Friday, July 17, 2009

pink skies

My last morning in Nashville. I stayed up until past midnight surfing reverbnation and thinking about the lessons. I think that and the long walks I took yesterday helped me sleep past the 3:30 am mark. It is about time to be over the jet lag! What a great thing to wake up to a pink sky at 5:45, a respectable time to be up and about.

It is exciting to have completed the first chapter in what I think could be a fascinating, entertaining, albeit expensive plan, to travel all over the world and meet with all the voice gurus that I can and then put things together for myself and dare I say...in years to come, become one myself. Is it bad to aspire to guru-dom? I am grateful that Rob is excited about my plan and supportive. He kept reminding me that this trip didn't need to be the end all be all, and that I should just go and have fun. That took a lot of pressure off.

So now, not as criticism but in terms of evaluation, and because I have given Singing Success quite a bit of free publicity to this blog's huge fanbase of three...thank you Mari, thankyou Mitzi Jo, thank you Mom, I really need to begin a more indepth briefing of my experiences. This may be the point where anyone reading decides to click next blog.

A trip to Nashville is always a fun idea. Everyone who I came in contact with at the airport along the way seemed to smile when they said 'going to Nashville today.' It just makes you think about fun times. Music Row is so pleasant, a kind of old-fashioned neighborhood setting, gently rolling streets, lilacs, big trees, songbirds, interesting buildings, historic and new. If you have stumbled upon this blog and you don't know that I have pictures on the Our Nine blog, I do, see Nashville post.

Brett Manning studios is a very friendly environment. It's very friendly and I won't say though I'll just say and clearly everyone is pre or more than pre-professional about a profession where image is almost everything, but still very kind and friendly. I can't stress the pleasant and friendly enough. I would even stress kind. And I would also stress image, again.

When I teach I always think about trying to give my students the most value from their lessons. (I have a lot of room for improvement in that area.) It makes sense that the pre-professional students at BMS would go in there looking for a commercial sound. In Nashville there is a lot of buzz about labels, producers, contracts, I would say a pre-occupation with them in this digital age of greater artistic freedom. But everyone wants to make money, even me with my nine lunch-money-needers, so I agreed that 'when in Nashville' looking for a commercial sound, for myself, would be a good place to focus during my five hours of lessons.

My teacher told me I had a great head voice, but that it wasn't a commercial sound. So, we spent a lot of time using the exercises to "find my more legitimate chest voice" and stay in it all the way up my range. That time was valuable, because whether or not I decide to abandon my head voice, don't worry mom I won't, I still have a desire to master as many vocal coordinations as I can, both for my own artisty and for teaching. So my objections, if any, were more philosophical than technical. I think if I really have a great head voice than I should never abandon it to have a more commercial sound...it's me... it's who I am as a singer. Who says I'll ever get paid a dime to sing? So I'd better sing in a way that I enjoy and that I feel expresses who I am. That's not to say I won't continue to explore and more edgy and contemporary sound. I just won't have "commercial" be the goal. Never, no, never.

Brett Manning has developed an amazing set of exercises. I think those execises, designed to keep the voice out of head voice and stretch the chest voice into the head voice range, using more compression on the vocal chords, actually do amazing things for the head voice. Once you decompress and allow head voice the voice feels amazingly flexible and effortless. I love the squeaky basketball shoes analogy...it is so helpful for accuracy on staccato notes.

I give a trip to Brett Manning Studios a big thumbs up, but it is not the last stop, and I would say go but take your own brain with you. Keep thinking. Keep being yourself. Enjoy the great atmosphere.

So now my goals are to go back and songwrite a bit. Dave Brooks promised it didn't need to be good, just do it to find out what my style is as a contemporary singer. I like that advice. Other goal: to continue using the Singing Success CDs and keep finding that contemporary sound.

Third goal: keep applying the technique to my classical songs, (third and a half: keep thinking about breathing..really honing that breathing technique) and fourth and most exciting start thinking about the next future adventure.

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