I wasn't even sure I'd go to singing. I was still suffering the aftermath of a chesty cough which had cancelled the previous Monday. Coughs don't help singers and I mustn't pass on any lurgi to V.But 140 weeks of lessons and the urge is still there. Sure I can write about it but I rarely catch the visceral pleasure of belting out German, pitch perfect and steady, for V's attentive ears:
Es schweben Blumen und Englein
Um unsere liebe Frau.
(Flowers and cherubs hover
Around our beloved Lady)
V acknowledges my cough and modifies the warm-up, but soon we're wrestling an old demon. How do you sing the first note of anything? - switching precisely from silence to music? It's called attack and is best understood as decisiveness. V has me doing chopped-off sounds: Ha! Ha! Ha! If I finger my Adam's apple the vibration tells me whether I've got it right.
Suddenly, if briefly, I'm in another world. Not every time but never mind. The source of my singing appears to have shifted. It's no longer at the back of my throat but several inches forward. The tone is wider and clearer; it has lost its artificiality. My front teeth seem to resonate with the passing sound waves.
I practice easier songs at home in this new way. Record them and compare them with earlier versions. Absolute proof! Previously I sounded mannered, even muffled. Might this be a true singer’s voice? Also: this is a more relaxed process. Correction, it must be relaxed.
The only comparison was when I got the breathing right and could finally swim a mile of crawl.
I wish you all such a sudden happiness.
Here's a "new voice" recording of Brahms' WIEGENLIED
I'm exercising my new knee towards a similar epiphany. But, it's only getting there slowly rather than in a burst of glory.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy for you! I'm also happy to learn of the attack. It is almost like it is a form of character building, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteLovely! Break-through is always satisfying...
ReplyDeleteLike a miracle! I remember those breakthrough, Zen moments too, when the sound suddenly felt like it was coming out of the top and front of my head, and with much less effort. Hooray for you! (having a cold can actually help.)
ReplyDelete"belting out German" Prost!
ReplyDeleteI have loaded your book about singing on to my Kindle. As soon as things slow down at work, I'll read about this "sudden happiness" stuff.
Sir Hugh: Whatever form it takes and however long it takes, I wish you the glory of that discovery. That something destined to go right is going right. Oh wow!
ReplyDeleteColette: I could write you a thousand words about "attack" or I could write you nothing. Better the latter. It is the hardest thing V has had to communicate and it is the hardest thing I've been required to understand.
The best analogy is mathematical. Imagine sound is presented as a sine-wave (up and down zig-zag) along a co-ordinate representing time. A sine-wave of sound must always slope forward slightly since sound needs a tiny amount of time to get going.
Now imagine the impossible! A sine-wave with a vertical line. Thus at some point in time sound doesn't exist, then AT THAT SAME POINT (ie, after zero trillionths of a second) sound starts at full volume. It can't happen of course. But you try to pretend it can. Is that character building? Trying to create something you know to be a lie? I suppose it can be if you believe the lie to be beneficial.
Marly: Have you ever written something you regard as perfect? It's likely to be no longer than a sentence, perhaps just a phrase. In your heart of hearts I mean, without reference to anyone else since, by definition, your own idea of perfection can only be defined and/or recognised by you. More likely in verse than in prose. This break-through is a bit like that but without the delay associated with writing.
Beth: I especially appreciate your comment since I know you've been there and and done that. In fact your description of the experience is more precise than mine. And yes a cold's "blocked tubes" seem to promote a form of vocal resonance - it must be fake resonance, but never mind - that allows you the confidence to re-capture that relaxed tone of voice. Like a miracle? More like: it is a miracle (a point made in Tom Stoppard's script for the movie Shakespeare in Love).
RW (zS): Thanks for downloading Opening Bars. A couple of lines review would be appreciated. Alas there may be rather too much about "sudden happiness". A friend who is studying music at a much more advanced level says he can't get on with my attempts to tackle the subjectivity of singing. The book is of course aimed at absolute beginners but his remark may well be valid.
I do sing other languages. Santa Maria (ideally for Neapolitan tenors) is in Italian, and I have tried to sing All Through The Night in Welsh which is how it should be done. But VR recognised my emotional response to Mozart/Schikenader in the first lesson and has continued to add German arias. More recently she has had me discover olde Englysshe songs (Purcell with dates 1659 - 1695 and Dowland, who died in 1626) and these have been a revelation.
Even so German means the most. Often I've known the songs and/or duets (albeit only as a listener) for decades. And German has the best compoosers.
I'd be afraid to regard something I wrote as perfect! I might be done then... Oh, I don't know. Maybe I just can't be satisfied for long enough to remember later on that I thought some phrase to be perfection...
ReplyDeleteI love accounts of sudden epiphanies, the more detailed the better.I'm also intrigued by the differences you noted between earlier recordings when your voice had not yet discovered its rightful place in your throat and its current miraculous re-positioning. It would be interesting to hear at least bits of those two recordings, as an added bonus. Could you post these examples, via the picosong (?) link you've used before?
ReplyDeleteMarly: "Perfect" used in conjunction with prose or verse is a relative term. Anything written can always be improved but the bigger question is Should it be improved? If you're more comfortable with "Best I've done so far." I'll accept that. Surely there were moments when you felt that, however reluctant you were to articulate the experience. I refuse to believe you remain in a permanent state of unrequited love with what you write.
ReplyDeleteNathalie: Here's an extract from Opening Bars:
"Be ruthless in deleting all earlier recordings (on Picosong). Yes they represent milestones in your improvement but you won't care to listen to them: making music should be joyful not masochistic."
Which is why the earlier recordings of Wiegenlied (Brahms) and All Through the Night (Welsh, trad.) - my comparatively easy, go-to works for testing progress - have departed into the ether.
But there's more. Eighteen months ago, after I'd discovered Picosong, I posted quite a few of my performances on Tone Deaf. To a resounding silence, which was discouraging. So I reflected. First, my repertoire is, for want of a better word, classical and this is a minority taste. I figured out that only one (perhaps two) Tone Deaf commenters recognised technically what I was up to and their silence could be taken as kindness; also, commenting intelligently on a beginner's progress is hard work and allowances have to be made. Second, all my recordings are done at home and are thus unaccompanied; this is a huge jump for people whose only experience is of the world's finest often against orchestral backgrounds. Third, although my progress as a singer is recognisable the development of my voice, (ie, its timbre) from ground zero in 2016, is much slower.
In short, I am still very much a student. It was unrealistic to expect meaningful reactions - and the hard work that goes with them - from people who haven't passed through the same sort of tuition as I have. Which is why posted performances ground to a halt.
All of which must make me out to be wanker, given my ecstatic (written) reports of progress. But perhaps I should be more trustful of the intelligent and zestful people who read and comment on Tone Deaf. I have re-listened to my "new voice" recording of Wiegenlied and decided that although it is far too slow it could be judged by amateurs. So if I can remember the process for posting Picosong I'll attach access to it at the end of my most recent post, Fog clears.
Hey! That sounds pretty good! You'll know you've got it just right when small children start nodding off.
ReplyDeleteRobbie, many thanks for granting my request, or at least half of it. I was hoping for a comparison between this (post-epiphany) recording and an earlier version, so as to hear the difference you describe in your post, that your voice moved "several inches forward" in your throat. Impossible to conjure this without hearing a before and after example - would you consider adding it?
ReplyDeleteConcerning your present recording of Wiegenlied, I can only offer my instinctive impression. It sounds to me as though the very low notes are quite an effort for you, even though your natural level seems to be baritone. In the middle range you seem more relaxed, even relieved. Any singing I've done has been and is (as you've heard from bits I've posted) entirely un-schooled so I really shouldn't venture any remotely technical comments. I admire the focus, discipline and devotion that you're giving to this career - yes, why not label it career? Never too late to add another string.
MikeM: Too slow, which means I'm over-extending the notes. Plus affected sinuses as I’m sure you recognised. Just checked on YouTube a version by Hermann Prey. He’s a baritone too and he appears to be at least a third of an octave higher than me, tenor-ish really. Slightly faster but not much. I’m not sure it’s lullabyish but then I went on to a Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (classical soprano) version and the thing clicked. If you sing high, sing slowly and of course softly – in her case even slower than me
ReplyDeleteNathalie: I think if you re-read the first three paras of my re-comment you'll discover why I can't provide a pre-epiphany recording of Wiegenlied
Taking the first verse, the lowest notes are those in bold face here:
Mor-gen fruh wenn Gott will..., wirst du wie-der ge-weckt.
and, of course, in the line's repetition.
I’ve listened to them several times and don’t hear any strain. But if that’s what you hear, that’s what you hear. Incidentally the second verse is better sung (In particular the opening words which have the “attack” I refer to in the post). This, alas, is often the case with me; it seems I often use the first verse to play myself in. The trick may be to sing the first verse twice and then delete the first version.