Music and a few critters

 

Oisin is learning to play this big scary Liszt thing* so I spent quite a lot of my cough-cough music lesson today listening to the organ and knitting.**  It's interesting how much you can begin to pick up just by . . . erm . . . listening.  As I keep saying the organ and I were not naturally best friends, and if it weren't for Oisin's passion for it I would probably have lived out my life quite satisfactorily without ever addressing my prejudice against the noisy bullying thing.  It still seems to me insanely complicated and I can't imagine how anyone gets their head around it.***  But as a result of hanging over Oisin's shoulder† a lot I'm beginning to pick up a little of what he's doing and what he's aiming at with all those frelling buttons.  Sure, I can hear (sometimes) when he pulls one out or pushes it back in that the sound changes, but I'm like, so?  It still sounds like an organ.††  He'd played some of the Liszt for me last week for the first time and I couldn't make head or tail of it and went home feeling like a dork and a bad friend.  This week I'd had a bit more of a run at it and was prepared.†††  There are moments when I almost half-get it:  the organ is an orchestra, in its own organny way, and as such is capable of thunder and lightning as well as astonishing delicacy.  As I also keep saying, if I were thirteen years old and talented I'd be all over organ lessons.  As it is . . . well, I need more time to knit.  At the moment if I will finish anything before I die of extreme old age is in question.           

There has been a slight setback on the hellhound front which is to say they declined to touch supper and I went to bed last night in despair.  But they were not ill today and ate lunch and dinner . . . in a close approximation of how a normal dog eats its meals.  So at the moment I'm saying (cautiously) . . . okay, whatever. 

Diane in MN:  I'm glad to hear that your boys are eating a bit more willingly. (I will not say any more because I don't want to be a jinx.) 

Yes.  I'm aware that putting our shenanigans around this matter on the blog is dangerous.  But it's been making me so mental for so many weeks now it was getting harder and harder not to say something about why I have turned an interesting shade of pale green and am leaving even more words out sentences than usual even me.  I am still hoping that we're headed in the right direction of happy well-fed harmony again—they've certainly been much more themselves the last couple of days. 

Shalea:  There are fat sighthounds in the world, but they're rare.

Sadly, not rare enough in the world of greyhound adoption — too many people think that their new pets should be bulked up to look like a lab. 

That breed varies so much because it's had the misfortune to get popular, but little old-fashioned working-type labs who, furthermore, are working, may show a rib or two on their smaller-than-the-giant-pet-mastiff-type-lab square bodies.  There's a lot of shooting country around here so we meet them from time to time.  Don't know if they're in your neighbourhood. 

Though I must admit to being a bit of an extremist on this point myself — greyhounds should show at least the last couple of ribs. No more that that certainly, and how much of the spine and pinbones are visible depends on the individual dog.

Yes, you're a lot more extreme than I am.  With the exception of the super-athlete I think two ribs is plenty and not absolutely necessary.  Although the retired greyhound that had pretty well convinced me to adopt one of his mates—and then I saw that ad in the paper for whippet cross puppies—was very ribby.  But then he also had a very round well-sprung barrel and big round muscles.  He was GORGEOUS.‡   I'm having trouble imagining a sighthound that didn't have a knobbly spine and prominent hipbones, but then I'm used to whippets with their humpy top lines.  Flat-backed greyhounds probably can be turned into sausages—to their detriment—supposing they ate. 

Stardancer:  Darn it! Now I want to start taking voice lessons again! 

Oh good.  Dooooo keep us informed of your progress.

            I may not be singing for the bishop after all, by the way.  This is one of the things that is supposed to Become Clear at the Muddlehampton AGM next week . . . except that one of the rehearsals they didn't tell us about was tonight.  You may remember that when the invitation/cattle call first went out I said I'd do it only if I could have the music well in advance because there was an awful lot of it to cram in in two rehearsals—especially for someone at the early sharp end of the learning curve of singing-with.  Turns out there are several more rehearsals—on Friday evenings.  Friday evening is home tower bell practise.  I was willing to miss one bell practise.  I'm not going to make a habit of it, both for my struggling band's sake but also for mine.‡‡  But if there were more rehearsals why didn't they tell us in the first place?  Even more disappointing than not singing Vaughan Williams for the bishop‡‡‡ is that Oisin had been invited to be in the choir—have I told you he sings?§—but he can't do Friday evening rehearsals either.  Oh well.  But I am going to start watching him closely for choir signs.  You know, he could perfectly well be a participating director of the New Arcadia Singers. . . . 

EMoon:  On voices. My mother sang tenor. I was an alto for years because I could sing low (not because I could ONLY sing low) and thought my upper range sounded worse. Octave below middle C, no problem. Lower than that, sometimes. I didn't sing as high as I could, thinking I had no quality up there. 

For people with gorgeous natural soprano voices this is probably never an issue but this is something Nadia talks to me about:  that your lower register may sound 'better' merely because it's stronger—most women talk in their chest-voice, and the voice is a muscle, etc.

But with a good voice teacher…lo, the upper voice now sounds better than the lower one. 

Sigh.  The jury's still out on what I am, and 'better' is a very relative term when applied to my singing.  I squeak at the top end and bellow at the bottom.  I have a ways to go.  I could just stick to knitting.§§ 

I had to learn to sing properly to get to that sound (not squeezing or pushing the upper notes, but letting them have the space they needed.) 

'Space.'  Yes.  Sigh.  One of Nadia's favourite words.  I squeak because I don't allow space.  

And my voice teacher says that "head voice" and "chest voice" are wrongly used for the most part–that the whole voice needs to be everywhere. 

YES.  This is what Nadia is beginning to try to teach me. 

That what happens to women singing low is that they don't know how to get the right resonance throughout, where it will do wondrous things to their lower tones. 

As well as to their upper, which is one of the things Nadia is trying to tell me—especially if I'm going to persist with this first-soprano scam.  One of the ways to give my bat-like squeakings a bit of depth is by (somehow) bringing the chest-voice resonances in.  Ask me in a few months about that 'somehow'. 

 I'm always being told not to get "chesty" because the furry quality isn't what he wants. (My next-seat-neighbor sings as low as I do, but without the furriness, and I can hear the difference now.)

 I, on the other hand, would be delighted to be accused of furriness.  Beats 'knife on tile'. 

For altos, opening up the top register gives you the chance to hear your full resonance and then urge that same quality downward into your comfort zone. That's what he says, and I'm increasingly convinced (hearing the change in my voice) that it's true–as the top opens up, the bottom gets better. 

Everything Is Connected.  Why can't we humans learn that?  [Discuss.]  

Annagail:  If you want to start a fight among voice teachers- a real one, complete with yelling and throwing things- start talking about registration. How the voice "fits together" is a huuuuuuge topic and no two teachers think the same way about it. We don't even actually know how many registers there are (largely because it depends on how you define a register). I could go into more detail if folks are interested but I will start geeking out about voice science. 

Please see previous request for a guest post.  I'm drooling here, okay?  Geek away.  Geek hard. 

In terms of women singing low- there're several issues here, one of which is that particular terms mean different things to different people. "Soprano" is a pretty catch-all term for all kinds of flavors of higher voices, but "mezzo" and "contralto" mean different things to opera/classically trained singers than they do to a "layperson". "Mezzo" to most people just means "middle to lower voice," but it's a fairly specific Fach, 

Fach makes me crazy.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fach  I see that the professional classical/opera singer world needs something like this but I look at the list of singers and want to—yell and throw things, speaking of yelling and throwing things.  I'm not convinced that all the specificity is all that useful.  Hrrmph.  However, I'm not an opera-house manager either.  —And yes, the mezzo has a much higher top end than most people realise:  you're only one note off the high C that makes you a lyric soprano.  Or something. 

requiring a more significant range than most people realise, but typically sitting in the middle voice . . . (The female leads in The Barber of Seville and La Cenerentola are both mezzos, and Cenerentola has some notes that sopranos would be proud of.) The tone is pretty specific. True contralti are very rare, but the short version of that is "alto" and that's what a significant number of women sing in choirs, thus confusing the issue. 

I've already apologised for calling myself a contralto—someone sounding less like Eileen Farrell would be hard to imagine—but very very very slightly in my defense, my it's-always-there-without-warming-up-and-isn't-too-squeaky-or-bellowy range, as confirmed by Nadia, is pretty well the standard contralto range:  E below middle C to the second E above.

Another issue is that a healthy lower voice- one that will carry- 

Ahem.  In a good way. 

requires a singer to use at least a touch of mix. 

YES.  Which is what all our voice teachers out there are trying to teach us to do.   With a greater or lesser sense of desperation.

In a voice which is poorly registrated (i.e. one with a big break, though there are other registration issues), refocusing work on the upper voice is necessary to strengthen it to enable a better blend throughout the voice. Even if you're a true mezzo or contralto, your lessons will probably involve helping extend your range up/work on upper register in some form or fashion. 

Yes.  You work on the weak bits so the whole will be . . . whole.

Even more issue- most English-speaking women have a relatively low speaking voice, especially compared to many Italian or French speaking women. This means that a non-singer will have a lot more initial comfort lower in her range because that's where her voice is all the time. 

The problem with that is the tendency to bellow.§§§  This is what Nadia has begun tackling with me:  to give that chest shout a bit of lift from the head voice.  Ask me about that in six months too. . . .

Last issue that I'll touch on- so much of voice lessons is undoing things! 

Yes.  In my case Issue Number One is letting the frell go.  Allowing my poor voice to have some space.  

Some people think of a trained voice as being unnatural and that if their higher notes require training to get that they're not actually part of their "real" voice. It's just not true- your "natural" voice is a voice that's released and free, not overly produced, but for most people, figuring out where they hold tension and how to release it takes training. I've met people with very naturally released voices (and congenially hated all of them) but they're rare. 

Allow me to join you in your robust loathing . . .

TO BE CONTINUED SOME MORE.      

* * *

* I want to say when is Liszt ever not big and scary.  Even his little stuff tends to be big and scary—I don't mean the pyrotechnics, I just find Liszt large.  And Liszt on a frelling pipe organ . . . golly.  

** He recommended the Mme Durufle performance on YouTube, which is, roughly, here:  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_playlists&search_query=Mme+Durufle+plays+Liszt&uni=1

I'm failing to get it to come up right.  It's in four parts, so every time you're feeling all engaged and go-with-the-flow the flow stops and you have to click up the next part.  But they could at least give you all four parts together.  You'll have to cruise down a bit for part 4/4, unless it's behaving better for you than it does for me.   Since I have broadband from hell^ at the moment I'm having trouble getting the wretched thing to function, but it's worth it if you can convince it to run.  This is another one I recommend supplementary speakers.  And be sure to listen out for the sound of the subway.  Oisin says there's been a conversation on his organ-programme elist about trying to get a sample set from this organ—St Thomas in NYC—but they're reluctant to try and do it around the subway noise.  Hee. 

^ Not my hell.  Some other shabby and badly-run establishment.

 *** Do you know, people say that about bell ringing.  Fancy. 

† Is it my imagination, or did he get politer when I brought out my long sharp pointy sticks? 

†† I'm so bad. 

††† Because I am bad, I told him that if he played any wrong notes he would be messing up my musical education. 

‡ There is a paranormal romance waiting to be written which involves a weregreyhound.  

‡‡ In our feeble days Niall has hit on the excellent ruse of making us learn some of the slightly more out of the way lower-level methods—I should be learning Cambridge minor, for example, and both Penelope and I would love a chance to grind away at bob major and Stedman triples.  But we haven't got the band.  But we do now ring Little Bob and St Clements.  I rang St Clements tonight accurately enough that Roger was surprised.  Snork.  

‡‡‡ I hope I'm not beginning a personal tradition of failing to sing Vaughan Williams for various events. 

§ Yes, the ratbag.  He hasn't told me yet about his membership in the Royal Academy^ or his one-man show coming up at the Tate however.  In his spare time he creates perfect miniature replicas of the Albert Memorial with matchsticks and a surprising amount of gilt paint. 

^ http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ 

§§  Don't want to.   

§§§ Well nigh irresistible to those of us with weak thready voices.  Hey!  I can make NOISE!!