Dear co-vocalisters,
Let's start by wishing you all a happy and musical new year.
It's been a very busy year for me so I did not find much time to write to the list. Although I did not contribute much in the last couple of months, I continued reading it.
Last year I have been working with a singing teacher, which was very fruitful. It was not easy though: I made the same kind of experience Kirsty made. I lost some control over my voice, and was quite frustrated at times because in the beginning I mainly made progress in learning to understand how bad the tone I had been making, was. Avoiding the old tone was very difficult in the beginning and since I tried to stop everything I used to do to 'make' a certain tone quality, my tone was in the beginning very basic. But after some time I got more and more different tone qualities back, and I also started to understand more how to control them.
When I listen now to (most) recordings from 1.5 years ago, I hear a tone that was basically wrong (throaty) with sometimes a tone that was ok. Now it is the other way around.
When looking back, I am really very happy with my teacher, although the lessons were often a fight against vocal inferiority feelings. Not that my teacher discouraged me, we even had fun during those lessons, but still: I was mainly working on what I was doing wrong, at least in my feeling, and that is kind of though. I was very glad I still had my pianist to make music with (and to learn from) and no matter how bad I sounded on my recordings with her, her piano play was always a great pleasure to listen to, often a comfort.
Apart from the fact that without the things I learned from this list, my teacher would have never accepted me, I still benefited from vocalist last year. Sharon's idea was a good example: it made it possible to finally cope with one of the things I have been struggling with since I started to sing: to find (or in the last months: to keep) the right balance between inhaling too much air to get my ribcage expanded on the expense of all kinds of bad tension, and, on the other side, having not enough air, not enough support, a weak kind of tone and all other kinds of misery. I know it is just a small trick, but it is exactly this kind of tips that can be extremely helpful sometimes. (And how amazing it is, what a small amount of air you need to sing a long phrase!)
This year will - be it unintended - also the year with my first paid gig. (An unknown person heard me practising with an organ player in a church, and despite the fact I discouraged her, saying my teacher disagreed, that I was not ready and still had to learn many things, she kept asking me to sing at a wedding and I said yes; I know it is a little bit early, but it will be in May and it is so nice to sing in a church, see below.). The practice session was September 9th, before the sermon on the occasion of my parent's wedding anniversary. I sang Caccinis' Ave Maria and Franck's Panis Angelicus. I had been so happy as to find an organ player who was not only really good, but also a very sensitive accompanist.
Of course most people on this list would have heard many things I did wrong: there was still some throatiness and tension, for example, and I sang one wrong note (nobody heard it, but was not the one written in the score). On the other hand: the voice sounded very full and amazingly loud. (I could hear it on the recording which was made below in the church, so at a distance of over 20 meters: it was very much louder than the amplified voice of the priest; I of course sang un-amplified. To see the beautiful interior of the church: see the P.S.) I know it is easy to sing loud in a church, but still, it was x times as loud as it would have been less than a year ago and it was a loudness I did not have to do anything for: all signs that I really had been making progress.
I was the more pleased, because I had never been so nervous when singing. That had a special reason: my ex-wife was in the audience; she had brought our daughter. My ex-wife had always disliked my singing, (it had even been a reason for our divorce;) but this time I somehow succeeded in changing her mind. (Of course my family liked my singing, but that does not mean anything of course: they liked it because of me, my ex-wife liked it despite me!) I think this is also the good thing about singing in a church: if you do it more or less ok, the sound that comes back is so strong, that it makes you (or at least me) feel great, which makes you sing better, so the sound that comes back ... et cetera and so on. (That's why you don't need a mike: this process is self-amplifying.)
I have the feeling (and I certainly hope) that my progress in this year will work in the same way as singing in the over 800 years old church worked for me, and of course I wish the very same thing (or something similar if that applies more) for all of you.
P.S. If you go to: www.rolduc.com then click on fotogalerij, and then on the lowest picture on the right, you'll see - slightly zoomed in - what I saw while singing, a really impressive image for an old catholic choir boy like me!
P.P.S. In 'A few lines I did not write last year 2' I will write about the way my new loudspeakers changed my opinion about many singers, especially about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and about how strong especially male voices can be coloured by almost all stereo-equipment and why you should never place your speakers on the floor.
Best wishes,
Dré de Man
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