Thursday, July 31, 2008

Questions for Your Artistic Self - #3

If you're a vocalist, how important are the lyrics to you?

To me - if you’re a vocalist performing the lyrics in the group – you have a great responsibility to communicate them so that whomever is listening can understand what the message is. The entire band has the music but only you have the words and those words are powerful. Someone wrote them, maybe even YOU wrote them. They communicate the message of what the music is trying to convey. The audience should at the very least…understand you. In addition, the audience wants to not only know what you’re talking about but also your point of view.

Show them you intention of choosing the particular piece you’re performing. Show them that you mean what you're singing about and audiences will believe in you. Think about how important lyrics are to you and make them even more important and your listening audience will want to take a small piece of you home.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

did you know?

It's really important to warm up before you start singing. I recommend some relaxing breathing exercises and gentle humming. Then pure vocal and bubble slides throughout your range. This really opens up up the voice and eases tension in the lips and eases the flow of air through the vocal cords while using strong support of the diaphragm and your abdominal muscles. Complete your warm-up before you start to sing.

Find a few songs that you love in the low part of your range or that are less than an octave range. you can sing along to a CD or not. After you've warmed up, pick one (or two) of these songs and sing them softly one time through using good breathe support. Once you've sung through the tune at least twice your voice will be ready to sing - provided that you're in good voice to begin with. If you're very tired, have a cold or your voice is strained in any way - warm up at least a full 20 minutes. Once again, it's really important to warm up before you start singing. I mean...it's really important to warm up before you start singing.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Singing at it's Best-Nat King Cole & Mahalia Jackson

Ahhhh yes! What more can I say. Some singing at it's best. Enjoy!

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Discovery


One of my favorite things about teaching voice is when the light finally goes off for the student and they get how the entire flow of the breathe works when they sing. When lungs, diaphragm and abdominals are working like a well-oiled machine. When their top note is theirs for taking today. When they start to FEEL it...consistently. Then I feel OK...

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Rene

Many of you have you heard by now about jazz-vocalist Rene Marie and her performance for a civic ceremony in the city of Denver where she extrapolated the lyrics of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" otherwise known as the Black National anthem and placed them firmly in the melody of the "Star Spangled Banner." There was a whole bunch of WOO-HAA about it. It turned into a BIG deal. People on the political right thought she desecrated a national institution. She was called all sorts of things. Selfish. Dishonest. Unethical. That's where my opinion stands. I believe what she did was unethical.

Let me preface by saying that I have NO PROBLEM at all with her melding the 2 pieces. It's a hip idea and why not explore the politics and the "exclusivity", as Rene herself put it, inherently involved in their respective texts. It's a fair and just question and worthy of exploration. I'm personally thrilled that she is probing these 'heavy' tunes, making folks uncomfortable. I love that!

Yet I didn't think her choice of venue was appropriate for such a statement. In this case her performance was purely a function that any qualified singer could have executed. This is a case when the job is not about her or her political viewpoint but simply to perform a function at a civic event. After the organizers phoned to offer the performance, Rene took a day to think about it and called back accepting their terms with no mention of her intention to join the songs.

I went to Rene's website - renemarie.com and I admire her candor and her well-thought out explanation about what she did and her right as an artist to make these sorts of statements.

To me her statement is NOT an artistic one, it is a political one. If it were an artistic statement, why not pick the type of forum where the message would be better received. As a working musician, my word is the best thing I've got. If I accept work, I believe it just right to do what was agreed upon. There's no shame in honoring an agreement and art has nothing to do with that. The irony is this is a potentially great message that most didn't hear because of the presentation Rene chose.I wonder why she didn't tell the organizers what she was going to do and does she think it's right to deceive anyone who offers her a gig? She too is a band leader in her own right. How would she feel if someone she hires decided to make their own "artistic statment" in the middle of a performance. Would she be open to that?

Just my 2 cents...

More stuff to read, hear and view:

To access one report:
http://undercoverblackman.blogspot.com/2008/07/embarrassing-race.html

an NPR interview with René:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92280877

And here's the clip:

Questions for your Artistic Self - #2

Are you making a statement with your performances?

I’d like to address the importance of this question: too often if we’re honest, we hear, see, and take in performances that puzzle us due to lack of imagination amongst other things. From time to time, I've seen performances where I've been blown away and swept up in the experience. Then there are times when I wonder why that person is standing there at all. I usually feel that way when I sense the performer isn't showing me themselves somehow - however I perceive that.

Now mind you, I don't think it's bad to lack imagination. This too is valued and has it's place. I’m not so sure it works in the realm of creative output, though. In other words, why choose to listen to a Bob Dylan copy when I can just go home and listen to him, himself on a CD.

What are we trying to convey in our performances? What do we want to evoke? How do we want our audience to feel after experiencing what we do? Why are we standing up there?

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Questions for your Artistic Self - #1

This is the start of a series of questions I've posed to myself and some of my students. I believe these questions inquires us ask ourselves about our why and what we express creatively. Today is the first one and every week, a new question will be posted for you to ponder. Since this is a forum focused on the voice, some questions will have that as a starting point yet most of the questions could used by anyone involved in producing art of whatever sort. Feedback is welcome.

Why do you sing and/or play a musical instrument?

This is a simple question on the surface and look at it from as many angles as you can and feel your reaction to what comes up. The question is asking you to look at what drives you to create and your intentions as a creative person. It may help better inform artistic decisions down the road you. The answer can be what ever comes up and feel “right” to you. As you develop your craft/art/voice more, you surely will be tested on your beliefs and convictions…I believe it is a strong force in creative people to confront issues such as these and transform what they discover back in their art to show again, one more perspective on any given theme. It broadens and deepens the human experience.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Filter

I used to live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and this will come up often because, you see, I worked alot of shit out when I lived there. For all sorts of reasons, I owe a great debt for my musical development to my 8 year stay in that great little city. I didn't always appreciate it then...but boy do I now. I learned great lessons while I lived there and I'd like to start off the blog with one lesson that is central to my way of doing things and to this blog.

Life Lesson: Anton Goudsmit.

Anton Goudsmit is a guitarist who played in my Amsterdam based band for about 31/2 years. We met through my husband whom had taken a few lessons from Anton some years before. I had heard Anton live a couple of times and I liked his playing. He also exploded on stage. At the time I was working with a Barcelona-based guitarist named Pere Soto and he was in Amsterdam, considering a permanent move. I wasn't looking for anyone then...and anyway I mostly worked with pianists at this time. Working with the Pere, I began to see the possibilities of using the guitar with my voice. I thought it offered more space and it could distort itself with colors and sounds that pianists can rarely do. I also found it sexy. Guitarist have a different posture and express the music in their bodies clearer.

Anton certainly could do that with the music and more. A few years later I hooked up with Anton for a couple small gigs, playing mainly standards with little rehearsals. I didn't know it then yet the music was changing for me. I started writing and wanted to hear my words more, my voice more. I was busy searching for my own sound, beginning to tire of the jazz mannerisms that had latched on and I didn't know how to shake them off.

Anton and I connected immediately and started working together shortly thereafter. after. I asked him to be on my second recording for the Dutch label Timeless Records. That worked like a dream. Everything fell into place on the recording. I asked him to be part of a new band I forming. He was happy to take part...

Anton is a very special person. I can best describe him as the perennially good side of a 10 year-old with all the greatest of intentions. He is a warm, carefree, fun-loving, open, brutally honest and creative person who was, is always in the moment. Sometimes you try to have a conversation with him and he veers off looking at some clouds while he contorts is face in a weird way, just like a 10 year old. Then he's back, dead serious, looking at you straight in the eye. Always present. This made the experience of playing with him a gift because I never knew what would happen. He showed me the pure joy that lay in just expressing oneself in the moment and how an audience reacts to that. Audiences LOVE him. Anton had no filter.

This fascinated me and flabbergasted many. You watched him play and he gave himself up to it. All the time. He had his rare off days and then he channeled it through the music. His completely honest feelings. He and I talked about it as best we could. You see, he never gave the thing a thought. It's just how he was. Same off stage. Same onstage. I wanted to understand how to be that way. It became clear to me that this is the way to be. No buttoned up sentiments with walls in between me and the audience. The real thing - connection. I too sought to be more honest in my expression. I wanted to express ME. whatever that is. Anton showed me the door and took me there sometimes even but I needed more time to walk through. When I returned to New York nearly 5 years ago, with the lesson of him fermenting...I wasn't ready but I worked on opening up and expressing myself in a more honest way. Ugly, sad, happy, angry, loud, strong, vulnerable, sassy, sexy, political, analytical, spiritual, small, big, historical, bad, righteous and bawdy. Everyday I get closer and lately I feel like I'm almost there. I'm not tracking it, mind you. Just looking at it. Just feeling it. How I relax more before I sing. How I KNOW things will work. How sure I've become of sounding like myself closer and closer to 100% of the time. I owe Anton big for that.

He plays alot in a band called the New Cool Collective. You can check him out here -

WELCOME!

A few weeks ago..I finally got around to something I've wanted to do for a long time. Start a blog on the voice. My ideas about it. Technique vs. expression, inside vs. outside music, band leadership, repertoire, Mike technique, CONFIDENCE, styles and most of all the unique tool of expression the voice is. How I came to understand and know what I do now and how much more there is for me to learn, hopefully along with you. I don't know how steady this will be. How frequent the posts. How geared the focus will be. What I do know is that I'll will write and include only what I believe to be true and honest.

The Visible Voice is just about that. Through our voices making our intentions strong, transparent and uniquely our own. We get to share a unique human trait that's universal at the same time. Half the world can carry a tune...well! Yet we're drawn to unique voices, in song, in speech, in content. We never tire of hearing someone sing, say, articulate the same old thing in a new way. That's the magic and that's what I intend to explore here. Getting to that place in you...