First roles!

Tonight I sang through my first two roles as a tenor.  Overall I did fairly well, I had some issues in Rinuccio but I made it through, survived as it were.  I discovered some challenges that I was already vaugely aware of, and I found some things to be very pleased with.  I did record my Rinuccio and I may try to take out some of the more encouraging clips to post for your listening, ahem, pleasure.  Next I have to begin looking at some programs to audition for and also start learning two more roles, in case I get asked to sing them in the next year:  Il Duca and Tamino.  These two roles are challenging in different ways and it will be interesting learning them both somewhat simultaneously.  Also, I have to learn one more aria for my audition package and work very hard to make everything considerably more comfortable before I actually get to auditions.

German is coming along well.  I am now coming into a more comfortable place and find myself able to think in German fairly aptly.  I am about a week away from beginning the active phase of Assimil and am slowly building my passive vocabulary the LingQ.  My next task is to start engaging in more German conversation and try to activate some of the passive vocabulary that I have gained.  I think that I now can focus a little bit more on German since these roles are over.

A Response

Today, I read a blog post by my teacher, JRL, which dealt with faith.  I found this post to be very poignant, and to a certain extent I felt like it was directed towards me.  With out going to much into the specifics of the situation, my last lesson with Ron was a challenging one for me, and I sense for him as well.  I came out of the lesson questioning whether I had the ability to make this all consuming dream of mine a reality.  Ultimately, my faith in myself got the better of me and a reaffirmed myself to my work ethic and the knowledge that my own perseverance has won out in the past and will ultimately win out again.  It seems to me that things always must become more difficult before they get easier.  Such is the case currently as I am struggling mightily with my voice.  

Things I thought I had finally overcome  have come back and new struggles have accompanied them.  This is particularly disconcerting as I am singing in a recital in less then ten days, and  I feel that I will not be as well prepared technically as I felt I was going to be originally.  The difficult aspect of this situation is that I am presented with two choices:  1.)  Allow myself to go back to what I was doing prior to my lesson so that I can get through the recital, or 2.)  Work as hard as possible with these "new" concepts that I have been struggling with and hope for the best when I get to the recital.  Ultimately the choice is an easy one to make.  Option number one serves a solely selfish purpose and does not benefit me in the least, or my audience.  Option number two, while considerably more difficult at the moment will be more subservient to my final goal and a step in the right direction, even if my current level is mediocre.  In general, one must always move with forward progress, even if it feels backwards at the time.  

In his post, Ron talks about the time it takes for a singer to develop their instrument.  In fact, this is a common theme in Ron's writing which more singers need to hear.  The truth of my situation is that I am in no rush to get out and perform, outside of the fact that I really dislike my day job.  My main goal is to become a complete singer who can be the best at his art.  At 27 I am still on the  young side of this business, but I am beginning to feel some pressure as young artist program age limits are beginning to creep nearer.  However, if I develop my instrument completely, I can still forge a career without the help of these stepping stones.  

The Kashu-do mantra that heads Ron's blog is the perfect statement about my life and my path in music throughout my musical life.  I believe wholeheartedly that I will make it as a singer, and even though I have faced many tribulations in this field already my faith, patience and hard work have always paid dividends in the long run and will continue to do so into the future.

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.

A realization

I was driving home today and had a light bulb moment that for some reason had not yet occurred in my tiny mind:  I am getting paid to sing every week.  By definition this makes me a professional singer, my ultimate professional goal.  To be honest the true fulfillment of my goal is to be a professional singer singing opera, not church music, but that is simply a matter of definition.  The fact of the matter is that I am getting paid to act out my passion!  I am far from a complete singer at this point in my life, and singing is definitely not paying the bills on its own yet, but I am one step closer than I have been in the past.  I am averaging approximately one service a week at the moment and would love to be able to find more work.  This week I also have my first paid non-church gig in over a year singing for a NAVY retirement ceremony.  I am very honored to be singing for this as the ceremony itself is apparently steeped in 200 years worth of tradition, and most civilians do not get to witness this.  All this to get to the point of my post this week.  It is a combination of old mantras:  Good things come to those who wait.  Slow and steady wins the race.

I have been working towards being a singer for about 12 years, 8 of them have been spent in serious pursuit.  I have had a fair share of setbacks, including very discouraging classmates in college, and people who I consider to be within my circle who often doubt my path in life.  However through it all I have kept firm to my beliefs that I am a singer and that this is my calling in life.  Now after countless hours of work I am beginning to see some of the fruits of my labor.  I often tell people that I am not the most talented singer, in fact many of my friends have considerably more singing talent than I do, but that the reason why I will be successful is that I have a work ethic that comes from a lack of talent.  I have seen many talented people become mediocre due to a variety of reasons reaching from sitting on their laurels to an unwillingness to hear criticism.  So while they simmer and fizzle out, I continued my work quietly and mostly unnoticed, until one day I was better than they were, seemingly out of the blue!  The moral here seems to be apparent:  Work ethic and passion will trump talent every single time, without exception.

Update - Back to French

I have been rather lax in updating this since my burn-out with Arabic about a month ago.  I am currently back to working on French.  I have foregone Italian for the time being because my level in that language is rather comfortable at this point.  Also, I need to bring my French and German level up because I am planning on applying to grad schools in the next year or so.  For French, I am using Assimil and French in Action at this point as my only learning sources, with the exception of Ernest, my friend from Cameroon.  I have seen my French skyrocket in the last month or so I have been working on it.  I am able to understnad and have basic day-to-day conversations with Ernest without many hiccups and am finding that I can express myself pretty well.  I have somewhat changed my plan (again) and am going to stick with French until I am "completely" fluent.  I will define what I mean by this at a later date.  I anticipate that this will take me at least until the fall, if not until the new year.  After that, I will focus on German until it reaches a similar level, and then I will come back to Italian to bring it up to the other two.

On the vocal front, I have a lesson in the City this coming Tuesday and I am excited to see what is next.  I had a moment of frustration, understanding and excitement all within about 15 minutes of each other today while practicing.  First I was frustrated because I feel like my range is not increasing to include the "tenor notes" at all.  Truthfully I know that I am progressing and that the path is long and slow, but every once in a while I get annoyed.  Second, I realized today that I have to warm up my voice all the way to its top (F above high C) and then bring it back down through the passaggio in order for the voice to find its place where it needs to be so that I can sing.  Finally after accomplishing this I sang through Di pescatore ignobile from Lucrezia Borgia and nailed a high Bb at the end that felt comfortable and somewhat released!  If I was a..."lesser" person I would have just given up after the initial struggles, however I continued to work through and past them and was rewarded with a major victory for my vocal progress.  Hopefully I can ride this momentum into my lesson on Tuesday!

العربية -- أسبوع ٩

I decided to take the week off from most of my active studying.  I still did some listening and my Anki, but otherwise I was feeling a little burnt out so I took a break.

Vocally progress is still steady.

Methodology Minute - The Importance of Rest

I wrote on this in an earlier post, but I believe that in most skill acquisition rest is an important part of the process.  The most typical application of this concept is can be found in weight training.  The body does not actually build muscle during the lifting itself, but during the rest period in between sessions.  I believe that the same thing occurs during all fields of learning.  In voice training, the muscles of the voice need time to rebuild stronger from the exercises performed.  In exercises of the mind, it is good to give the brain some time to process what it has learned.    

I have found that after periods of rest, I come back to my studies or vocal training stronger and with a renewed energy.  There is a limit I believe to the amount of rest that can be taken before it becomes to much and has a detrimental effect.  Sometimes, coming back from a prolonged rest I find things to be more difficult.  However, in physical training about 2-4 days rest seems to be optimal.  Mental rest, on the other hand, is dependent  on the person.  I think that while one make take a rest from learning new things, I still think that some small review during the session of rest is beneficial to not totally allow the brain to shut down.

العربية الأسبوع ٧

This week I have continued my FLR work and am pleased with what has come of it.  I do not know how much I am necessarily retaining of my reading, I think that aspect of the work manifests itself most during my writing exercises at the end of the week.  I do know however, that my listening and vocabulary seem to be becoming strong as the time progresses.  With both, I add one unit's worth of exercises per week.  While this leads to a smaller vocabulary, I find that the words I do add implant themselves better in my brain with the time allowed to focus specifically on them.

I have decided to focus on small things vocally.  By this, I mean that I am taking single exercises and continually doing them until I achieve a desired result and then moving on.  Sometimes this only takes a couple of repetitions, other times it takes 5 or 10 minutes worth of work.  The benefits of this however are noticeable even the next day.  For example, since my lesson three weeks ago I have been working with the [ð] occlusive in my exercise regimen.  I perform a 5-note scale beginning with [ð] and moving to [i] ascending to the fifth and then descending back to the root.  I tend to struggle with not cracking, or slipping, at around A above middle C.  So, I will continue to do this scale starting on the D above middle, refining and honing in on the correct sound and sensation, until the note no longer slips.  Upon achieving this I move up by half-steps until about C5, the tenor's high C.  I am currently relatively consistent in this exercise on the A now and have moved on to B-flat and B as my main focus.

I have also noticed the importance of rest in the voice building process.  On average I vocalize about five days a week.  During this time I make progress daily, however my largest progress always comes after those couple of days of rest.  I think that this fact proves that training a voice is a muscular activity.  When training any muscle, the growth does not come during the exercise itself, but during the rest period when the muscles can rebuild and adapt to the new standards being required of them.  This is why and good exercise program should require rest periods.  Even in running and other cardiovascular activities, at least one day of rest is prescribed.  As the weeks go by, I continue to grow towards my ultimate goal of being the best singer possible.  Knowing that this process is a muscular one enables me to find satisfaction in the gradualness, but consistency of growth.

Methodology Minute - Trust Your Intuition


In most areas of intelligence, our intuition leads to more results than anything else.  Unfortunately, most of us do not trust our intuition, especially in areas that we do not consider ourselves experts.  A quick example:  When I speak to my friends in either French or Italian I generally come to a point where I want to say something, but do not necessarily know for certain what the correct word is.  During these times, I occasionally have words pop into my head from seemingly out of nowhere.  If I am comfortable with the people I am speaking with, I will tentatively try out the word in my head, usually with a positive affirmation of my offering. I always check my thoughts after the fact if I am by myself practicing, but the percentage of time that I am correct is far greater than the times I am wrong.  

If we have done enough work in a subject area (in languages this equates to input and building a passive vocabulary) eventually and inevitably this passive knowledge will become active when the opportunity presents itself.  My encouragement this week is to trust that little voice in your head.  Often it will be correct.