(no subject)

[darcydodo]

Dude, the soloists for the Haydn are all pretty fucking awesome, but the alto just kicks major ass. She's so, so fucking incredible!!!!!! I want to be her when I grow up. And the baritone used to be in Chanticleer. Berkeley's such a great place to sing. :) The only soloist that I don't care for quite so much is the tenor; he sounds like he doesn't know his notes, but since he presumably does, I don't know what the deal is.

Also, my lesson today was good; I'm starting to remember problems I've encountered in the past and identify new ones beyond those. Maybe this whole being a singer thing could actually work some day. In the very far off future. I'm pretty sure, actually, that I'd take it over being a classicist, except I suppose it's a lot more uncertain. What if you're sick? Or just have a really bad day? Or does that just not happen once you're good enough that you're Really Good? (Well, being sick obviously happens, but I heard Dawn Upshaw sing when she was sick, and she still sounded fantastic, she just didn't do the pieces she would otherwise have done that went above high C.) Also, I'm convinced that I sing better when I'm singing in my lesson. Which isn't to say that I can't sing like that in other situations, of course, just that I've not yet figured out how; and this is problematic, because I don't know what the difference is. I can't hear myself as well or identify problems as well when I'm not singing for Deborah.

Glug.

And I need to memorize all my P5 pieces so that we can sing them in churches at random whims without having bits that fall apart or go randomly out of tune. (Though the out-of-tune-ness on "Timor" was due to lack of parts, I think.)

Oh, and I so want to sing the rest of the pieces that go with Josquin's "Ave Vera Virginitas," now that Esther's told us that it's an entire cycle.

I felt bad for telling Lily to shut up so sharply today, but she's such a child, it's ridiculous. If someone asks you to be quiet, then you be quiet! Ugh!!! (Especially when you don't know the person. It's called respect. Honestly.)

Comments

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[judytuna.livejournal.com]

yeah! the alto is my favorite!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wow, chanticleer??

Re: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[darcydodo]

*bounce*

wow, chanticleer??

Yeah. :)

*bounce*

*is trying on her Halloween costume "just to make sure it fits"* *bounce*

[rwclark.livejournal.com]

Who's the baritone?

[darcydodo]

Chad Runyon.

[sampiano.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun... rather better than the choir I'm singing in here!!! But I am standing next to somebody called Laszlo which makes it great fun.

Listen, about this being a singer lark. You have the potential. I told you that a long time ago. It's hard work and unstable which is what put me off it (being a pianist that is, not a soprano!), but it can be very very rewarding if it is what you want to do.

Just a few things though. You sound like you have an excellent teacher, so that is good. But on top of that, go out and find some books on vocal technique (I know of some, I'll try and remember them) and read them. Singing isn't something you can learn from books, but the combination of a teacher and a solid knowledge of the foundations will move you on a tremendous amount. Then start giving lessons; to beginners, children or students because you'll find you learn so much more about your own voice when you start trying to teach it to others. Then when you've been doing that for a while, you discover you've learnt how to teach yourself to some extent. You'll still need the teacher, in fact you'll always need the teacher, or coach or somebody else (just the same as in academia that you always need colleuges to help out at times), but the huge increase in ability comes when you start being able to teach yourself.

Practice well... you should be spending up to half an hour every day vocalising and working on technique.

Start taking piano lessons. Very soon. Not just so you can teach yourself songs, but also so you can play through to some extent accompaniments to songs. It's not important that you can play them up to speed, but it's important that you can get through them so you can start studying how the voice part interacts with the other parts in songs in detail. Very competant people can do this just by score reading, without having to play it. But that usually comes from having played many scores and therefore being able to easily hear in their head what it would sound like if they played it.

And start learning repetoire. One of the major differences between a pro and an amateur in the repetoire. My experience shows that a good amateur singing/playing the piece they've been working on and a low-end pro in a concert are often indistinguishable. The difference is that the pro could sing several thousand pieces at that standard with a couple of days notice, whereas the amateur may have only 5-10 pieces in his/her repertoire at any one time. This is what puts me firmly in the amateur category... ok I know a lot more pieces than most people; but I'd usually have to work for weeks or months to put a concert together. You don't have to learn the pieces fully just yet, but somewhere around 70% is good, because then you can add the last 30% when you need it without having to start from scratch. Something good to begin with would be to buy a book of Schubert Leider, and sing through them all. Also, find some soprano operatic anthology (I'm sure you have a number of them already), and similarly, sing through ALL of them. Not necessarily all in the same night though!!!

Then next time you come to visit, we can sing through loads and loads of stuff. That will be cool!

Anyway, I've gone on long enough now; but because I've been through much of this myself, I thought I'd share my experiences. You've got it in you, but it's hard hard work.

Good luck!!

[darcydodo]

Start taking piano lessons.

Damn, wish you were here. 'Cause I said I'd take lessons from you. ;)

Love you lots! And thanks for this.

[sampiano.livejournal.com]

You're only 9 time zones away...

I wish I could teach you, I bet you'd be my favourite student.

What was even funnier than my teaching piano in NY though was that I was actually doing some voice coaching... and didn't seem to be too bad at it!!!!

I'll have to try and find some students here when I get a piano. It would be amusing trying to give lessons in Italian... but I enjoy teaching. Physics/piano whatever. Probably will never get another job teaching girls physics again though, like I had in Oxford :)

God, I ramble a lot sometimes...

[darcydodo]

I bet you'd be my favourite student.

I'd probably need something to bang my head against lots, and your spongy hair's all gone! I could start out trying to teach myself, I know the notes. Any suggestions of good books to begin from? Or should I just have my parents send me some of my ancient piano music, if they can find it? :)

It would be amusing trying to give lessons in Italian

*looks scared*

[sampiano.livejournal.com]

It would be amusing trying to give lessons in Italian
*looks scared*

I wasn't going to try and teach you in Italian :)

When all my boxes arrive, I'll tell you which books I used to use (unfortunately can't remember the name, kind of referred to them as 'the purple book' or the likes). You aren't a complete beginner; maybe you should try Clementi, Sonatina No 1 in C major. 1st movement only to begin with. It will probably take you a while to learn, but I think you can do it... At one point, I was thinking of putting a 'teach yourself piano' section on my website. But that will probably take a while, if I get round to doing it at all.

OK, I'm off to play some Rachmaninov before my Italian class...

[darcydodo]

I think one of the things that's going to help with playing piano is learning to read music better, and I think that this is something that's actually been improving with my singing. Or at any rate, "Che faro senza Euridice" is pretty fucking easy, from both a playing-the-melody and a sight-singing-with-a-bit-of-piano-notefinding point of view. It's in C. Half of it's in thirds.

I'm confused, though; my teacher said it went up to a G and down to an A; was she on crack? It goes up to an E and down to a B.

I'll go look in the library for the Clementi. Aha, the power of the xerox card!

[sampiano.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things that's going to help with playing piano is learning to read music better

I'd have put it the other way round, beginning to practice piano is going to help you learn to read music better.

Another thing is just reading music. Every week, get out of the library an orchestral score or two, or maybe a large scale choral piece and follow through it as you listen to the piece. You'll find with the big pieces it isn't so easy to begin with... but it helps practice read.

I'd lend you a load of scores, except I'm in Italy, you're in California and my scores are in Scotland. But if you've got a big telescope you might see them.

[darcydodo]

I'd have put it the other way round, beginning to practice piano is going to help you learn to read music better.

Oh, I'd agree that this is definitely the case as well. However, I was noticing this morning, while looking at the very simple Gluck aria, that I was actually registering better what notes on the staff were what, and hence there was much less delay between me looking at the page and me hitting the note on the keyboard. :)

I'd lend you a load of scores, except I'm in Italy, you're in California and my scores are in Scotland. But if you've got a big telescope you might see them.

*sniffle* I'll have to go up to the Lawrence Science Lab and take over the telescope, and refocus it down to earth.

I'm not sure what the deal is with non-music-students actually checking scores out of the library, but it's probably OK, so long as they're not on reserve.

[sampiano.livejournal.com]

Just a quick note on note reading...

Be very carefully when reading music that you aren't thinking... this is an A, there is an A on the piano I'll play that note. Sure, you have to think like that to find the first note; but after that there is no need to 'spell' the music.

When you read words, you don't read the individual letters in them, and then put the letters together to recognise the word. You recognise the entire word as a pattern, if it's not a word you recognise you go down one level into syllables, etc... If you try to read an unpronouncable word in some slavic language, you are so slow because none of the patterns in the word make sense.

And similarly with reading music. Once you've got your fist note, read the next note relative to the first. It is most likely to be up or down a step; sometimes up or down a third. Until the 20th century, almost all lines went up or down a step or a small interval almost all of the time. Then because the piano is an ordered array of notes, if it goes up a step, you go up a note on the piano; and play that note. It doesn't matter what it is called. It is very important to try and teach yourself to think like this at the beginning. As a singer; you are most likely to do this anyway.

Eventually, you then start noticing bigger sets of patterns; that simply comes with practice. There are excercises you can do to help this along, but they will come later. And one of the biggest advantages of learning the piano for a singer is reading patterns in music. You see a pattern on the page - you think, oh I played that pattern before, it sounded like this. And then you sing it without even thinking.

I could (and have done in the past) go on about this for hours. I think my methods work as well: I was fairly succesful at teaching sight-singing, and beginner pianists to read music; and also (without modesty for a change from me!), I'm one of the best sight-readers I know (comes partly from being lazy when I was young, if I could sight read a piece, I wouldn't have to practice it; and my teachers then usually didn't know the difference...)

Once more, best of luck with it all!

[leech.livejournal.com]

I want to be her when I grow up.

Me too.

(Though the out-of-tune-ness on "Timor" was due to lack of parts, I think.)

Made all the more severe when I couldn't remember the bass part after singing baritone for so long...

[darcydodo]

Ah well. I think the tenors were just a bit out, too, though I'm not positive. It may have been due to lack of low parts.