The celebration of Black History Month is over, although Black history continues to flourish and enhance society (check out my studio FB page for the 28 artists to whom I paid tribute during February). Now it is March, and it is Music in Our Schools Month! (AKA MIOSM)
Not everyone knows this, but my undergrad degree is music education, unless you have read one of my very early blogposts. While I didn’t really want to teach classroom music, I was talked into it by an advisor who had no idea what kind of training a performer and voice teacher needed (and neither did I, for that matter), so she told me I had to be a music education major. The whole story of that misbegotten advice can be found here, in the aforementioned early blogpost.
However, while I don’t feel that i was suited to be a classroom K-8 music teacher, I respect and admire classroom music teachers tremendously. They are why I went into music in the first place. And I’m hoping to use this blog over the next month to profile the teachers who formed my life’s work – and me.
This year’s MIOSM theme is
This is the 37th year of MIOSM – when I was an undergrad, I was president of the SMENC (Student Music Educators National Conference) Chapter at my school. At that time, there was only a Music In Our Schools Week. It was a very special week for me. (MENC is now known as NAfME, National Association for Music Education).
And while music education, particularly at the public schools, has been decimated by budget cuts and a focus on STEM (a subject on which I will write later this month, and on which I’ve written before for publication), it still provides an opportunity for young people to find their voices – whether that is through actual voice training or learning to play an instrument.
Unlike the private training that I offer, classroom music offers the opportunity to make music together daily (or at least weekly) with others. Singing in a choir, playing in a band or orchestra, collaborating with each other and learning to listen to each other and create something special.
It is my hope that I can find some way to give back for MIOSM to celebrate the music education I received in my K-12 years, in my undergraduate years, and in my graduate school years. Next year, I’m going to think about this much earlier so that I can find a way to collaborate with the schools in the area (whether it’s through Mezzoid Voice Studio or through my role as programming chair for MDDC NATS).
In what ways did music education affect your life?
Who are the teachers you remember the most?
How is music the sound of your heart:
Drop a comment and let me know. Shout them out! Remember them on your socials and reach out to them if they’re still around!
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Congratulations to Nick Johnson and Kay-Megan Washington for their first place wins in their MDDC NATS categories, and to Juliet Jones (2nd place) and Sasha Kostakis (honors).
Nick, Juliet, and Sasha all will be competing at the Mid-Atlantic Regionals (and we’ll see what happens after that!)
I just finished adjudicating several categories for the MDDC NATS auditions and the first thing I had to do was watch a video called
Adjudication 101: A MUST Watch
(And they weren’t kidding. You had to watch it in order to proceed.)
it’s an unlisted video so I won’t/can’t share it here, but I think it’s okay if I write down my takeaways from it, because I think that these are things that apply to being a good adjudicator, a good teacher, a good friend, and basically a good human being.
In this video, Dr. Mark McQuade, NATS National Coordinator of Competitions and Auditions, outlines 5 points that should be present in comment sheets and in scoring auditionees. These are:
Encouraging
Truthful
Specific
Tactful
Legible
(The last one might not apply to anything other than adjudicator, but it’s still a good quality to have.)
As a teacher, I try hard to embody the top four. I’ve always said that I think that anyone walks into my studio is capable of going to Broadway or the Met until they prove otherwise (and that proof might be that they simply don’t WANT that for themselves, not that they can’t do it). So I think I have the encouragement part down.
(This is the opposite of how I approach other drivers on the road when going to DC – I assume they’re all morons until they prove me wrong).
I try to be truthful as far as the place that a student is in at this point in time, what I see them being capable of, and the difficulties that lie ahead in the event they decide to pursue a performing career.
I am pretty sure that the direction I give them is specificin terms of their technical development as well as the choices that they should make acting wise (giving them the freedom to expand upon that as needed).
Tactfulness – well, there’s something that I’m not sure I’ve mastered. I’m better than I used to be, but – I blurt, therefore I am. I am blunt, often to a fault. I think I’m less blunt in adjudicating strangers than I am with my own students. At least I am now.
My students are all being judged, probably as we speak, by people who have also been required to watch this video. I’m sure that they will all take these takeaways to heart in their judging. And will give them fantastic feedback which will (hopefully) reinforce the specific, encouraging, and truthful advice that I have given them – and maybe point out a few things that I might not have seen or in a way that I had not thought of. In a tactful and legible manner.
(One good thing about virtual lessons is that we’re all typing our comments instead of handwriting them, so they’re more likely to be legible!)
Whether you’re an adjudicator, a teacher, or do something else, I think these qualities are worth implementing into your own life – job-wise or relationship wise.
Today’s blogpost is inspired by the great Annie Lennox, one of my favorite performers of all times. She wrote an article for The Guardian entitled, “Why Everyone Should Sing.” And since this blogpost is titled Why I Sing (and you can go back and check out my very first post explaining that right here), – I think it’s very appropriate source material on which to base today’s post.
The very first words of her article are:
I love singing. I love the fact that there’s no external instrument that I have to master, that the voice is within me, the voice is me. And through my voice, I have the opportunity to express whatever I feel.
I have said in the past that singing is so personal; our voices are unique and even if we’re imitating someone else, we still sound different. It’s why we take it so personally when someone doesn’t like our singing; because “the voice is me.”
In a piano competition, assuming everyone is at the same level of technical ability, all the performers are playing the same instrument. It’s what they do with it that determines who the winner will be. What is the difference in phrasing? In interpretation?
In a vocal competition, assuming the same technical factors exist, all the singers could be singing the same song. But it’s going to sound different in each voice, because it is their own voice. They are not playing an external instrument. The winner could be the singer with the best voice – but maybe not.
Hopefully, the winner of a competition, no matter what instrument they’re using, will be the one who has something to say. And that’s something else Ms. Lennox says:
Singing a song is one thing, but expressing a song is another – it’s deep. That’s why you don’t have to be the best singer technically, as long as you can convince people of your emotional authenticity. Performing isn’t just about the voice – there’s a magic to it, an alchemic quality. All the separate elements add up to something else that’s really powerful. It’s that something that I’m interested in. [bolding mine]
Her reference to magic and alchemy struck me and inspired the title of this blogpost. What is alchemy?
a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life
a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way
She probably means the latter, but I think the former definition is exotic and exciting. The implication that, as performers, we are combining some kind of chemicals with speculative philosophy (which is defined as “being marked by questioning curiosity”) in order to convert that which is ordinary into something precious – that is thrilling to me.
If your singing is emotionally authentic, you are an alchemist, creating magic and transforming the ordinary into the sublime. You are combining the elements of vocal technique (breath, resonance, registration, alignment, articulation, and phonation) – which, by themselves, are basic – with the idea of “What would happen if” in order to create something new and exciting to your audience.
It’s not enough simply to master the individual elements and play/sing what’s on the page. It’s the extra step, that curiosity, that exploration, that sets you apart and makes you an artist, an alchemist, maybe even a star (if that’s what you want). It worked for Annie Lennox (the crystal clear vocals didn’t hurt either).
*****
What are the elements of your performer’s potion?
Explore Curiously Strong Singing and Performing with
Mezzoid Voice Studio by booking an
Ask Me Anything or Vocal Discovery Session here.
I’ve always got something brewing!
There are two words used in singing (especially choral singing) that I think should be stricken from the face of the earth:
HOLD
CUTOFF
We’ll deal with cutoffs another time, but right now I’m going to focus on the word “hold.”
Often, I find that my students have trouble “holding” a note. They run out of air, the note gets driven-sounding or forced, and they wind up squeezing out every last bit of air in an attempt to hold the note. But when they are singing a phrase of moving notes that is of the same duration as the “held” note, they have no problem. Why is this?
The difference is approach. Rather than approaching the single note of longer duration as though it were capable of movement, they are treating it as though it must be tamed and held in place. Often, a singer holding a note is unable to move from that note, even if they tried. What they really need to do is to think about sustaining the note rather than holding it.
is that hold is (lb) to grasp or grip while sustain is to maintain, or keep in existence.
In other words:
To hold a note is physical effort.
To sustain a note is to give it life and make it a part of the flow of the song.
Let’s look at this graphic I made up this morning:
On the left hand side of the graphic, there is a hand gripping a pencil. Hard. Is that an optimal position to actually write anything? And from the little lines above the hand, it appears that there’s some exertion and tension there. How long are you going to be hold that pencil before your hand starts shaking? It’s not like it weighs that much. You’re just using too much effort.
On the right hand side of the graphic, there is a hand elegantly holding a pencil in an efficient and graceful way. That hand will be able to write for awhile.
When you are singing and you have a long note to sustain, check to see if you can move from it. If you can’t, there’s some kind of tension somewhere. Perhaps it’s your breath and you’re pushing too much.
Are you using vibrato? This should be a natural consequence of the breath flow, not something you’re contriving by jaw or abdominal movement. Even if it’s not stylistic appropriate to have a full operatic vibrato, there should still be some shimmer in the show, some vibrancy, if not vibrato.
Perhaps your articulators aren’t free enough. Can you move your jaw while you’re singing? Or your tongue? (This is something for the privacy of the practice room or studio – it looks funny in public – don’t believe me? Check out Michele Lee singing “I believe in you” at 1:06.)
Some other ways that you can explore keeping the breath flowing in order to sustain and give life to the phrase include:
Sing it as a series of staccato notes and see how long you can go. Then, connect the dots and do it as written
Sing it while moving back and forth to the neighboring tone or even go up a few notes a back
Try physically moving while you’re sustaining the single note – wave a pencil in the air, move your hands through the duration of the note, pretend you’re bowing a string instrument (and dig into the imaginary strings), DANCE!
And then try it without any ornamentation or gimmickry but with the idea that I could if I wanted to
And if you really can’t hold it that long, early on, don’t. As Marianna Busching told me, years ago,
People don’t notice how often you breathe or how long you hold a note, but they sure notice if you run out.
Build up stamina. Maybe you can’t maintain it yet, but aim to maintain it a little longer each time.
Look at it this way:
If there’s an interesting line in the accompaniment under your long note, and you can’t maintain your note for its full duration without drawing attention to the fact that you can’t maintain it, find a graceful* way to stop singing. It’s highly unlikely people in the audience will have the score in their laps and call you out on the fact that the note was intended to be 16 beats long and you only sang it for 8. Let the pianist have their moment with the beautiful line that the composer wrote for them.
*The operative word here is “graceful.” Have this in mind even if you can sustain the note because things happen in performance. The room is dry. You have a cold. Phlegm happens. Above all, you have to sing it as though you meant that to happen all along.
Consider a change in your attitude toward long notes as being ones that have motion and life, rather than ones you hold up in the air for all to see.
Above all, a long note means something. It’s not there just to challenge you, it’s there to express an emotion. Figure out why it’s so long. And then sustain it, don’t hold it in a death grip.
It’s a matter of balance and release. Two words I use often in my teaching for a variety of technical and emotional applications.
And with that in mind, we’ll talk about cut-offs another time. Don’t let me forget.
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If you want more ideas about how to sustain healthy singing while meaning something, why not contact Mezzoid Voice Studio to find out how we might work together?
As I mentioned in a recent blogpost, Grit and Creating a Practice, I committed to doing 30 consecutive days of yoga at the beginning of this year, using videos by Adriene Mischler of Yoga with Adriene. And, surprisingly, I’ve kept it up!
While I’ve written before about how cross-training relates to singing (mainly based on a poster I saw outside a Pilates studio), it wasn’t until I actually started doing yoga that I thought about how they really can and should work together.
One of my fellow Speakeasy Cooperative colleagues, Marisa Atha, is also a yoga teacher, and she wrote a blogpost awhile back about 7 Attributes of a Personal Yoga Practice and I was thinking that these all are attributes of a personal singing practice as well.
Grit – I could link this to my previous article, but I did that in the first paragraph. Show up and do the work!
Patience – that’s a hard one for us as singers, especially early on when our technique isn’t solid yet. Especially when we hear recordings of people which may or may not be enhanced by their sound engineer’s skill at autotune or cutting and pasting multiple tracks or just adding more echo to the sound to boost it.
Flexibility – Ms. Atha speaks of this relating to both the body and the mind, and we can relate that to singing. Our voices become more flexible as we work on our technique, in terms of range and ability to move rapidly within that range, and our minds become more flexible as to the possibilities we have ahead of us.
Awareness – This is crucial for us as singers. Too many singers go through the motions without being aware of things they’re doing – like that weird Baltimore approach to /u/ (which comes out as some variation of “ew,” which sounds particularly bad in Latin or Italian). Don’t go on autopilot!
Space – As Ms. Atha says, “We create space between muscles and joints, but also an openness of mind, heart, and spirit.” As singers, we create space between our back molars, by the elevation of our soft palates (the degree to which is based on the style we’re singing and which needs to happen on the inhalation, not through any weird and artificial kind of manipulations), by opening our mouths the requisite amount needed for the pitch and vowel we’re singing, and by our alignment and freedom in our bodies and how they relate to the space we’re in on stage or in our practice rooms. We also need to create space for ourselves to be open in our “mind, heart, and spirit,” which is necessary to facilitate flexibility and awareness as well.
Balance – if you take lessons from me, you know that I talk about balance a lot. We’re balancing our breath pressure through appoggio/resistance; we’re balancing in terms of alignment, in resonance, in negotiating registration breaks and determining how best to use registration for the style in which we’re singing, and in initiating and ending sound (phonation). There’s also emotional balance. As in yoga, balance is not just about remaining upright, but the energy involved in doing so and in taking yourself through the rest of your life as well. And lastly –
Grace – Not only looking and sounding graceful/elegant in your performing, but feeling an internal grace and acceptance of where you are in the process. For singing, this also applies to develop a gracefulness of transitioning through your registration, of being comfortable in your body and able to use it as a tool in your interpretation (Will I move here? How will I gesture in a manner that looks intentional and without artifice?)
All of these elements of a yoga practice can – and should – apply to a vocal practice. I invite you to try adopting this mindset the next time you go into a practice room. Find the grace and grit to allow yourself to seek balance, awareness, flexibility, and space. And above all, have patience with yourself.
If that scares you, try this:
And with that in mind, I’m heading downstairs. According to this month’s challenge, called “Blossom,” I’m on tap to do “Yoga Kiss” today, whatever that is.
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Thanks to Marisa Atha for her wonderful article and inspiration
for this post (and to give yoga another try).
If you’re in Northern California and looking for a voice teacher
to enhance your own vocal practice,
check out Marisa’s studio, Three Sparrows Studio.
And if you want to try an online practice, check out her
new yoga studio for women, Mama Yoga!
How do we blaze a trail as performers? As students? As teachers? What is that next step that will set us apart?
As performers and students, we need to focus on things other than learning the skills needed to pass a test, win a competition, and get into college.
As teachers, we need to be able to do something other than “teach to the test” or to prepare students for solo-ensemble, or the NATS auditions, or the upcoming recital.
I feel seen
Okay, I’m guilty of that. To a certain extent. But I can explain.
As a performance-oriented teaching artist, I seem to always have something to work toward. A competition, an audition, a recital, both for myself and for my students. But I do hope that my students aren’t working just toward completing those tasks, but discovering the process that is needed for them to take the next step in their performing lives. And I hope that I’m making that clear to them in helping them in that preparation.
If we merely follow the path without blazing the trail, nothing new happens.
Seth Godin is not a fan of traditional education. His belief is that traditional education follows a path, and doesn’t create trailblazers. Which is why he’s developed his Alt-MBA program, with the idea that we need to take the next step beyond merely learning enough to ace a test, to become independent thinkers and innovators.
In his November 10, 2021 blogpost, School vs. Progess, Godin outlines the difference between maintaining the status quo (school) and taking the next step (progress). I’ve added a column of how I think the next step pertains to us as performers, and I think we can apply that to teaching performers as well. (And in case you might say, “Okay, your words are just synonyms for the ones in the previous column,” I’m attaching definitions to tell you why they’re not.)
As artists, we do have goals to achieve. We have competitions, we have auditions, we have assignments in our classes and lessons that we have to complete and master in order to get to the next level. And as teachers, we have to prepare our students for those events. But if the goal is just to get through it and get it done, without taking anything from it that, it’s just a treadmill. We might as well be working as cashiers at Target, putting in 8 hours and then going home.
(This is not a denigration of Target cashiers. I was one in high school and college.)
When you are on stage, are you just putting in your time and going through the motions? Are you following, leading, or responding? Are you copying, innovating, or interpreting? Are you doing what’s correct, finding what’s possible, or letting your imagination run free? (Or as I love to say in lessons, “what would happen if….?”)
Are you blazing a trail or just following a path?
******* Find your trail (or your grail) with a complimentary Ask Me Anything session – which might lead to a Vocal Discovery session, which just might result in your joining Mezzoid Voice Studio. More info here.
I was looking through my blogpost ideas for today and came across something I saved marked Offensive/Defensive, and I thought it would have something to do with football (the Super Bowl is this Sunday).
But it actually came from a Seth Godin post about offensive/defensive behaviorand finding the place in between. It pertains more to marketing. But I was thinking about how these terms pertain to performing and I think they also relate to the idea of armored vs. daring leadership (or performing), which I wrote about here.
As far as being defensive, Godin writes:
The problem with becoming defensive is that our internal narrative gets in the way of expressing what’s actually going on. Because we’re imagining all the blame and shame and scorn that the other person may or may not be feeling toward us, we bring those feelings into our words and actions, and end up making a mess.
If your performance is a defensive one and is all about yourself and how people are receiving your message, yes, you wind up making a mess. Because you aren’t expressing what is intended by your song, your dialogue, the composer, the playwright, etc.
Godin uses the term “offensive” here to describe offensive behavior, which also gets in the way of the message. I don’t think that this works in performing, because “offensive” can be in the eye of the beholder. You can be performing something exactly the way it was intended by the work’s creator, and someone is going to be offended. So let’s switch over to the idea of “offensive” and “defensive” as they relate to business, because I think they might be more relevant here.
In Mark Samuel’s blogpost on Bstate.com, he talks about the roles of the offensive player as they relate in football and in business. Here’s a quick overview of the differences between being on the offense vs. on the defense:
OFFENSIVE
DEFENSIVE
Proactive
Reactive*
Has a goal in mind
Is completely in the moment
Sees the obstacles in the way and creates strategy to counter
Is the obstacle
Scores points
Lets other people score points
Has motivation to keep moving forward
Keeps others from moving forward
*You might say, “But Christine! Isn’t all acting RE-acting?
Shouldn’t I be reactive if I want to be authentic?
Wouldn’t that mean that I should be defensive?”
That was the conventional wisdom. But current wisdom favors responding (more measured, more thoughtful, less spontaneous) in favor of reacting (knee-jerk, emotional, instinctive). A response is done with the intention of eliciting a positive outcome. A reaction might elicit a positive outcome, but it might elicit a negative one as well. According to the article, A Blueprint for Leadership Transformation:
Reacting is emotional, responding is emotional intelligence.
With the exception of improvisation, as performers, we know the story before we begin. We have the information so that we can make those decisions, even if they’re in the moment, in order to create a positive outcome. We have a story to tell, whether it’s a narrative of two minutes or two hours, and we need to make the choices based on the information that we have gathered in advance.
And even with improvisation, the best improvisers – in both music and acting – have developed strong enough technique to have that stored information at their fingertips, so they are, in fact, responding to the situation with the tools that they have learned rather than reacting in a knee-jerk fashion. They are on the offense, rather than the defense.
Both definitions of being defensive work here because they both involve blocking something. In the case of Godin, you are blocking yourself from being authentic and vulnerable in the cause of self-protection. In the sports use of the term, you are preventing someone from getting somewhere. In the case of performance, you very well might be blocking yourself – or the audience – from achieving the satisfaction of an authentic interpretation.
In performance, we need to be able to respond in a manner that gets us to our goal and to move forward. We need to think offensively in order to achieve our goals and to tell our stories.
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If you want to develop the offensive skills necessary to be a good performer, then try a Vocal Discovery Session with Mezzoid Voice Studio to hone those skills – and have fun (without the possible head injury factors involved in football)
During cold and flu season, I’ve had many students interrupt their singing by coughing, clearing and pointing at their throats, saying, “Oh, sorry, phlegm.”
And my response is usually, “Hey, phlegm happens. And please try not to clear your throat.”
For years, I have wanted to create a sticker for my studio that says:
PHLEGM HAPPENS (AND IT’S SNOT FUNNY)
Mezzoid Voice Studio LLC
So I did.
(eww)
(Someone said, “Don’t look now, but someone has sneezed on your logo.”)
But as Kyle Broflovski says,
and that is that what we might be calling phlegm might actually be mucus. And vice versa.
I feel like I should have known this before. I did know that your body produces 1-1.5 liters of mucus per day. I know this because there was an ad in some magazine about 20 years ago for an allergy medicine showing two people dancing in a field, and it said something like this (this is not the actual picture – just what was available in Canva):
At least they seem HAPPY abou tit
We need mucus to function. It’s like engine oil. It lubricates and filters everything. It’s thin, it’s clear, it’s stringy, and it comes from the nose, sinuses, and the lining of the throat. You have mucus membranes throughout your body. Mucus is the body’s flypaper.
If you are experiencing THICK mucus, that’s probably the result of dryness, which is very common in the winter months or in dry climates. If you take medications that dry you out, it will dry you out EVERYWHERE (see mucus membranes throughout your body). That will result in thick mucus and cords that feel like you used sandpaper on them.
Thick mucus is often mistaken for phlegm. Phlegm comes from the lower airways, the lungs and lower respiratory tract. If you have phlegm, the consistency of which is also thick and gloppy (like thickened mucus), it indicates that there is some kind of inflammation or infection in your body. Phlegm generally moves upward, which is why you cough it out. (Hopefully, with an artfully placed kleenex or handkerchief to catch it, especially if you are in my presence). You have mucus in places other than your nose and throat, but you don’t have phlegm in your stomach. Unless you’ve swallowed it.
EWW.
As my husband, the ER doc says, “All phlegm is mucus, but not all mucus is phlegm. It [phlegm] is specific to the laryngeal and oropharyngeal regions [i.e., throat and where your throat meets your mouth].”
The terms are used interchangeably, even by health professionals. Whether or not you have thick mucus or phlegm, it’s still going to get in your way if you have to sing. So what can you do to relieve that gloppy feeling in your throat? If you are feeling phlegmacious (my word) or phlegmular (my former student Jennifer Leevan’s interpretation)?
You have several options:
Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Both internally (water) and externally (humidifier). These are things that should be part of your daily health care routine anyway.
Guaifenesin, the active ingredient in Robitussin, is great for thinning mucus, if you can handle it. It is also sold generically.
If you have allergies, consider an antihistamine or decongestants – again, remember that if you are drying up your nose, you are drying up every other mucus membrane in your body, therefore losing that lubrication your vocal folds require to function efficiently.
Spicy food! Eat some Thai food and watch everything open up!
Nasal spray or rinse or neti pot. You can check out my tutorial on how to use nasal spray HERE.
And as I review that last link, I see that I wrote it on February 3, the Feast of St. Blaise, patron saint of throat maladies. And again, I’m writing today’s post on his feast day, which seems appropriate. I wrote the last one in 2020, and was marveling at how healthy I’d remained through cold and flu season and was hoping that I wasn’t jinxing anything by the post. Who knew Covid was right around the corner to shut everything down?
In a nutshell,
Mucus is snot.
Phlegm is… not.
Generally, if mucus is working the way it’s supposed to, you’re not even aware of it. Much like everything else in your body. Or even vocal technique, for that matter. It’s only when things go awry that you become aware of it.
Oh, and if you’d like to know why you shouldn’t cough to clear your throat, check out this video of four singers being scoped while they sing. They are asked to cough at the beginning of the video, and you can see just how forceful coughing is on the vocal folds (come for the coughing, stay for the lovely singing):
(By the way, I will be giving out those stickers to my current students in the next few weeks. )
For more information on vocal health, check out Dr. Heather Nelson’s blog on the topic. She actually wrote a detailed post about phlegm, which I didn’t see until I finished my own. 😀
Today is National Get Up Day, a holiday created in 2017 by U.S. Figure Skating to commemorate the end of January (National Skating Month).
For those of us with wobbly ankles who only remain upright on the ice with the assistance of well-placed friends on either side of us, how does this impact us? Other than getting out of bed in the morning (√), what does #wegetup mean to us?
The mission statement is outlined as follows:
The Get Up® campaign was launched by U.S. Figure Skating in 2017 to help skaters and non-skaters alike to recognize the grit, passion and perseverance needed to Get Up in the rink and in life every day.
Grit, you say? Passion? Perseverance? Seems like this is something I wrote about just a little while ago.
Whether you are getting up from a literal fall (on the ice, into the back of a chair after slipping on a rug, walking up your skirt in a performance, tripping over a crack in the sidewalk, having a tower of boxes fall in front of you as you are heading into a room, slipping on fruit cocktail sauce while working at American Serb Memorial Hall and smashing into a concrete floor – yes, all of these things have happened to me) or a figurative one (divorce, substance abuse, mental or physical illness, job loss, etc.), your only recourse is to GET UP.
It will be difficult. You might be in pain at first. Metaphorically or literally.
And no one is saying you have to do it right away or all by yourself. Take baby steps. Find a support team – people who hold you up, whether it’s physically, psychologically, or emotionally.
If you had a bad audition or performance, you have to get back on the musical ice and practice.
Maybe you have to revisit the basics
Perhaps you need a coach or teacher – and if you already have one, examine what they’ve been telling you. Were you listening?
If they haven’t been telling you the right things OR if they have, but for some reason it wasn’t resonating with you, perhaps you need a new coach or teacher.
Perhaps you need to revise your repertoire – are you singing things that are a little above your technical ability right now? This isn’t to say you’ll never sing them – just not now.
Every day, you have to start anew. And some days that process is harder than others. As Jerome Kern said (via Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers):
#WeGetUp
Skaters actually practice falling and learn how to do it without serious, long-lasting injury. Maybe that’s a skill that we should learn in other areas so that it won’t come as such a shock when it happens.
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I may not be able to help you stay upright on skates,
but I can support you in other ways. There are a couple of openings
in the studio right now. Why not find out how to work with me?
Today is Wolfgang Amadeus (although some write it as “Amadé”) Mozart’s 265th birthday (and he doesn’t look a day over 250).
As a lyric mezzo-soprano, I have sung a lot of Mozart. I loved the movie AmadeusMy favorite contemporary composer, Stephen Sondheim, has been referred to as the 20th century’s combination of Mozart and Shakespeare.
But the most important lesson I learned from Mozart was how to count. I learned that in a production of Cosi Fan Tutte, which I did with what was to become Milwaukee Opera Theater back in 1999. I was Dorabella, a role I had dreamed of playing (and wish I’d gotten to play again, but oh well).
Of course, I knew how to count by then. I’d been performing professionally for nearly 20 years by that time (I started in utero) and done a lot of pretty difficult music that involved complex rhythms and meter changes, so of course, I knew how to count. In theory.
Perhaps it was Richard Crittenden who really taught me how to count – without looking like I was counting. His motto was “Make the Music Happen,” and he drummed it into his students at the Crittenden Opera Workshop that everything in the music mattered, and that you had to use it to create a cohesive narrative. Never should you look like you were waiting for your entrance, or, god forbid, like you were counting the beats till you came in. You had to be emotionally engaged during the moments you were not singing, even if you were alone on stage, and if that meant that you were singing the music in your head with words that applied to your staging or emotions, that’s what you needed to do. I remember doing the Ballad of Baby Doe quintet and writing in my score, during the introductory measures, “I’m going to go over here, and then I’ll cross to the left, and now I’ll look really sad” just so that what I was doing was with intention (and I can’t hear those opening bars without singing that in my head).
Those ideas were the early seed of my learning to act in opera, which had not been part of my training up to that point. And I applied them and built upon them to gain a deeper interpretation than just navigating the stage/traffic management. But the most important application for me, in an emergency, was during that production of Cosi Fan Tutte, about 10 years after I had done the workshop.
We were doing two performances at a church on the East Side of Milwaukee, with a cast of four, no chorus. Our director was also our conductor, and it was a pretty mom-and-pop kind of production, done with piano. We were expected to come in having learned the music already and go right into blocking. It was a two-week rehearsal process. Our soprano had spent a substantial amount of time and money working on the role with a professional coach. I, on the other hand, had sat in Einstein’s Bagel Bakery every morning for about 6 months with my Sony Walkman and headphones, with the score in front of me while I drank copious amounts of Diet Coke and ate chocolate chip bagels with a schmear of peanut butter. She was completely off book and knew her part cold. I was a little intimidated by her; she knew the show backwards and forwards. I knew my part, but also knew that staging would cement any of the places where I was unsure, because I tend to be a very kinesthetic learner.
Rehearsals went well, and we were a great team. I had very high hopes for opening night.
During the Act 1 Finale, the soprano didn’t come in at a crucial point of polyphony (“tutta piena ho l’alma in petto”) where she had always come in before – flawlessly. And my entrance was based on hers. So Ididn’t come in. (I suspect we had been staged so that we couldn’t really see the conductor that well, so maybe he cued us and we didn’t see it or maybe he didn’t since it had never happened before).
You’ve hear the words, “train wreck,” right?
We were all a bit shaken by that and Act II was shaky, but we wound up okay by the end.
We had a day off before the closing performance, and I decided to sit with my score and look at the music so that I would come in no matter what and not depend on anyone. I paid special attention to the Act I finale, since that’s where we’d gone off the rails (see “train wreck,” above).
I realized that there were two beats before that section began and the soprano entered, meaning that there were six beats before I came in.
Flashing back to Richard Crittenden’s training, I thought, “Well, I don’t want to look like I’m counting to six. What is my mood there? What would I be thinking?”
And I realized that the predominant thought during that section was “oh sh!t.”
So.
There was one “oh sh!t” before the soprano came in and three “oh sh!ts” before I did.
Hey, that could work.
But it shouldn’t have to be because surely it wouldn’t happen again. RIGHT? RIGHT?
Wrong. It happened again. But this time I was ready.
We finished the previous section and I thought my first “oh sh!t” and DAMN if she didn’t miss that entrance again. So I came in. I sang the back half of her line:
“…. piena ho l’alma in petto”
and then sang my line (“tutta piena ho l’alma in petto”) and then she realized what she had done and jumped back in on her next line.
Whew.
So I guess that Richard Crittenden actually was the one to teach me to count. But Mozart – specifically Cosi (and, unintentionally, that soprano) taught me to become independent and not base my entrances on anything but the musicianship. Because it’s all there. The notes, the emotion, everything you need. If you pay attention and find it for yourself. Whether you have the help of a coach, or you sit in a coffee shop with headphones on, mouthing the words while everyone around you thinks you’re loony. It’s still on you to be so prepared that you cannot get it wrong.
So thanks, Richard. And thanks, Herr Mozart (or can I call you Wolfie?).
What methods do you use to make counting organic and part of the fabric of the piece rather than something external and contrived? “Oh sh!t” might have limited application (probably not the best choice when singing something from, say, The Messiah) but what can you find that works for you and feels natural? Perhaps it might amuse you a little bit, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’d love to hear the craziest thing you ever came up with to keep time. Tell me about it in the comments!
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