity Killed the …

Nothing. It kills nothing.

Curiosity is a good thing. According to Seth Godin (who I haven’t quoted for a while), curiosity is one of the three foundations of art:

Curiosity
Generosity
Connection

These three components allow us to create and to make art, which “is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing.” (The Practice, 2020, p. 55).

(Also remember the bumper sticker: “EARTH without ART is EH.”)

His 2008 book, Tribes, is a bit outdated now because of all the technological advances that have occurred in the nearly 13 years since its publication. But the roots of his work on curiosity are there, in his discussion of the difference between fundamentalism and curiosity, management and leadership, the settler and the heretic.

“It has to do with a desire to understand, a desire to try, a desire to push whatever envelope is interesting. …. Once recognized, the quiet yet persistent voice or curiosity doesn’t go away. Ever. And perhaps it’s such curiosity that will lead us to distinguish our own greatness from the mediocrity that stares us in the face.” (pp. 63-64)

I’m blown away by this because curiosity is the driving force of my life. And I can’t abide mediocrity. I don’t know if I can say I’m great (I am, after all, from the Midwest), but if I felt I was even remotely mediocre, I don’t think I could stand it.

So maybe curiosity kills mediocrity. Yes, I’m going to go with that.

Plus, the whole “curiosity killed the cat” thing is completely bogus. The phrase is actually, “Curiosity killed the cat – but satisfaction brought it back.”

To say half the phrase implies that it’s okay to settle, not to question, not to try, because to do so might actually court death. But instead, while pursuing something different might take you down for a while, ultimately, the satisfaction of the effort will allow you to bounce back up. (This, and other phrases, are frequently misquoted and misinterpreted.)

So if you’re curious about anything, say, I don’t know, maybe singing, maybe now is the time to take the risk and try it.

After all, look at these cats. Do they look dead to you?

Singing cats — Curiosity kills the mediocre. The cats are fine.

Also, thinking of curiosity – this song was played by Peter Jacobson in a Total Vocal Freedom class I recently took and I was just enthralled by it. It wasn’t this version, but this version was just the right length for what I wanted to include here. The song is “Experiment,” from Nymph Errant by Cole Porter (1933).

Original lyrics:

Before you leave these portals
To meet less fortunate mortals,
There’s just one final message
I would give to you.
You all have learned reliance
On the sacred teachings of science,
So I hope, through life, you never will decline
In spite of philistine
Defiance
To do what all good scientists do.

Experiment.
Make it your motto day and night.
Experiment
And it will lead you to the light.
The apple on the top of the tree
Is never too high to achieve,
So take an example from Eve,
Experiment.
Be curious,
Though interfering friends may frown.
Get furious
At each attempt to hold you down.
If this advice you always employ
The future can offer you infinite joy
And merriment,
Experiment
And you’ll see

**********

If you’re curious about finding your voice and speaking/singing your mind, contact MVS to set up a complementary 20-minute chat about what Curiously Strong Singing & Performing can do for you.

My First Webinar!

This past Saturday, I hosted a webinar on the topic of singing the Schubert Ave Maria. Each attendee received a handout afterwards covering:

The history of the piece (spoiler alert: Schubert did not write the Ave Maria – at least that wasn’t the name of the song, it wasn’t in Latin, nor was it intended as a setting of the Hail Mary prayer)
The translation of the Latin text and its setting in the song
The pronunciation of the Latin text using the International Phonetic Alphabet
A deconstruction of the song for practice purposes, including
- Deconstructed sheet music
- A practice track for a singer to work with before adding the actual accompaniment

I posted a video of the webinar to YouTube last night, and you can find here. (Note: I accidentally did not record the first half of the webinar in real time – forgot to take it off pause when I was waiting for folks – so the first half was made after everyone had left; which allowed me to fix a few things I had issues with, tech-wise, during the actual webinar.)

You can watch it here:

If you are interested in getting the handout about the history/translation/pronunciation, please click here and I’ll be happy to send it to you.

What other topics would you like to see in a webinar? Someone suggested “O Holy Night” when we get closer to Christmas. Some ideas I have include:

International Phonetic Alphabet
Structuring your Practice Session

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave them in the comments.

******

Have you been asked to sing the Ave Maria (any version, not just this one) or another song for an upcoming wedding, and you want to make sure you do it right? Contact MVS to set up a discovery call
to see if a drop-in lesson or a package of lessons is right for you!

Summer Singers Society for Students 8-11

I have always said that I’m not a teacher of small children.

It’s not that I don’t believe that young children should take lessons. I do. I just haven’t been sure that I’ve been the one to teach them. So I’ve focused on reaching students 11 and up.

But I did some thinking and realized that two of the best students I ever had started working with me when they were 7-1/2 and 9 years old, respectively. Both of whom I took on reluctantly because their parents begged me for a chance. One stayed with me for 11 years (!) and, although she didn’t go into music, she has been active in the arts in her new home of Los Angeles, working in the entertainment industry with companies such as ABC and Amazon. The other worked with me for two years till I moved away, and then studied with my good friend and colleague Diane Lane until she graduated from high school. She won first place at the national competition for HS Classical Women at NATS in 2018 and she is studying vocal performance in New York.

So maybe I am the one. Or they were the ones. But either way, I don’t need to limit myself So I’m going to tip a toe into the pool of younger students and offer a 4-day online vocal camp that I’m calling the Summer Singers Society. (Kinda took the idea of The Singing Club from Nikki Loney at Full Voice Music and made it my own.)

From June 21-24, I will work with six students between the ages of 8 and 11 to explore their voices in a supportive, fun, and pragmatic way, and start them on their vocal journey. The format will be the following:

- 10:30am-Noon: Vocal Explorations and Technique
- Noon-1:00: Lunch on your own (there might be a listening party during lunch, still TBD)
- 1:00-2:30pm: Work on individual pre-assigned songs. Singers will work on their solo pieces in class twice: M/W or T/Th, and will learn to listen constructively when others are singing.

Songs will come from age-appropriate musical theater or folk song repertoire. Singers will submit a recording of themselves singing a song to Christine by no later than June 4. Appropriate songs include:

- Happy birthday to you!
- The star-spangled banner
- Amazing Grace
- Any age-appropriate* musical theater or folk song that shows range

*For example, “Defying Gravity” is not age-appropriate.

Singers may also submit a list of songs in which they’re interested. Based on the recording, I will select a song from their list or one of her choosing. Singers will be given a copy of the music and an accompaniment track for them to practice with, if they don’t have their own already. Song selections will be made and sent to the singer by June 7.

On Friday, June 25, students may have the option to book a bonus 30 minute individual lesson (online or in-person, if in the area) with me to work personally on their songs and expand upon the concepts worked on earlier in the week. An evaluation and suggestion for future study will be sent within 72 hours of the bonus lesson. If people want to continue working with me afterwards, that’s up to them!

Registration is $125 through May 24 with the code SSS2021, and $150 afterwards. Registration will close June 4.

Why online?

A few reasons:

Although I’m fully vaccinated, the vaccine isn’t available for kids of this age yet, so I want a little more time for us to reach herd immunity before I let people in my house, especially a bunch of people. The individual lessons may be in my garage/driveway or in the studio with the windows open and an air filter running between students.
I think it would be really cramped to have 6 students in my studio all at the same time, so I’d have to rent a space to hold classes.
If I did have 6 students in my house, I would need to take the dog to day care.

Either 2 or 3 would be expensive for me and would increase the cost of the Society, which I would rather not do. At least not this time.

I’m convinced it’s going to be a good time! If you have a child or know a child who would benefit, send them my way.

Register for the Summer Singers Society at HERE
Register for the Ave Maria Webinar HERE
Or contact MVS if you have any questions or want to set up an info call

Session Singing – Being One Voice

A few weeks ago, I put together a few people to sing on a virtual choir video for World Voice Day. The day before WVD, I released a sneak peek of the video but didn’t really talk about it that much. (I had a few other things on my mind.)

Putting the video together was a new undertaking for me, and one I almost abandoned because I didn’t think I’d have the time to do – plus people weren’t really responding to my requests for participation. Ultimately, I had enough people to do it (although I did wind up laying down my own vocal tracks for soprano 2 and alto 2 because I was a little shorthanded, and also doubled the root of the chord in both the tenor and 2nd soprano lines just because we were a little out of balance). I have to thank my friend, fellow voice teacher, Speakeasy member, and Zumba instructor, Talia Zoll, for advising me on how to do it. I almost paid her to do it for me but then I figured it out for myself.

I sent everyone tracks to use, as well as the music, and gave very specific instructions on how to do the self-tape. Specific enough that everyone got them right! Then I compiled the videos and stripped the audio from them (much easier than I expected) and put the individual tracks into GarageBand to create one track. Which was much easier than I expected until GarageBand crashed right before I was about to add the final track. Tears and a couple of calls to Apple later, I got it to work. I had the audio. I had to do some tweaking – cut off notes held too long, extend notes not held long enough, do a little careful splicing if someone was a bit ahead of the beat, but I was pretty pleased with the end result. Now on to the video!

I used the free version of DaVinci Resolve to put the videos together. The hardest part was figuring out how to get people to pop up at different times as they came in, but once I figured that out (thank you, YouTube!), it went very quickly.

I’m very happy with the final product.

And the value of it, other than acknowledging World Voice Day (and learning a few new skills on my part), is that this is a great preparation for being a session singer, which is a pretty lucrative skill to have.

According to Berklee College of Music, being a session singer (or a backup singer or a studio singer) is a valuable skill that may lead to future success as a solo singer or as a career in and of itself. It involves a very special skillset, including:

Sight-reading – you often have to come in, read through something a few times and lay down the tracks in a very short period of time (studio time is expensive!)
Vocal harmony – sometimes it’s not written out for you
Vocal improvisation – see above
Knowledge of and proficiency in broad musical styles – pop, musical theatre, country, etc.
Excellent ear for pitch, tone – can’t be out of tune! While autotune exists, it adds to studio time and studio time is expensive!
Versatility – see knowledge and proficiency of styles
Phrasing – no swooping (unless you’re asked for it)!
Vocal technique – you need to be able to manage your breath so that you don’t have to breathe in places where they don’t want you to breathe
Impeccable sense of rhythm and timing – you can’t take liberties with the rhythm, especially if you are singing with other people
Ability to take direction – the producer or vocal arranger might decide to change things up quickly, and you need to be able to adapt (see versatility)
Not being a diva – if you are egotistical or unpleasant or argumentative, you will not be asked back (and the word will get out)

Some people might think of this kind of work as unglamorous, and it might be unless (or even if) you travel on the road with big-name artists. In 2013, the movie Twenty Feet From Stardom came out to celebrate some of pop music’s often overlooked (but not unsung) heroes. Here’s the trailer from that – I think the full movie is available on Netflix (figures that Mick Jagger is in the thumbnail instead of any of the subjects of the movie).

Even if session singing does not lead to stardom, it is a way to make a living and it might be something to consider. Like a lot of music careers, it depends on where you are and who you know. There’s more opportunity for this kind of work in places like NYC, LA, or Nashville than there is in, oh, let’s say, Milwaukee, but if you keep your eyes open and establish a reputation, perhaps it’s a side hustle that you can consider pursuing. (Plus the skills will help you be even more valuable in whatever your main hustle is.)

Figure out what skills you have already and what you need. Do you need to up your game in the realm of sightsinging? Intonation? How are you going to do that? What can I do to help you with that?

If you sang in the video I made, thank you and you should be proud of your participation in the video. I certainly am. Consider this your first time doing studio singing; and ask yourself – if I had done this live, what would/should I have done differently?

I am considering doing a workshop on being a session singer this summer, so …. stay tuned!

*****************

Summer lessons will be available for registration this Thursday,
May 13.
The Summer Singers Society (ages 8-11) will also be announced this Thursday, so look for that as well.
The free Ave Maria webinar is still open for registration and will take place this Saturday, May 15.
If you’d like to schedule a free Ask Me Anything Call with Mezzoid Voice Studio before committing to lessons, please contact MVS here.

So YOU want to sing Schubert’s Ave Maria …. correctly?

When I was a little kid, the organist at my parents’ church played the same songs every Sunday as the processional and recessional hymns:

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Holy God, we praise thy name OR
Holy, Holy, Holy

Being a little kid, I thought that was how it was supposed to be, and when there was a guest organist who played something different, I became indignant. “No, that’s not what the opening hymn is supposed to be! It’s supposed to be ‘Praise to the Lord.'”

Except in May, when the opening and closing hymns were (almost always in that order)

Immaculate Mary AND
Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above

Why in May? Because, in the Catholic Church, May is the month of Mary.

(I am SO sorry)

I had forgotten that until this morning, and realized that my planned webinar:

was very aptly timed! I picked the date because my husband was working that day and I didn’t have anywhere to be, and wedding season is coming up, but it has even more meaning because of the significance of the month in the Church year.

This is something I have wanted to offer for some time. Back in 2010, a high school student of mine was asked to sing the Schubert Ave Maria for a teacher’s wedding. She didn’t tell me she was going to do it, so we had never gone through the piece. Her mom called me the night before the wedding to tell me that she had rehearsed with the organist, who had scolded her rather harshly because she sang it with wrong rhythms. She was kind of shaken because she sang it the way she’d always heard it (and that organist was kind of a jerk to do that to a kid, if you ask me). I don’t want that to happen to any of my students ever again.

So many people sing the Ave Maria wrong. They swing the rhythm – this is easy to do because, although the piece is written in 4/4, the accompaniment is entirely in sextuplets, while the melody is in duple meter, so it is a case of 2 against 3. Try tapping triplets with your left hand (123 123 123) and tapping in duple meter with your right (12 12 12). It’s hard.

And then there’s the Latin. There are only 5 vowels in Latin, but somehow other ones creep in and it begins to sound like American Latin (note: while German Latin and French Latin are options when singing in certain styles of music, there is no place for American Latin in any musical genre).

Also – do you have to sing both verses? What if the time is limited and you only sing one? Is that okay? (The answer is, well, if you want to sing only half the prayer, that’s up to you.)

And if I’m singing it for someone German, should I use the original German text that Schubert wrote? (Quick answer: NO)

Join me on Zoom next Saturday, May 15, 2021, at 12:30pm ET to deconstruct the Ave Maria so that you can sing it for the next wedding or funeral. For 60 minutes, we’ll go through:

The origin of the song
The meaning – word for word
The pronunciation, using the International Phonetic Alphabet
The song itself – both the melody and that tricky rhythm

Participants will receive

The text with IPA
a copy of the Deconstructed Ave Maria in one of three keys, G, Ab, or Bb, within 24 hours of the webinar,
a practice track so you can work with it on your own and get it solid before you add the actual accompaniment

It’ll be fun!

Sign up HERE to join me!

Or CONTACT me if you want to work on it one-on-one

I’m BA-ACK

Well, that was fun.

Both my vacation and World Voice Weekend.

Honestly, I could not have asked for either to have gone better. In the case of the latter, there were no

internet outages
no-shows
inappropriate behavior (not even from me – mostly)
boring clinicians
trainwrecks of any kind

The only thing that went wrong was that there was one person to whom I somehow managed not to send the Zoom link for Christian Borle. And he was very understanding, so I gave him a refund.

The clinicians were all excellent, engaging, and entertaining (did you know that I enjoy alliteration?). The performers were giving and brilliant, and the masterclasses were fantastic – both the teachers and the students.

I’d like to do this again next year, and I hope to be able to price it so that I can reach the audience for whom it could offer the most benefit: the preprofessional and young professional music/theater student. It is also valuable for the avocational adult who wants to know about their craft, and for the teacher who is looking to refresh their knowledge and get a different perspective. (Kind of like NATS conferences – I don’t go because I don’t already know this stuff, I go because I want a different point of view.) The tentative dates are 4/23-24 (because World Voice Day falls on Easter Weekend.)

Really, it’s beneficial for anyone who has an open mind.

My vacation to Sedona was fantastic. I will say that we should have taken FIVE days to get there and FIVE days to get back. 8+ hours in the car per day was a little rough. Not so much for Bill and me, but for Seamus … well, you be the judge.

Up next:

Group Voice Class for Adults, starting next Tuesday: 4 weeks, $95, 7-8:30pm.

AND

So You Want to Sing the Ave Maria – CORRECTLY? – a free webinar on Saturday, May 15, 12:30pm ET.
(I’ll write more about this in Thursday’s blogpost.)

Counting down the days

Last day for auditor registration! Sign up HERE

Not QUITE more day till the One Voice Project video is premiered – tomorrow, April 16 (World Voice Day) at 11:30am (can’t watch it till tomorrow, but if you click on it, you can get a reminder to watch it):

Two days till World Voice Weekend launches (registration is closed but if you really want to get in, let me know and I’ll see what I can do):

AND four days till we refinance our house in the morning

And then head off to vacation some time after noon for two weeks.

This voice teacher needs a trip to Sedona! — Vacation awaits in Sedona, Arizona

Yes, we’re driving to Arizona. And bringing the dog.

Seamus gets to go on vacation too! — Celebrating his first birthday at puppy camp (2019)

See you on May 4 – or at World Voice Weekend, if you’re registered.

More projects are in the works for summer – stay tuned!

Last day for auditor registration! Sign up HERE

And then head off to vacation some time after noon for two weeks.

This site uses cookies 🍪 (but never oatmeal raisin)