Terrifying

After all this time spent with my vocal instructor, she finally laid the law down at my last lesson and told me, "you're singing an actual song today." I've been doing nothing but vocal exercises for so long but never was ready to make that leap.
If you've never had vocal lessons, let me tell you that there are some very strange exercises out there. First starting, I was quite self-conscious doing them because they distort your face in odd ways and some just have you making strange buzzing sounds and blowing your lips out really hard. But I overcame and now think nothing of it. Being silly with it makes it easier. But the thought of actually attempting a real song in a real way, without being silly, has been a roadblock for a while. It's terrifying. There's a lot of vulnerability in it. But, as I said, she laid down the law and I had no choice.

As I was unable to come up with a song, she picked for me. I'll tell you that the songs we did were certainly not what I had in mind when I started trying to sing. But you have to start somewhere, and thus we started with two songs that were in a comfortable range for me.
"You know what song would work great with your voice? 'Loveshack!' "
Now, I said above that neither song I ended up singing was what I had in mind...but it's freakin' "Loveshack." Everyone loves to sing that (ridiculous) song. It also has the bonus of a female part so my instructor could do that and I could do the male part. Doing a duet made me more comfortable about the whole ordeal.
"Loveshack" was done on a karaoke machine and the volume of it made me more comfortable singing. Part of my singing problem is a confidence issue when you can hear too much of just my voice. I can just belt it out along with the radio while I'm in the car and (mostly) be on key, but as soon as you cut the volume off, my voice withdraws back into my body like a scared turtle. So I think the loud machine was a good stepping stone.

The next song was "The Dance" by Garth Brooks. I'm not much into country, despite living in Nashville for so long (there's a lot more here than country, if you're not aware), but I grew up with my parents listening to country in the 80s and 90s and there are a few songs from back then that I like. This happens to be one of them. As we decided on the song she says, "now we are going back to the piano, you're going to play this song and sing it...I'll face away from you if it will make you more comfortable." And that is exactly how it went down. I managed to make it through the entire song and didn't feel it was a complete disaster. She was oddly excited and, seemingly, proud that I had made the steps I had, but instead of feeling proud about it myself, mostly I was thinking, "I'm never going to have a strong, interesting voice like I dreamed." I try to shove that thought aside the many times is comes to mind. Negativity is never going to get me anywhere.

Now, I've done plenty of piano performances at this point in my life, and I'm never really nervous about them. Even my first performance when I was only ~6 months into learning wasn't bad. I get a few butterflies leading up to it, but once I'm at the piano, I zone out and take care of business. I'm told I look very angry when I play, but that's just me focusing. My expression probably isn't helped by the fact that I have a default "resting bitch face" though...
Despite my playing piano in front of groups of people without nervousness, singing in front of ONE person - who has by now seen me and heard me do some WEIRD stuff - was dreadful. And she had her back to me!
I knew as I finished that I had been nervous but, as I reached up to scratch my brow, I felt my forehead and it was COVERED in sweat. My eyebrows were damp if that tells you how much. That gave me a new respect for live performers. Not that my respect was low; vocal classes has pretty much raised my awe of singers each time I go to class. Granted, I'm sure most of them are far more confident in their voice than I so they might not have quite as much inner turmoil about performing.

I'm supposed to be working on the country song for our next class and hopefully by then some of the mistakes I made I can manage to remedy. We'll see in a few days.

Various Happenings

It's been a busy year. Keeping an updated blog that only ~3 people read is more work than anticipated, especially on a topic that doesn't lend itself to being put into words.

Here's what has been going down.

1) I've had two recitals since the last time I updated, which tells you how far between my updates have been. Or that I have recitals too often. But I've grown to enjoy the recitals. After all, one of my goals was to play in front of people, though a recital isn't exactly what I had in mind, nor is playing a piece out of a lesson book. Still, it's progress and a step toward one of my goals.
The last recital I played my most challenging piece thus far, an upbeat ragtime song. And while I'm not a ragtime fan, I loved playing the piece, especially in front of a bunch of strangers. I get the expected butterflies before a recital but when I actually play I completely zone out and forget about everyone else. I didn't even notice a cameraman got right in my face. I'm told my gaze gets "focused, intense, and angry". The furrowed brow isn't anger, just concentration. I don't really recall being up on the stage except for feeling completely in sync with the piece, and that was a nice, rare moment.

2) I was in New York for a week this month for a wedding and made some pretty great new friends. I danced terribly out on the dance floor and had a great time when I was finally able to not worry about other people and just enjoy myself. Who knew dancing (even badly) was such fun? Have I really been missing out all these years because I was embarrassed? One of my new goals for the year is to learn to dance with some fast tempo songs so I can keep up with one of my new friends, Justin, who danced everyone's face off.
My other new buds are a husband and wife duo who are both musically inclined. When they found out I played a few instruments, they wanted to break out the instruments. He plays bass and she the violin. I played them some pieces I'd done before as well as a new one I was working on, and they played me an incredible cover of a Coheed and Cambria song that they are doing for an upcoming talent show, which I desperately hope they record. After that we just sort of goofed off, singing songs and jamming. I was reminded just how much fun it is to play music with people. It'd been far too long.

3) I played a ukulele for the first time and found it to be quite the pleasant little instrument. Playing it felt very naturally and I taught myself a few songs in an hour or so. I think I might pick up my own for fun.

Speaking of which, after I found out they had a uku, I shared with them a fantastic player I had just seen a few weeks prior.

All in all, a very eventful few months and I'm feeling quite inspired. Can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings.

I was thinking about some of my goals from when I started this whole process and it made feel that my progress has been craaaaawling by. I've accomplished a few of my objectives, but my most important ones are yet a long way off, though they shouldn't be as far off as I am making them.

I've always had a bit of a problem with being a jack-of-all-trades type of person. I know a good deal about a fair number of subjects and have experiences with many of them. I can draw decently. I can paint okay. I can play guitar alright. I can have basic conversations in a couple of other languages. I'm not a terrible rock climber, I'm somewhat talented at Aikido, etc. I find all of that satisfying in some ways, yet at the same time, I would love to be simply incredible at something. I'm interested in so many topics that I want to dip my toes into all of them, often forgetting that my life - as far as I'm aware - is finite and I probably need to have more focus.

I was discussing a favorite author of mine today and how in his podcasts about writing he constantly recites the importance of a motto that you may have heard, "BICHOK", which simply means "butts in chair, hands on keyboard." Likely this is obvious to you, but it's the idea that, as a writer or someone who wants to be a writer, you need to always be writing. You don't talk about it or don't think about or say "maybe when I'm in the mood." You just do it. He always stresses how it's almost more important to write when you don't feel like it than it is when you are inspired to do so.
This concept sums up some of my problems/limitations. No one who has had great success in any of my areas of interest have done it by doing it my way. "My way" being to extensively read and discuss a topic but rarely getting around to actually putting the time into practicing a given craft. If I spent the amount of time at practice as I do researching "how to", I would probably have mastered several skills and talents by now.

We can take one of my goals stated on my first entry as a prime example. I've always wanted to write a song, and writing a complete one was an aspiration when I started getting back into music. That was a year and a half ago. Guess how many songs I've written? Actually, guess the percent of a single song I've written? Either question you answer, the number is the same. Zero, if that wasn't obvious.

This is even after I was challenged by my vocal instructor to write one "no matter how terrible it ends up." Which is honestly a great way to start, probably. I always wonder, "how does someone even start writing a song" and the key probably is very simply, "they just do it" and there's no real magic to it. Any musician I admire surely started out writing terrible songs, despite their talent level, and they continued writing terrible songs until they started writing less terrible songs, and then they started writing amazing songs. And likely the secret to all those amazing ones is that they started out as terrible songs that slowly became amazing songs as they tweaked them, not unlike how a painting starts as a bunch of colored shapes and blobs and then suddenly you have a beautiful landscape or portrait.

I'm sure part of my problem is that I'm scared of making something terrible and then becoming disheartened. The obvious issue here is that if I never try, I'll never even get that far. Besides, I've made plenty of terrible things in my day, what's one more thing? I can't start improving on it if I never make it happen in the first place.

Dave Grohl has a great quote that sort of relates (though it's overall in reference to how ridiculous music reality shows are):
“Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some shitty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don’t need a f'ing computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol.”

Maybe this will be the year I can really display how much I suck and maybe by the end I'll suck a little less.

Still Progressing

It's amazing how quickly you can get behind on something that you meant to do frequently. I was thinking today, "I haven't updated my music blog in a few weeks" only to look and realize it had been several months. Despite a little funk I went through where my motivation waned a bit, I'm still making progress though - as usual - not nearly as much or as fast as I'd like. Part of the problem I'm discovering is that it's oddly difficulty to write about music especially given my current state of musical skill isn't especially interesting to anyone but myself and possibly my instructor. And when you spend a lot of the little free time that you do have either practicing or in a class, it makes it hard to get around to updating a blog that no one reads. Still, I started this for myself as a motivational tool, and it will be nothing but a boon to me if I can keep it up a little more regularly with better detail than I've provided previously. My lofty vision of what I was going to do with this page was pretty high up the mountain side compared to what I've actually accomplished.

In my effort to fill all of my spare time with productivity, I think I possibly bit off a little more than I could chew. In addition to piano lessons, I am doing vocal lessons, as previously mention. Pile onto that the fact that I dusted off my guitar and have been trying to get back into that, as well as taking about 3 classes - 'music theory', 'music tech', and 'learning how to learn' - I think it's fair to say I'm a little overwhelmed. That's not even counting the self-study I've been doing for work to try and improve myself so I can progress there as well. All of that said, I'm sure you can see how I have gotten a little over-zealous in what I can accomplish in a given time and have had trouble staying afloat.

I'm going to try and spread myself a little less thin so I can give each thing I'm working on a bit more quality as far as my effort and thought goes. At this point I'm almost doing myself and anyone helping me a disservice by drowning myself in work.

I will do better.

Vocal Range

Today was my second vocal lesson and I'm already feeling a lot more confident in what I might accomplish if I stick with it. We worked on seeing how far I could sing along with scales using a variety of sounds. I went ~2 octaves and my instructor thinks I can go farther still, both high and low. All these techniques for focusing on projecting sound, for imagining sounds, and paying attention to the shape of your mouth, and where the sounds sort of resonant inside your body is all oddly fascinating to me.

This was the range I did today while keeping my voice in harmony with the piano. Exciting stuff!

I'm hoping I will soon be able to look back on this starting point in signing the way I look back at starting piano and being amazed at how far I've come in so short a time period. I wish I'd not fallen out of playing music for so many years...I would be so much farther. But I can't undo that so I suppose there's no sense fretting over it. Eyes forward!

Singing

  Today, after years of being too terrified to take the step, I went to my first voice lesson. And it was a freakin' blast.

  When I arrived I was really hoping there would be no one else there, that no one would be able to see me, and that we would be in an air-tight room where no sound could enter nor escape. Obviously not a single one of those hopes came true. But part of the reason I wanted to do the class was I thought it might help me with my shyness, so what better way to put that to the test. I'm 33, it's time I stopped being shy. I managed to make it through without fainting or voiding any bowels or anything else that fear might cause a person, so I call that a victory. I was slightly comforted when I entered and this tiny little 6 year old said in a cute voice, "hi! I take singing lessons just like you!"

  Who knew there was so much going on with the voice. Head shape, neck length, how you picture sounds, all sorts of things I never imagined mattered. I don't know what I truly expected out of such a class, but I think it involved an instructor just going, "okay do what you just did, but try to make it sound good." 

  The majority of the class was discussing what to expect, my experience level, my goals, and so forth. I was really put at ease during that portion so when the actual work rolled around I didn't completely freak out. Okay, I'm making that dramatic. It wasn't bad at all, I just had built it up to be a lot more intimidating than it was. I was given the option to either try and harmonize with piano scales, or sing a song I thought I was good at singing. Obviously I went with the former.

  The exciting news is that she said I hit every note almost perfectly, I only had trouble when switching from a chest voice to a head voice, which she tells me quite common and that I corrected for the problem quickly. We did a little over an octave and a half, and she said she thinks I'll be able to go a bit higher as well as probably a lot lower, so maybe I'm not as big a lost cause as I thought. I'm pretty pumped about the whole ordeal. There's little I love more than belting out a favorite tune. This gives me a lot more confidence to try and write music someday.

  Interestingly, I warned her I might be a troublesome student because I have no uvula... or the "hangy-down thingy in your throat" as people tend to call it. I figured since that causes problems with me doing certain things like rolling letters, that it would be an issue. But she believes it will actually be a boon and seemed super excited to use me as an experiment to see how high she can get me hitting notes. Evidently I'm her first uvula-less student. Finally a positive side to not having that thing, hooray. Hopefully her theory is correct.

  Thankfully I made it out without her requesting to hear my Aaron Neville impression, which earlier in the class she'd said she wanted to hear. Bullet dodged for now. Not that I'm worried because my Aaron Neville impression is amazing.

  All in all, a fantastic experience and I'm glad I finally went. I'm looking forward to next week. Ariel will be back teaching piano and I'll get my next vocal lesson which I'll feel considerably more confident at. Good times.

  Getting back into music has really been a wonderful move for my life. It's not only opened me up to a lot of other things, but I had forgotten just how much I like playing instead of simply listening. And nothing makes me feel more alive than learning new things. 

"She's the sea I'm sinkin' in"