Singing

Gary had to cancel our scheduled lesson on the 4th because he had the WorstColdEver(tm), and so I finally had a chance to meet him last Friday.

He told me his theory of singing instruction, which I won't bother to repeat here - suffice to say that he has over thirty years teaching experience, and everything he explained made sense to me, and hey, I have no basis of comparison.

That said, he said that he teaches unlike pretty much every other voice coach out there, but it worked very well for me.

I've always thought I had a good ear for music, as does my wife, but it was still good for the ego to hear Gary tell me I had a really good instinct for music, and that furhtermore I took instruction exceptionally well.

We spent the first part of the lesson going over the basics of the human voice, how we make sound (which Gary termed "the human grunt") and how to turn it into not only musical sounds, posture, breathing, and so forth. I had brought along some music (Comedian Harmonists and Ensemble Six) as samples of what I wanted to be able to sing well some day, although I also want to sing Nessun Dorma, Toreador, and other opera arias that are just plain fun to sing.

In seemingly no time, I was singing scales, and if you've ever heard an operatic singer warming up, well, that's what I was doing although with frequent coaching, variations on technique, and practice practice practice.

Gary said he was going to be my "instant feeback mechanism", and that he would keep raising the bar as we went along. Indeed, in our first hour, he says, we did a lot more than he usually does with a new student.

Interestingly enough, he told me not to practice before our next lesson so he wouldn't have to undo anything. So, I'm keeping my end of the bargain so far, but still singing along with my favoiurite songs the same old way I ever have.

I've signed up for lessons until the end of the month, but I'll definitely carry on until the end of the summer. Hopefully grad school this fall will allow me to carry on with the singing too.