Voice Diary

Here in the past 6 or 8 months my sense is that my singing has gotten a lot better. When I've sung around other people there have been a few spontaneous positive comments that suggest that what to me seems a tremendous shift is at least big enough others can hear some difference. Here are a few things I think are contributing to the improvement:

• I did not begin to sing until in my 20's when I began playing guitar, and my guitar playing was always stronger. What's dawned on me lately is that my guitar playing was leading my singing, rather than the other way around. Most conspicuously, I was laying into the down beat strum on the guitar to such an extent the syllable sung on those beats was getting covered up. Lately I've been just very lightly strumming on the downbeats and letting my voice learn how to lead. There's definitely some brain rewiring going on, because not paying attention means the old habit creeps back in.
• Listening back to recordings has made me cringingly aware of how my affectations were suffocating the poetry and music. I was so caught up in trying to convey how wonderfully artistic my stylings were, there was a lot more ego than artistry on display. Now I'm trying to just sing the song - letting all the consonants and vowels come alive and the phrases more naturally spring from the words, chords and rhythms.
• I've been giving songs I've sung for 40 years a rest and working up more new ones so as to stay out of the old ruts. Exploring new pieces makes it much easier to try new ways of singing.
• Back when Dietrich Fischer-Diekau passed away I clicked on a video of him singing and noticed that he sometimes tilted his head down and that made me realize I'd always assumed looking straight forward or tilting one's head up a bit was the best way to sing. Tilting it down a bit changes the way the sound feels in my head. There's the sense it's resonating more fully up there - and it also changes the musculature around the throat. Both those effects give me the sense of having more tools to work with to create a good sound.
• Brass players sometimes use the cliché, "let the air do the work", and that's sort of the feeling I have now when the singing is going well, that I'm not forcing or making it happen, but simply letting it happen. Rather concentrating on projecting sound, I'm more focused on singing expressively, syllable by syllable, phrase by phrase.
• Playing the horn has given me a much deeper nonverbal appreciation of phrasing and its connection to breathing. Just to play a phrase on the horn, you have to keep the energy level up throughout. For me it's harder to simply "phone in" notes on the horn as I sometimes feel I do with the flutes, and that in turn made me aware of how from time to time I've been just sketching in phrases with my voice, rather than giving full support to every syllable and pitch.
• For years and years my singing was either in day rooms in psych wards and nursing homes or leading music therapy groups in closed classrooms for emotionally disturbed children (and never with a mic). In both cases volume and projection were of paramount importance. Now I'm more often singing with pro level players and sometimes with a mic and it's a totally different environment and allows for a more nuanced approach.

Analog vs. Digital

Back when CDs first came out, a lot of "golden ear" types lamented the passing of analog reproduction, saying the digital just wasn't the same. I couldn't hear the difference, and decided that even if I could, the absence of all the little pops and hisses of vinyl more than made up for it.

Here lately I've dug out my old reel to reel tape deck so as to transfer some compilation tapes I did back around 1970 to CDs. The first thing that happened was my wondering where all the static was coming from and checking all the connections, only to realize it was simply the popping and hissing of vinyl that I'd forgotten about.

The next thing I realized was that I could hear the difference between analog and digital and now understand what was lost. The best way to explain it might be to compare it to the resolution of pixels on TV or computer screens. Sometimes when it's very low resolution you can sort of see what's being represented, but it's fuzzy and your brain has to supply the detail. 

The first thing on the tape is a cut from the Baptism album of Joan Baez where she's singing the e. e. cummings poem "all in green went my love riding" put to music. The arc and continuity  of her phrasing took my breath away. That movement from moment to moment in the music is in no way pixelated and the effect is much more engaging than the digital sound of the CD. My brain needed to filter out the pops and hiss, but the beauty of line of the music through time was fully there.

Parameters and Musicianship

The March 2012 Musician's Friend catalog carries an interview with Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine and other groups. The interview doesn't seem to be online, so I'm going to type in a couple of things he says.

I've had the same rig since prior to Rage Against the Machine, with my band Lock Up. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. One of the things that has helped me creatively and helped my imagination is to have some things just carved in stone. . . There's a sense of comfort in not worrying about gear anymore, I'm going to worry about trying to get sounds and music out of the gear I already have.

This is very similar to something I said in a post about composing, i.e. set some parameters and then see what you can do within them. If everything you're doing is boundless, it's sort of like that thing that can happen to hikers lost in a wilderness when they can't see the sun due to cloud cover or tree canopy - they often just wonder in circles.

There's also the "if only I had a better instrument" syndrome. It's true that better instruments are more responsive, but it's also true that a fine musician can make an average instrument sound great. 

Later in the interview he says:

. . . Up until that point, I had wanted to sound like my favorite guitar players - that's what "good" guitar playing sounded like to me. Then came this revelation that good guitar playing is when you sound like yourself, and I really began to discover who I was as an artist, as a guitarist and a musician.

To me this is the true path of the music maker. You start because you hear things you like and try to do the same, but over time, working towards discovering what it means to "sound like you" is what keeps the practice of music making meaningful, rewarding and ever refreshing. 

It can take a while. I've been singing some Dylan songs for 40 years, and just in the past couple of years have begun to sing them in a voice that sounds more like mine. I think two of the things that helped me were: 1) recording myself much more and repeatedly noticing I didn't sound like I thought I did or how I wanted to, and 2) playing the horn has taught me a world of things I hadn't fully realized about breathing and phrasing and the importance of never letting the musical line just be there filling space as opposed to moving forward with purpose.

String Tone

Here is a terrific post by Elaine Fine, with great illustrations, talking about how various harmonics can create different tone qualities. A snip from the first paragraph:

Violinist-composers tend to load up their music with sixths because the sixth is such a harmonically rich interval. It is simply loaded with overtones, some that can be heard, and some that can't really be heard distinctly. They can be felt though, by the person playing and the people who are listening. It is rare that a microphone can pick up the full array of overtones and difference tones. These are the things that give texture to the music and contribute to the personal quality of an individual player's sound.

And In This Corner . . .

There's something of a flame war going on in the musical blogosphere. In one corner there's Greg Sandow, whom I've linked to a number of times. Championing the opposition is Heather Mac Donald in this essay. It's got people riled up. One blogger I follow regularly (and think of as normally mild mannered) allowed as how Greg is a "windbag"(!) a ways down in this multi-topic post.

I see it all as froth on top of the tidal shift in the culture of music making brought on by the advent of recorded music. There are good points to be made on both sides of the issue, which has to do with whether or not classical music is losing its audience. A lot of music specialists can talk a long time about music without ever mentioning the audience, because the music itself is what they are about. For me as a music therapist, it's how the audience is experiencing the music that's the salient point. So I find this discussion very interesting because of all the talk and conjecture about the audience. It's also interesting that the discussion has tinges of what's usually associated with discussions about politics and religion.

Pliable over at On An Overgrown Path touches on this subject from time to time as well. In this post he quotes composer Jonathan Harvey:

'Young people don't like concert halls... and wouldn't normally go to one except for amplified music. There is a big divide between amplified and non-amplified music... The future must bring things which are considered blasphemous like amplifying classical music in an atmosphere where people can come and go and even talk perhaps.. and certainly leave in the middle of a movement if they feel like it. Nobody should be deprived of classical music, least of all by silly conventions.'

Recorded Music

I keep coming back to the idea that the ability to listen to recorded music is the biggest change to the culture of music making, ever, with all sorts of recognized and unrecognized consequences. 

In this post, Kyle Gann talks about how much he likes recorded music, particularly his own. As usual over there, the comments are great.

In this post, Terry Teachout wonders whether second tier orchestras are needed in the age of the iPod.

In this post, ACD takes issue with Terry in his usual bracing style.

Mirror neurons, and the notion that live music is healthier than recorded, go unmentioned. Part of me thinks most music specialists, whatever the species, tend to go for the abstract elements of music and lose sense of the common touch elements of music making.

Recording to Learn

Because of it's ease of use, I've been using the little Sony PCM to record all the performances of the Kenwood Players. Then I run the audio into the Tascam 2488, tweak if needed, master and then make CDs for everyone. I've learned a tremendous amount by listening back, and several members of the group have spontaneously said how much listening back to performances has helped them.

The thing that's so interesting is that they've all mentioned things they need to improve that I hadn't really noticed. And when I talk about what I hear in my playing and singing and don't like, they seem a little surprised.

I think that if you are fairly familiar with how your instrument works and have a pretty good notion of the kind of music you want to make, recording yourself and listening back, while not the same as having a good teacher, is at least as helpful overall. It's that old saw about how we're all our own worst critic. The thing of it is, when I hear something deep in the substance of the music I want to improve, that work seems to improve other aspects of the music as well. 

Another way of putting it is that when you hear a recording of your music making and notice something that needs improvement, you know exactly what the problem is in a gestalt kind of way, with both the left and right brain in on the awareness. No teacher talking to you about your playing can get something like that across so completely.

(The header photo just to please the eye and our Vermont readership. It's about the last bloom on a volunteer sunflower just out the back door. Just wish I could catch the moments when I've seen the goldfinches perched on one eating seeds)

Having Fun Unamplified

The Kenwood Players have recently done three performances that were well received, the latest being the fund raiser for Celebrate Orange. Not using amplification seems to let the audience enjoy themselves more than they would if they were having to talk over the amplified sound. We can play and sing loudly enough to be clearly heard while the audience can visit comfortably with one another. By not blasting the audience with amplified sound, we seem to be encouraging more actively engaged listening.

The other thing is the having fun part. I've always moved with the music when playing the guitar and banjo. It makes performing more fun for me, and it also was the way I "conducted" the music in my music therapy sessions. After Dixie performances I always get people saying how they get a kick out of watching me have fun making music. With the Kenwood Players I think there's more of that because we're in the Preservation Hall mode of improvising our way along, which is a really fun thing to do, but also is another way for attentive audience members to see how we're having fun trying different ways of playing the songs.

Recorded music changed performed music in lots of ways having to do with setting high expectations and the putting the focus on creating "definitive" interpretations of music. What a live performance can do better than recorded music is to transmit to the audience - through sound, gesture, attitude and general behavior - the fun and fellowship we're having making the music, which adds a therapeutic dimension to live music.