Level up!

I'm going to start this post with something I haven't really talked about in a while - language.  Last night I was working at the hotel (my "rent" job) when a gentleman walked in looking for a room.  I explained to him that we did not have any vacancies and he asked if I knew of any other places that did.  As I was talking with him he asked me to speak slowly because he did not speak English very well.  Being the naturally inquisitive person that I am, I asked him where he was from.  Then it happened; he said he was from France.  I immediately proceed without hesitation to speak to him in French while calling around to other hotels in the area looking for a room.  Our conversation ran the gamut from talking about why he was in Rochester of all places, to me giving him directions, to finally talking about my career as an opera singer and me giving him my website.  All in all we probably spent 20 minutes conversing solely in French!  Those of you familiar with Moses McCormick would call this a "level up!"  Towards the end of our conversation he gave me his card so that I could reserve a room for him at another hotel.  I noticed he had an Italian last name and he told me that he is actually Italian, but lives in France.  I proceeded to tell him that I speak Italian as well and we went on for another few minutes talking in both Italian and French.  This is the reason why we learn languages:  to communicate with people!  As a singer, I obviously learn these languages so that I know what I am singing (which is another form of communicating), but in a larger sense it events like last night to happen.  I have set aside working on my language studies for a while due to financial and personal obligations that force my hobbies to take a back burner, but things like last night really make me want to get back into my studies.  Perhaps in the next few months I can get back to it.

In other news, now that my time with Finger Lakes Opera has ended I have begun my focus on Cosi fan tutte, which I will be performing in Detroit this September.  I have learned all of the music and am in the throes of attempting to memorize an entire role for the first time.  I took some advice from my friend and colleague, Gregory Kunde, and have made cue cards of my part.  Already, this has been very helpful in getting some of the text down.  I also have an upcoming audition in Pittsburgh and some other big pending news that I will have to wait until next month to unload on everyone.    

Linguaphile - Lover of language

This is a rather impromptu post, however I said something in an early conversation today that I wanted to discuss here.

"In becoming a linguaphile I have become a lover of language."

This statement seems redundant I'm sure.  However let me explain what I mean.  One of the things that I am striving for in my journey of learning languages is to be able to have musical moments in which I find myself transcending language and music and finding a deeper connection.  I had this occur on Christmas eve while singing "Oh Holy Night" in the original French text.  While everyone thinks that the song is beautiful in English, it was only through my knowledge of French that I found the true beauty of the song hidden in the real text of the song.  My French is at a level where I no longer need to translate what I am reading or saying, I just intuitively know what I am saying or reading.  This enables one to experience the culture of thinking in the language you are using.  I have found it to be true that people who speak different languages see the world differently.  Let us take a look at the text of Oh Holy Night to see what I mean.  The order will be French (original), then a literal translation and then the sung English version.

Minuit, chretiens, c'est l'heure solenelle, ou l'Homme-Dieu descendit jusqu'a nous.

Midnight, Christians, is the solemn hour, where the God-Man descends among us.

Oh holy night, the star is brightly shining, it is the night of our dear Savior's birth.

Pour effacer la tache originelle, et de son Pere arreter le courroux.

To erase the original stain, and to stop the wrath of his Father.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Le monde entier tresaille d'esperance, a cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur.

The whole world trembles in hope, on this night which he gives a Savior.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Peuple a genoux, attends ta delivrance, Noel, Noel voici le Redempteur.

People on your knees, await  your deliverance, Noel, Noel, here is the Redemptor.

Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices, oh night divine, oh night when Christ is born, oh holy night.

For me, in performing the French version of this song I finally felt the true emotion of the piece and was free to perform it with the integrity it deserves.  I found the real text to be considerably more moving and inspiring and that was channeled through me as I was singing.  This is the real reason I learn languages, so that my performances may be truly genuine.  Because I know French at an intimate level, I was able to connect to the music.  My love of language grew tenfold that night, because I learned experientially that speaking a different language really does give one a new way of thinking about a topic.  Only through a thorough knowledge of the language one sings in can one truly give an informed and accurate performance.  

Mid October

I am nearing the end of my intensive time with French and can say that I am very happy with where I am.  I am understanding the vast majority of what I read now and will try and do a reading test from a newspaper before the year is over.  My listening is still a bit behind everything else, especially when listening to the radio, however I have begun to work intensively on my reading and listening abilities so hopefully they will both come up in level before the end of the year.

To increase my levels in those two areas I have begun to use LingQ almost exclusively. I even upgraded from the free version so that I could use the program more effectively.  I have to admit that I find it to be very helpful.  I love the concept of extensive/intensive listening and reading, but it is very difficult to read when having to flip back and forth from a book to a dictionary.  LingQ eliminates this by having a pop-up dictionary always present.  I have talked about LingQ before so I do not want to spend much time here on it except to tell you all to try it out.  As much as I liked the idea of using it for free, I do not feel that one gets the full benefit of the program until you upgrade to a pay version (and come on, it is only ten dollars a month!).

I am currently on the train on the way home from NYC, where I had a lesson with JRL.  Today's lesson was a very frustrating one for both of us I am sure.  Lessons like the one I had today are huge tests of courage and perseverance.  I have gone through a range of emotions in the six and a half hours since my lesson and have landed on a huge desire to get into a practice room and work.  It may be perseverance, or it may be ego, however I cannot have another lesson go by like this one did.  So I will spend the next month fixing my issues and come back better than I was today.

The largest frustration to me is that I spent the last two months working very hard and came in today feeling pretty good about myself.  Unfortunately during those two months I seemed to have regressed on a certain bad habit that I honestly was not paying as much attention to in the time between lessons as I was other technical things.  It would appear that I overdid to the point of misunderstanding a certain idea I was given last time and now I must go back and fix those issues which were not plaguing me at my lesson but came back with a vengeance today.  If this teaches one anything, it should be that we must always be vigilant!  Complacency can only lead to disaster.

End of September/Beginning of October

It has been a bit since I last wrote here.  Some good things have happened on both the language and singing fronts, as well as some discouraging things.  In my language work I have begun reading Les Fables de la Fontaine which are mostly on my level.  I find that the hard thing with reading is that though I know the words I'm reading, I often miss the actual context of the story.  I figure that this is similar to listening comprehension and the practice will ultimately make things clearer as well as fill in the holes in my vocabulary.  I have unfortunately been rather lax in my other forms of study.  I have recently picked back up on Michel Thomas, but as of yet have not gotten back into my Assimil work in about two weeks.  I have every intention of working on it again tonight though!

In other news, I feel that I am to the point now where I can actually begin to call myself a tenor.  For the last month and a half or so I have been working on the Duke's arias from Rigoletto by Verdi.  These arias have stretched me and almost forced my voice to work in a different way than it has in the past.  In the last couple of days my Bb4 has really come into its own and the B4 is not far behind.  I am looking forward to the few weeks, during which time I am hoping to have a few lessons, some coachings and even participate in a recital (my first as a tenor)!

The only discouraging part of my singing life currently has been this week.  My voice has been feeling different this week and certain things that were relatively secure before are not this week, while other things that were not present before are now starting to present themselves.  I assume that this is just some of the growing pains in the process and am not terribly worried by them though.  I'm hoping to get back into being slightly more regular with my updates here, but with the holidays quickly approaching we'll see what the reality of that is.

Mid-September Update

Je pense que je vais ecrire un post en français.  Cette semaine etais un peu agaçant pour moi parce que moi et ma fiancée sommes malades.  Parce que-là, je n'avait pas pratiqué.  Je n'aime pas perdre les temps et je ne peux pas attendre commencer encore.

En autre information, je commence ecouter de la radio française.  Le meilleur problem pour moi est l'audition; je peux lire et parle, mais je ne peux pas bien ecouter.  Etrange, non?  Maintenant, j'ecoute à France info de Paris.  J'espere que je peux amèliorer mon compréhension à l'audition devant l'année finit.


*I welcome any corrections, as always.  An English translation is below for those who would prefer not to read French.


I think that I will write a post in French.  This week has been a little annoying for me because me and my fiancée are sick.  Because of this, I have not practiced.  I do not like losing the time and I cannot wait to start again.

In other news, I am beginning to listen to French radio.  The biggest problem for me is listening; I can read and write, but I cannot listen well.  Strange, no?  Currently, I am listening to France info from Paris.  I hope that I can improve my listening comprehension before the end of the year.

End of the Month Update

I am now more than 75% through my Assimil program and nearly as far through Michel Thomas.  I somewhat feel like I've stagnated a little bit as far as progress goes; mainly due to my slacking about the last couple of weeks in studying.  The bright side is that the Active Wave exercise today went very well and the majority of items just flowed out of me, which is a good sign.

On a note of wanderlust, I purchased Wheelock's Latin over the weekend and am going to read through it on the weekends when I take time off of French/German (after the new year).  I don't necessarily know what I'm hoping to gain from learning Latin, other than that I will inevitably have to sing in Latin so understanding the structure and language will be helpful in that regard.  Plus being Catholic, Latin kind of comes with the territory.

Vocally things are going very well.  I am feeling more and more comfortable every day.  I am going to be actually singing my first concert as a tenor in November at my church as part of an "Opera Hits" concert.  I will likely only be singing one aria and a duet, but this will mark my first public performance as a tenor!  As of right now my plan is to sing Alfredo's aria and the Parigi, o cara duet from the final act of La Traviata.  Hopefully, I can convince someone into video taping this performance so I can post it to youtube, and thusly on here as a mark of my progress.

Encouragement!

I just came back from a quick jaunt to NYC for a lesson with JRL where I received some great encouragement.  I'm pretty sure that I've posted here about how I always feel like I am never progressing.  Well, apparently my brain was wrong!  At my lesson I was commended on my marked progress and even encouraged to begin coaching repertoire and think about auditioning in the fall (next fall, not this one I presume)!  This is great news for me and really gives me a boost.  In addition to this I had just recently in practice session found some of my top notes and was excited to begin with before the lesson.  Now, before anyone reads too much into this, I still am maintaining my work ethic and still have the general concept that I am sub-par as a singer.  The thing is though, that sometimes we need that encouragement to push us onward.

I have had similar experiences with French, where I will go through a patch where I feel I am not progressing at all and then someone who is more knowledgeable than I am will compliment me on my progress between times that they had talked with me.  I think ultimately that this goes back to the idea of being persistent and having trust in the process.  As I made mention of before, all progress that is worth keeping will happen gradually.  The past couple of weeks have shown this to me more than ever.  Between my vocal progress and the books I have been reading lately, I feel that my entire outlook on life has changed to one of bigger time frames.  For the most part the long-term goal is what matters, not the short-term ones.  As long as you constantly check in and are working towards your long-term goal, then you will be on the right path.  My long term goal as a singer has always been to be able to support myself solely by singing.  It would seem that I have made large strides towards this goal in the last four months and I look forward to what is still yet to come.

Love the process and make it your goal!

The Art of Practice

I am currently reading a book on running by Danny Dreyer called ChiRunning.  I have only just started this book, but have already come away with at least one great point that applies across the board of skill acquisition:

"Making an activity a practice is a process of self-mastery... One reason to practice a skill is to make that skill easier until it doesn't take effort."


This sums up why we practice better than anything I've ever read.  I truthfully could end this post here and I feel it would be sufficient, however I'll expound.

Whenever we begin to learn a skill, be it a new language, instrument or physical activity it is a difficult task.  There are many new things going on that we have to process and think about getting right that sometimes the  ultimate goal seems incomprehensible.  However, as we continue to work on the skill (a.k.a. practice) the smaller building blocks that we stumbled over before become simpler and simpler to the point that we eventually don't think about them at all.  Naturally, there are always more blocks to come on top of the ones we already laid out, however as the process continues in the same way with new, challenging concepts gradually becoming easier and eventually becoming second nature.  This is the beauty of skill acquisition!

The end result of this process is something we all know when we see it, a sense of ease that a master has when performing his/her skill.  This is what we should all strive for no matter what skill we are learning.  Below I will post a couple clips of the end result in various skill areas.

The most obvious master in the modern age of operatic singing, Luciano Pavarotti.  For that matter, also a master conductor, Herbert von Karajan.

One of the best running backs of all time, Barry Sanders.

One of the best short distance runners around, Usain Bolt.

One example of many masters of language, Richard Simcott.

A brief update on my own journey:  French is progressing along steadily.  I plan to finish up my French studies during the first week of the new year and then I will move on to German!  Vocally things are really starting to solidify for me.  I have recently found my high A and am gaining a lot of stability with it, the next step here is to hone in on the B-flat!

A Passion for Learning

I determined the other day that I have a problem.  As soon as I become interested in a topic I try to learn as much about it as possible.  Examples are as follows:

1.)  When I first became interested in the science of singing I read as much as I could get my hands on about the topic.  I covered authors spanning from Tosi and Lamperti up through Reid and Frisell.  I even read Jerome Hines book on pedagogy (not Great Singers on Great Singing, but his other book, The Four Voices of Man.  Overall, I spent about six years reading almost exclusively about the voice and the art of singing.

2.)  When I decided to truly become Catholic, I again went and obtained as much information as I could about the Church.  In my collection I own works by Thomas a Kempis, St. Teresa of Avila, Jean-Pierre Caussade, G.K. Chesterton, etc. not to mention having a catechism and Bible with me nearly all the time.

3.)  Now I have taken up an interest in running, specifically in barefoot running and the same pattern has followed.  I already have two books coming in through ILL and have an eBook in my possesion which I am currently reading in addition to the book that I have already finished.

Truthfully this is not a problem, maybe a slight disorder especially compared to other people in my generation that I have witnessed.  The urge to learn, I believe, is one of the greatest determinants of eventual success.  How can anyone become an expert of anything if they are not willing to do research on their own.  A friend of mine who I was recently discussing this topic with commented that this makes almost obvious success.  In his professional world, as in many, the first step to proving a theory is to research and see what has come before the theory and what might make it plausible.

In our instant gratification world, so few of my peers even pick up a recreational tome, let alone an informational, non-fiction book unless they are being forced to do so by some class.  Why have we as a generation moved so far away from a true thirst for knowledge?  If anything, this trend seems counterintuitive to me.  We now have the internet and eBooks at our fingertips which can provide us vast information about practically anything we could want to know; and yet most people would rather spend their time on social networking sites.

I would still be a complete novice in all four areas of passion in my life were it not for my thirst for knowledge.  I submit that I still am a novice in some areas due to my relatively new discovery of them, however I can say without hesitation that because of my unquenchable thirst for knowledge that I will quickly surpass others who may have started down a particular path prior to me.

A prime example of this lies in language, one of the main purposes of this blog.  I am currently working on French, as you all know, and prior to this current time I had taken one semester at university and spent one month on my own working on the language.  When I decided to focus on this particular language I did what I do with nearly all of my passions:  I signed up on a forum concerning the topic.  From this forum I was able to ascertain numerous possibilities of ways to study and from there determine what I wanted to try.  The next step was to get materials I would need.  In general I attempt to get as much as I can for free or inexpensively.  In the case of French many of my materials came from the library and inter-library loan (ILL).  What I could not get for free I bought from a discount site, half.com.  After I get my resources it is just a matter of application and practice.  I continue to research new possibilities to aid me in my learning and acquisition and continue to watch my progress.  Approximately two and a half months after starting this focus on French I was able to list the language as one I can speak.  Now nearly four months in I am continuing to grow my skill and am nearing towards my final goal in this language, which is to be able to teach or give a speech comfortably.

The above process goes for any skill that I embark upon learning.  I have already proven to myself that I can succeed in picking up any skill because of my desire to learn and constantly improve.  Imagine the things we could accomplish in this world if everyone had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and did not just want to skate by on their undeveloped talents.

Frustrations, Progress and a Diatribe

In the past two and a half weeks I have had quite a few different emotions running through my system in regards to language, singing and life in general.  Starting with languages, I had a week of solid conversational French practice while I was in Kentucky on a mission trip with my friend Ernest.  For those who don't know, Ernest is from Cameroon and fluent in about eight languages ranging from Italian to Bengali.  After that week I jumped right back into my studying and am progressing at a very pleasing rate in French.  I anticipate that I should be able to call myself fluent in French by the new year.  That may seem far off to some of you and not long enough at all to others, but the truth is that languages can be learned quickly if the motivation is there.

The frustrations of my past two and a half weeks came in singing.  During my week in Kentucky I was unable to practice at all outside of singing for daily mass.  When I got back in the practice room the next week I felt like my voice was not doing anything correctly.  Then, luckily, I began to turn things around late this past week.  I also had a realization that I have been breathing far too shallow for far too long.  Now that I am taking completely full breaths I have found that singing is feeling much better again.  My current frustration now is finding the funds to get down to NYC for a lesson with JRL.  I posted an ad on my facebook asking for applications for a patron, but no one seems interested which is sad for me.

Now onto my diatribe which will take this blog of course momentarily.  This past evening I attended a "Teen Life Mass" at a nearby Catholic Church.  I had recently heard stories about these masses from traditionalist (like myself) speaking of various horrors inherent in this style of mass.  To my mind, these were all verified during the course of the mass.  The purpose of a Teen Life Mass is to reach the teens through more "accessible" music and encourage their participation.  However, to me, I was attending a protestant mega-church worship service rather than a mass.  The major problem I have with the music is not necessarily the music itself; contemporary christian music has its place, but not in the mass.  There was a huge disconnect between the upbeat, bubble-gum music and the solemnity of the rest of the rites of the mass.  Not only that, but the music had nil to do with the actual readings, which it is supposed to according to the general rules for the mass.  Also, the whole point of this music is to engage the teens and youth of the parish more, however I saw a very small percentage of these people actually participating in the singing!  There were other problems within the course of the mass liturgically speaking.  During the mass I vowed to never be at another Teen Life Mass in my life.  What this type of mass does is set up the youth of the parish to leave the Church!  I pray that the new missal and future reforms will save our youth from the horrors of the Teen Life Mass and bring back a sense of reverence to the Mass.

French Update

Since I have some free time at the moment, I figure I will free write a post on my progress as of late. 

Currently I am sitting in the library listening to France Bleu Isere out of Lyon and they are currently playing a French version of the Frank Sinatra hit "My Way."  It actually sounds very nice in French, although lacks a certain swagger that Frank had when singing this.  In listening to the radio I have noticed that I am understanding quite a bit of the words, although they are not necessarily completely making sense in my brain (natural listening) and the pace is still a little fast for me.  I have to research some exercise to improve my listening to a more natural level.  A large part of this I think needs to be approached by simple immersion (i.e. listening to French radio, watching French TV and movies, etc.).  I find that the most annoying and challenging thing about immersion for me is that the only way I can access French radio when driving, which admittedly is how I spend most of my waking hours, is through my Palm Pre which has horrible battery life, especially when using streaming apps.  I suppose that my solution to this will have to be podcasts.  In keeping with the immersion concept, I have changed much of my computer, internet and GPS to French in recent weeks.  Truthfully, I don't even notice that most of them are in French, which I take as being a good thing. 

I have been working my way through Assimil and Michel Thomas during my studies and have been keeping  a pretty steady pace throughout the last month and a half or so.  I only recently started the MT and only do one track a day, so I am only at about lesson eleven or twelve and ultimately the amount of material covered is relatively small.  For the most part, however, I am using MT as a reinforcement so I am okay with the slow pace I am taking on it.  At my current rate it will take me about three months to get through the course and then I will move on to the vocabulary booster and then the advanced course.  In Assimil I am currently on about lesson 33, so nearly one-third of the way through the Passive Wave.  I find that I am learning quite a bit from the Passive Wave without necessarily doing a whole lot.  The book recommends spending between twenty and thirty minutes per lesson in the Passive Wave, but I find that I am under this number daily (maybe 15 minutes or so per lesson).  The program has been helping my listening and in general I have noticed that I am gaining between 2 and 5 new words per lesson at this point.  This may not seem like a whole lot, but percentage wise 5 words over the course of about a one and a half minute segment is rather significant.  There are also other words in the course of the lessons that I do not know and do not necessarily pick up through just the Passive Wave, but I am sure that I will pick these up during the course of the Active Wave.  More importantly than the vocabulary, arguably, is that I pick up new grammatical rules, structures and some colloquialisms as I am going through these lessons and am finding myself retaining some of the work on tenses that they present during the course of my listening and reading. 

I do not necessarily have a great measure of how well I can speak the language at this point, although I seem to have an easier time staying in French when talking with my friend and I generally have a certain level of comfort in my conversation that I did not necessarily have a couple of months ago.  I think I mentioned earlier that I have changed my learning plan for my languages.  I have progressed to a more realistic plan of spending all of my time with one language until I have learned it to a level that I consider fluent, which I will describe eventually to the public, and then move on.  I believe that I can reach this level in most languages I am working on in a year and thus I still will be well within my goal of ten languages by the time I am forty.  My progression through languages has also changed based on my needs for my intended profession.  The order is thus:

1. French
2. German
3. Italian
4. Spanish
5. Russian
6. Czech
7. Swedish
8. Portuguese
9. Arabic

The tenth language here is English, obviously and the reason that Italian is third on the list is because I need to take my French and German farther than I do my Italian which is already at a decent level, although not completely fluent.