New Year, New Plans

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It has been a few months since I have updated the world about my life, I apologize.  The end of 2013 marked some important changes in my singing life.  In the most recent audition season, I sent out nearly 25 applications and was granted five auditions.  I am still waiting to hear back from some of those auditions, but as of right now I have no offers on the table.  In the interest of understanding my situation and furthering my career along, I had a meeting with my voice teacher to discuss the coming year and what we can do.  The answer, primarily, has been to change my repertoire around.  Specifically he told me, "You have to start doing things that other singers struggle with."  With that statement I have officially moved into the Bel Canto repertoire.  My future repertoire finds itself sitting a lot higher, but ultimately feels fairly comfortable in my voice at this point.  I am looking forward to the next year with this repertoire and the possibilities it may bring.

Along those same lines, this year I have decided to really increase my work level towards my career.  This includes more lessons, coachings, study/practice time, and hopefully more performing.  Part of this also concerns my health.  I am about 60 pounds overweight and need to work to lower that number considerably before next season.  All of this change will involve making a new daily schedule to accommodate everything I have to do on a give day, and planning out what I need to work on when I do work.  This year is the year of "working smart."

In the language aspect of my life I have somewhat let that part of my life linger for a while.  This technically should be my year for Russian, but I am contemplating going back and trying to further either my French or German.  This is partly due to practicality and partly due to money.  We shall see where my heart ultimately leads me.  

Summer Adventures Debriefing

Well, I'm back from my summer adventures.  Admittedly I have been back for nearly three weeks now, but I am just getting around to writing.  I had a myriad of experiences ranging from wonderful, insightful learning experiences to downright awful working conditions due to personality clashes and planning problems.  I am not going to talk about the poor experiences except to say that they were still learning experiences and ultimately I was glad I had them in the environment I was in and not in the professional world.  The positives I can elaborate a little on.

The Opera Advantage program was designed to help the entire creative process rather than focusing solely on the voice.  This is exactly what I was looking for and I knew upon seeing this program that I had to do it.  I learned so much about the craft of performing and about myself that I am sure I have already forgotten more than I have remembered.  Luckily, I have a journal and notes to refresh my memory.  Among the most important and helpful things I picked out of this program was the process for building a character and also identifying the things in my own psyche that hold me back.  The latter of these has been especially important moving forward, both for myself and for others whom I have shared this knowledge was.  The most positive aspect of my time this summer has been a reaffirmation of my love for this art and my need to do it.  During this summer I realized my vocation and that has made a huge difference in my reasoning behind everything I do.

In other singing news, I am starting a voice studio out of my home.  I am targeting high school and avocational singers, so if you know anyone in the greater Rochester area that is looking for a person to take voice lessons with send them my way!

Admittedly languages took a back seat this summer.  I have maintained my languages through my normal channels (people who I know that speak the languages I know).  So while I have not regressed, I have not progressed.  Hopefully, once the fall begins I can get back into my studies a little more.

Forward motion

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post.  I have not been necessarily too busy to write, but I have had other things going on that took importance over writing last month.  Additionally, on the language study side of the blog I ran into a rather large roadblock that took most of the last two months away from me.  More on that later, because I want to begin with the more exciting things that have been going on vocally in my life.

It always amuses me when things from two different areas of life come together.  This has been the case over the last few years of me re-training my voice.  I wen to a Christian college and a common expression on campus was "God's will, God's time."  I've always liked the phrase as it give some perspective to the fact that our plans for our life are ultimately not our own, but God's.  This has taught me much about patience in the last decade or so since I came back to my Christian faith.  Anyway, early on when I began to study with JRL he said to me that when my coordination was there, the high notes would come "very fast."  In my pride, I had assumed that since I had already been studying singing for ten years, this "very fast" meant only a couple of years at most.  As the two year marked went by, I became slightly discouraged, but remembered my college days and gave up my own timeline for that of God's.  Now, as I near in on almost four years of study with Ron, I have finally had the experience he was talking about.  In the last two months I have gone from struggling with notes just above the staff to singing comfortably (in a practice room) up to at least E-flat above high C on a daily basis, even when sick!

The key to vocal development, which so many of my peers seem to miss out on, is that it takes time and patience.  I have family members and friends who consistently inform me that I need to start a career in case this singing thing doesn't work out.  I've never given this any real thought or merit because I have known for a long time now that I am a singer and my career will be in singing.  I am not in a rush to make this career happen, because I know it will happen when I am ready for it to happen.  I have already seen this beginning this year.  A couple of weeks ago I made my professional debut with a local company, and I am of the belief that work leads to more work.  In addition, I have two auditions coming up in a few weeks which I am very optimistic about because of this new found security I have in my voice.  If nothing else, I am sure that I will be able to at least learn and sing through one or two roles this summer with the Kashu-do studio.  I am moving forward and already beginning to look forward to next season's auditions.

Now, the language side of things.  It occurs to me that Spanish is a large stumbling block for me.  It's not that the language is terribly difficult or anything like that.  It is just a demoralizing language for me because of my time spent with it in high school.  I did not have the money available at the beginning of this year to go buy the materials I usually use for language learning.  So, due to this and the fact that I have a pretty solid foundation in Spanish, I have decided to only use LingQ for my Spanish learning.  It has been a very slow process, but I am beginning now to really focus more.  I picked up French in about eight months and I am hoping to be able to do something similar with Spanish.  I would like to get my known words level in Spanish higher than in French, as this was not something I accomplished with German.  We shall see what happens.

A New Phase

I have entered a new phase of my vocal journey this month.  I was lucky enough to be able to have two lessons this month as compared to my usual one every other month.  During the course of these two lessons, JRL and I worked on a new aspect of singing technique.  For the past three years, we have focused mostly on developing the chest voice component of my voice.  This was lacking from my singing previously and took some time to develop.  Now, we are working on finding the "thin edge" of the voice.  This is proving to be very challenging for me, though I am finding success and a certain ease in my singing that was not as present before. 

In the past five years or so, I had noticed that I was losing my vocal agility and I could not figure out why.  I found this very frustrating, because I used to pride myself on the ease with which I could handle coloratura passages.  After a couple of weeks of working to find the "thin edge," I sang through "Ev'ry Valley" from Handel's Messiah today with relative ease and at a passable tempo.  The runs felt both clean and under control, not to mention the top notes were easier than they have ever been.  My challenge now lies in this weekend. 

I have two auditions this weekend and these are some of my last auditions of this season.  At this point I have not been terribly pleased with my performances in audition situations this year.  I have been becoming more and more comfortable with each audition and I know that this is a process.  Singing tenor is still new to me, especially in front of people, and the more that I do it the easier it becomes.  I am hoping that some fruit will come from these auditions this weekend. 

My primary goal is to sing well and seek the "thin edge" throughout my two auditions.  My secondary goal is to be offered a position through these auditions.  I am at a difficult point currently in that I am nearing an age where I need to either find work singing, or pursue a secondary plan that is more sustainable than my current day job.  This will inevitably lead to me pursuing a graduate degree if I have to go down this path.  Following a path towards a graduate degree does not necessarily hurt my chances of singing professionally, in fact, it would probably help me a great deal.  The issue I have is that I would rather just get out there and sing rather than go through another two years of academic work.  Prayers are greatly appreciated that my auditions this weekend and throughout this audition season lead to an offer to sing somewhere this summer and begin my career.

German is still coming along at a consistent pace.  I have fallen into a pretty good groove as of late, though I am a little slow on my goal of 4,700 known words by the end of the year.  As we come into December I will need to increase my workload so to reach this level.  4,700 may seem like a random number to want to achieve, however there is a method to this number.  There is a study out of Australia (I believe) that found that in English the amount of words known divided by 1.6 equated to the number of word families known, which is a better measure of fluency than simply words known.  It is generally accepted that one can be quite proficient in a language once they know 3,000 words.  The Australian study points out that this is really 3,000 word families, not words.  Therefore, per the equation, I need to know 4,700 words to know 3,000 word families in English.  While I do not know the specific equation for other languages, I have found this same equation works pretty well for other languages.  If I can reach this number by year's end I will be at a solid intermediate level in the language and be able to have relatively comfortable conversations on a wide variety of topics.

I'm getting married in a week! Also, my first tenor audition!

I'm getting married in a week.  Therefore I have done very little with German over the past couple of weeks.  I still continue to speak when I get together with Ernest, however I have not studied anything actively over the last two weeks.  I even let my LingQ account lapse until after the wedding so I can save as much money as possible.  I plan to get back on track after the wedding with German and make a big final push over the last couple of months.

About this time of year I let the cat out of the bag regarding the language I am going to next pursue.  I am running into a similar problem that I ran into toward the end of last year with French.  I plan to move on to my next language, but I feel drawn to sticking with German and really solidifying everything and continue working on German until I reach fluency.  On the other hand, I like moving on to something new so that I don't get bored.  It appears that my German will be at a solid B1 level by the end of the year, maybe B2 if I work effectively.  Truthfully that's sufficient for what I need currently, and is a high enough level where I can move on and not really risk losing what I have done.  That being said, my next planned language of study for next year is:  Spanish!

I studied Spanish in high school for three years and continued to speak Spanish for a while in college with some friends.  However, I have not actively spoken or studied Spanish in about eight years.  Also, since I have already worked in French and Italian I have a solid base in the language.  Therefore I am not a beginner, however I am still going to start from the beginning of my process and see what I can do.  It has been predicted by Ernest and other polyglots I know that Spanish will quickly become my best language because of the background I already have, and because of the easy exposure to Spanish in American culture.  I tend to agree and would love to be able to make it to fluency in the next year, beginning in January.  My goal at the beginning is always to attain fluency in a year, then I modify as the year progresses.  Next month I will give my review of my German year and assess how I have progressed.

I sang my first audition as a tenor on Saturday and it was a bit of a train wreck.  Just about everything that could have gone wrong during my audition did.  It started with flipping verses for about eight measures and proceeded to forgetting words, blanking out completely, and shanking high notes.  Fortunately this was a small local company which shouldn't have any effect on me elsewhere.  On the plus side, I did go into the audition very comfortable and confident, which I did not anticipate.  I was using this audition as a sort of practice experience to prepare myself for the more important auditions coming up in the next couple of months.  I need to go back and take a look at my repertoire to make sure I have it all memorized properly and securely so that my nerves don't steal my words again.  The audition experience provided me with the setup for a night of beating myself up, however sleeping does wonders for the soul and the mind and I have been much better since waking.  I have to take a week off from serious practice time to prepare and experience my wedding, and then I will be back in the swing of preparation again when I return next week.

A Time of Blessing

The blessings of the Lord have been flowing down upon me the last couple of weeks!  I'll begin with the language side of my life.  Yesterday I finished the Michel Thomas course I have been working on for the last five months.  This is significant for a number of reasons.  First, I feel that I have a strong base in German now and can comfortably hold my own in basic, day to day conversation.  Second, this means that I can now move on to Assimil, picking up where I left off at lesson 24.  Additionally, tomorrow I will cross over the 2,000 known word milestone on LingQ.  This has taken me a lot longer than I anticipated, however it is ultimately of my own doing.  I took a small hiatus earlier in the year from LingQ and in general I am lax about doing LingQ if I am lacking motivation on a given day.  This puts me at about the same level on LingQ as my Italian says I am.  Although Italian was the "first" foreign language I brought to a significant level it has quickly become my lowest level language, besides my high school level Spanish.  At some point I will come back and bring all of my languages to higher levels, but for now I am content with where it is.

Based on where I am in the Assimil program, I have approximately 126 days of work ahead of me, which equates 25 weeks of study based on a 5 day study schedule.  That should bring me to about December, which allows me to focus solely and intensively on LingQ for the final month, where I hope to really increase my known words.  The nice thing about known words is that they grow exponentially.  In French I learned approximately 5500 words in 8 months.  If I follow a similar pace from here on out in German that would bring me to about 7500 known words by the end of the year, give or take a few hundred.  If I stay on course and hit all of my goals for the rest of the year I should have no problem speaking German coming January 1st.

The real exciting news comes on the vocal front.  I went down to New York to have a lesson with JRL and had a very productive lesson.  Towards the end of the lesson I was assigned the role of Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi for a sing-through later in the summer.  This will be my first time singing a role as a tenor!  On top of this, I am also looking ahead to doing my first round of auditions for some summer programs in the autumn.  After three arduous years of struggle and hard work I am beginning to come out on the other side of this process and am confident about my prospects.

Another important part of my trip to New York was my coaching with Susan Morton.  During the coaching I was recommended a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  While I am still just barely scratching the surface of this book, it has transformed my approach to nearly every important aspect of my life.  The concept of "deep practicing" discussed in the tome has made learning a much more intense and rewarding experience.  I have witnessed the benefits in my singing while learning this role, in my running as I have determined to beat my chronic shin splints this summer, and even my language work as I near an intermediate level of German.  I highly recommend that anyone who is attempting to gain a skill find this book and give it a read.

Overall, the last two weeks have seen many prayers beginning to be answered and many goals in their infancy of being realized.  I look forward to where these new opportunities and experiences take me and glorify the Lord for granting me the patience to see these things through to their fulfillment according to his will!

Strength is coming!

There's not a whole lot to report on the language front this time around.  I am still plugging away and making progress daily.  There have not been any new big breakthroughs.  The only noteworthy thing is that I will be finish MT before my next post, which means I will then go back to Assimil.

My vocal studies are where the more interesting things have been happening lately.  A couple of weeks ago at church I was singing at the 8:30 mass and went for a G4 which I can normally hit in a rough way that early in the morning.  This time around, however everything happened the way it was supposed to:  the F turned on the [o] vowel and then the [a] vowel turned ideally on the G producing a nice, easy, free flowing pitch.  I took this accomplishment to mean that I have begun to build significant strength through my passaggio so that these acoustical things can happen correctly and automatically.  The second thing happened to me this past evening at a rehearsal for an ecumenical choir concert that I am participating in.  We had just finished rehearsing a men's choir piece which took the tenors up to an Ab4.  I sang this easily the few times we went through it without giving it much thought.  As we were going back to join up with the rest of the choir one of the other tenors made a remark to me that I was "one of those high tenors that sings that Pavarotti high C."  I laughed and answered that I was working on it.  It amused me because a year ago at this concert I was told be one of these singers that I was a "2nd tenor" and now after a year of work on my part I am being told that I am a "high tenor."  Ultimately these people are amateur singers and their thoughts on my vocal classification have little merit in my life.  It is nice however to see that my work is paying dividends.

I have come to realize over the course of my vocal studies that things happen at a slower pace for me in this medium than they did when I was a saxophonist.  Luckily I have learned to be patient and trust that the process will get me to my end goal eventually.  When I started down this path as a singer I did not realize how hard I was going to have to work to attain my dreams.  Everything else I had ever done in music came easily.  Now, though I have broken through so man apparent glass ceilings that I have very little that can stand in my way.  I had a goal set in front of me by JRL at my last lesson that by this time next year I need to have a workable C5 so I can work on Faust and Rodolfo.  I take these challenges very seriously and am closing in now an my B4, just a half step away from the famed "Pavarotti high C."  If my voice continues along the path it is currently on I anticipate not only reaching the goal of a workable high C, but hope to achieve it earlier than the date set forward by my teacher.

This fall I am going to be auditioning for a few summer programs and possibly one or two programs for the following year.  The following fall my sights are set on the MONCA competition.  This especially is a lofty goal, but I am confident that my work ethic and faith will see me through.

Language Leap!

I am a little over a quarter of the way through my German year and I have made a considerable leap in my ability to express myself in the last couple of weeks.  I had a similar thing occur in French last year, where all of sudden the language began to flow from me with a lot less hindrance.  There are obviously still holes in my vocabulary, however I have discovered that I can now carry on conversations beyond mere greetings and niceties.  I'm not exactly sure what the turning point was for me and I wish I had kept a better catalog of hours spent working in the language so that I could possibly start to formulate a theory on the relationship between time and achievement.  My estimate is about five hours of Michel Thomas, eight hours of Assimil and 10 hours on LingQ.  So that is really only about 23 hours, not including time spent talking to myself and others, time spent watching movies and listening to the radio.  Truthfully though, this is a very small amount of time and I wish I had more time to devote to learning the language.  If I could devote this much time into my week instead of over the last three and a half months I can only imagine how strong my German would be come December 31, 2012!  Unfortunately I do not have four hours a day to devote to language learning so I have to do the best I can with the time I have.  I imagine that I will be able to add German to my list of spoken languages by August; then I would like to amp up my workload to really achieve fluency by the end of the year.

I have been having some struggles lately with my voice.  These challenges are things of my own doing, but they are very annoying nonetheless.  It is especially frustrating because I had such a great lesson a couple of months ago and I feel like I have done the two steps forward, one step back thing in the last couple of weeks.  I am beginning to pull myself out of these issues, but it appears that it is going to take me longer to recover from than it did to fall into.  There are some positives though, I still have built my strength up some as I am now able to sing a fairly consistent A4 ever without warming up (I don't do this often).  Overall it is important to continue to look at the positive movements that are happening and use those to get through the troublesome times.

Coming in like a lion

This has been a rough month for me.  The amount of things I have to do at work, which is when I usually study, has increased considerably and taken away my time that I can work on German.  Suffice it to say that I have not been able to make much progress so far this month.  I have tried to maintain at least one aspect of my study per day though, usually Michel Thomas.  I am in the process of trying to restructure my day so that I can fit in my Assimil and LingQ work daily again.  The one positive from this month thus far is that I am at a basic conversational level in German.  I define this as being able to greet and speak candidly with others about menial, day to day things (i.e. How are you?, What are you doing this weekend?, etc.).  I am very pleased and excited about this, especially since I have not been able to put much time in as of late.  When I can get back to more regular study I anticipate being able to count this language as being fully conversational by mid-summer, which makes fluency by December 31 very attainable.

I am still in a very good place vocally as well.  Since my lesson in February I can feel my voice getting stronger every day.  My A-natural (A4) has really solidified as of late and I am now working on B-flat (Bb4) and B (B4).  Even my repertory has taken a step up as I have begun to earnestly work on "La donna e mobile" and "E la solita storia."  My hope for this session between lessons is to have a reliable B-flat and a workable B natural.  Assuming I keep up my newfound pace, I believe I will definitely be audition ready for the fall.  I have about two months until my next trip to New York City and am planning on having a lesson and at least a couple of coachings while I am down.  Until then, I have much work to do so that I can build on the momentum I have gained from my last lesson.

Big Progress!

I had my first lesson in quite a while this past Friday with Jean-Ronald LaFond.  My lesson this time around was one of discovery and great advancement for my part.  During the course of the lesson I felt myself singing in a way I never had before and I liked it.  It was a great experience for me and we even talked about me doing auditions in the fall if I can get a few more things to line up vocally.  Since I've been home, I have continued to work with the new concepts I was given and can employ them fairly well in my vocalises (at least I think I do), however I am struggling to put these things through into my repertoire work.  This is especially frustrating since I was singing so well at my lesson.  I chalk up my difficulties to the fact that I am not in front of JRL receiving guidance as I am singing.  I will ultimately figure out how to incorporate and synthesize these concepts into my singing and know that if I continue with the work ethic I have been developping that I will be fine.

Linguistically, however, is a different story.  I have had a rough couple of weeks with my language learning time.  This is mainly due to a largely increased workload at my actual job which results in less time for study.  I am hoping that things will slow back down to normal at work next week and that I will be able to get back to my normal routine, otherwise I am going to have to find a new time to study.  This is very frustrating to me because I was on such a good pace with German and now I feel as though I have skidded to a stop.  Luckily I still do manage to get in at least a little time with the language, mostly my Michel Thomas recordings.  Again my mantra is, as always:  Slow and steady wins the race.

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.  

End of the Year Update and Next Year's Plans

LANGUAGE:  Well, the year is coming to an end and I think I can successfully say that I have accomplished my goal for French.  In my two reading test at the end of this year I have averaged a 97% comprehension rate.  I do have one more test planned for next week so I can have a three score average to more accurately rate my ability.  Additionally, I feel pretty comfortable in conversation in French and feel as though I can express myself pretty well.  I am very pleased with the last eight months of work in French.  Admittedly, I was not always as consistent in my work as I would have liked to be, but it provides me with goals for the coming year.

2012 brings in an entire year devoted to German for me.  My system will be similar to what I did for French, since it seems to have been the most effective for me.  This includes working through Michel Thomas, Assimil and LingQ on a daily basis during the work week, taking the weekends off from studying to allow things to work themselves out subconsciously.  In addition I will again be consulting my friend Ernest for conversational practice beginning early on in the process.  My goal for the coming year is to be more consistent in my studying - making sure that I get in all three phases of my work, five days a week.  Based on the results I saw with French after only eight months, I am hoping to be even farther along in German by this time next year with the extra four months of work.

MUSIC:  This has been an enlightening year for me musically.  I have grown much as a singer and artist, however I also encountered some setbacks that varied from minor annoyances to things that made me step back and think about what it is I am undertaking.  Overall I am better for all of my experiences as they have led me to discover new interests and paths in which I can explore my own artistry.

The most difficult part of this year was the culminating recital, my first as a tenor in nearly ten years.  I had some successes and some failures throughout the performance which I meant to talk about here but never got around to it until now.  The positives from the recital were that I made it through all of my repertoire without feeling fatigued at the end or ever really feeling in danger of cracking.  The negatives were that I never really loosened up during the entire performance and thus my singing came out pressed and my artistic performance suffered for it.  I blame these issues mostly on nerves from not singing that high in public in many years.  I remember as a baritone that I had similar issues for a number of years until I had enough performances and faith in my voice through performing that I no longer suffered from the fright. 

The other challenge this year has been that I do not feel I have progressed as much as I should have this year.  I take the sole blame for this and have already begun to plan how to address this issue in the coming year.

After my recital, I began to contemplate if this was really the field for me to focus on and began taking choral conducting lessons with the plan of going to grad school for choral conducting.  Much to my delight, I have found that I really enjoy the study of choral conducting and have found myself doing what I do when I become truly interested in something:  researching and absorbing as much information as I can about the subject.  Ultimately this has not pulled away from my desire to perform and performing is still my primary goal, but I am still considering a MM in choral conducting, since an MM in vocal performance is not necessary for my goals.


For the coming year I really need to focus on more directed, intensive practice.  Difficulties abound due to my schedule, namely that I work overnights, however I have to figure out ways to be more productive and push myself if I want to make my dreams realities.  It is a challenge only being able to have lessons once every couple of months, but I cannot let that be an excuse for my not progressing.  This year I truly have to take my fate in my own hands and constantly remind myself that achieving my goals is a responsibility that rests solely on my shoulders and nobody else.


I am looking forward to 2012!  I can already tell that it will be a year of great growth for me as a person and artist.  Highlights of the coming year include planning a recital for the fall and my wedding, as well as figuring out where I will be relocating to in 2013.  Have a happy holiday season and I will be back in January!

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.

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!

You are what you do!

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Today I want to break down this statement by Aristotle.  I cam across this while reading ChiRunning by Danny Dreyer and I feel it really speaks to my life.  So much so that it has been my quote of the week.

Part I:  We are what we repeatedly do.

The great thing about this part of the quote is that it is a statement of unequivocal fact.  Michael Jordan became a phenomenal basketball player because he practiced so much that the game just became part of him.  Likewise, the cello is simply an extension of Yo-Yo Ma because of the endless hours of time put into learning and perfecting his art.  In all fields, one can find similar stories that all follow a similar path.  This same point that Aristotle points out so eloquently has recently been elaborated on through the 10,000 hour rule, which has been popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (a book which I highly recommend).  The basic premise is that if a person reaches 10,000 hours spent performing a specific skill or activity that they will be a master at it.  This equates to three hours a day over the course of ten years.  The truth is in the results.  Gladwell points out that the number of hours is not a magic number, and that one may become a master before reaching 10,000 hours, but that the process of constant, consistent work towards a goal will eventually reach its fruition.  

One thing that this rule, and Aristotle's original statement allow for is gradual progress.  The road to mastery is a long path and thusly progress will not be in large leaps, but in small steps.  Every once in a while there will be a "breakthrough moment," but these are really just a culmination of many little adjustments over time fusing together to create the current product.  This process of slow growth is not often embraced today, however the effects are considerably more lasting than quick fix practices.  

For myself, coming to realize this slow process has been a lesson in patience.  I first started my transition from baritone to tenor about two years ago.  Apart from my obvious issues of distance from my teacher, the process has been very slow as in not nearly done.  I have just recently come into possession of a high A and Bb, and they are still fickle at best.  The process has been, for me, one that seems to move at such a pace that I do not really feel like I am progressing at all, but feedback from others and those few moments affirm that I am on the right path.  Faith is a key component to this as well, for without faith that I am a singer, I would never have pursued this path this far.

Part 2:  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Using the example of Michael Jordan again, he practiced his shot so much over the years that it was second nature for him.  The same goes for Tiger Woods at his peak, or Michael Phelps, or Luciano Pavarotti.  This ties into my last post, but when we put the time in to make something a part of ourselves, we have no choice but for it to appear easy.  If we practice with the goal of attaining the highest level possible then excellence will occur.  It has no choice.  

Aristotle's quote as a whole is really an if-then scenario.  If we repeatedly do something to the point that it becomes a part of us, then excellence is to be expected.  There is a concept in endurance sports that essentially states:  If you want to be a better runner, go run.  If you want to be a better swimmer, go swim.  Excellence can only occur when you focus on a task.  What do you want to become excellent at?

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.

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!

Nothing is Hard!

Today I had a friend whom I had not seen in some time ask me how my languages were coming.  I spoke truthfully and said that I am now conversational in Italian, French and Spanish as well as some Swedish.  This prompted a response which I get a lot and spend most of my time trying to refute:  "You have a gift - languages are hard (rough paraphrase)."  I responded to this as I always do saying that nothing is hard.

For whatever reason I always get strange looks when I say this to people, but let us reflect on it a bit.  According to the dictionary.com hard means "difficult to accomplish; fatiguing; troublesome."  While most skills might be challenging, I do not believe any of them are actually hard.  Take an example from the athletic world, if one wants to learn a particular sport or fundamental of a sport there is a process involved in acquisition:

1.)  Instruction
2.)  Practice
3.)  Application
4.)  Acquisition

If this sequence, or some rough form of it, is followed acquisition is unavoidable.  I have a friend who is a U-14 soccer coach.  One day he was explaining to me how he was teaching his boys to strike the spherical, showing me the proper technique.  Afterwards, I went home and for a week practiced the proper technique in slow motion making sure that every bit of the form was correct.  When I saw my friend again and was playing around pretending to strike a ball he exclaimed that my form was nearly perfect.  In fact, he mentioned that he wanted to take me to a practice to show his boys how the form looked!  This is huge for me, considering that I am not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination!  Now in reality I have not taken this skill to the next step of application, however I know that if I wanted to I could become very good at striking a soccer ball because I have already laid the groundwork through my practice of the instruction given.

I have unwittingly applied this same process to many skills throughout my life, from my basketball shot, to my billiards playing, to singing and language acquisition.  Overall the process is always the same!

The other mantra that goes along with the concept of nothing being hard is "Slow and steady wins the race."  Going back to the model of the soccer strike I only would practice the form for maybe thirty seconds at a time multiple times during the day and within no time at all I was able to have perfect technique.  In singing, I have never been one for marathon practice sessions, however I consistently put in time every day, multiple times a day.  In language acquisition, I only study for approximately 30 minutes a day and then speak to myself and others here and there throughout my day.  Do I make progress as fast as others?  Not always.  However, the progress is consistent and always forward.  My fiancée today remarked that my French has now gotten to a level that she doesn't understand what I say.  That is in only three months of steady work as compared to her four years of schooling!  Similarly, when I began the road to becoming a singer I was bad; not just mediocre but flat out horrible.  I even had people questioning why I was a voice major, but over time with my consistent and constant practicing (generally not in an actual practice room, but more on that in a minute) I eclipsed the majority of my graduating class and am one of only a few still following my career path.

The key to this mantra is to always be in a state of practice.  As a singer, I sing all the time.  That may seem like a "duh" statement to some, but let me expound a bit:  I literally sing ALL THE TIME.  I sing in the shower, when I get in the car, walking through the store, in the practice room, in my apartment, in my mother's house, in church, etc.  The difference between me and others is that I am always attempting to sing my technique whenever I open my mouth to sing.  This is how I have gone from worst to best in some circles of singers.  It is not always about the amount of time spent in the practice room, or in the library or on the pitch.  It is about the amount of time spent.  It is better to spend 5 minutes practicing 20 times a day then 1 hour practicing once a day.  If you want to learn a skill, any skill, learn the technique and practice it constantly.  Before long you will become an expert without even realizing it.