New and Challenging Material

Recently I have been working on my “regular” songs and trying to find 2 for a performance I have at the end of this month. It has been an interesting journey. I found many songs that I love and of course most of them are ballads and have a theme: they are a little depressing. I ran into this same issue when I was working on my first cabaret show. The first few incarnations of the show were very depressing and I realized that if one or two audience members were to leave the show and slit their wrists I couldn’t blame them. I loved the show though but realized that if I were to do that type of a show I would turn off most of my audience. So I went back to looking for more material.

• I spend hours looking for the up-tempo, comic and non-ballad songs but then once I decide on the “new” songs and I begin to learn them I get extremely frustrated. I still haven’t pinpointed the reasons for this but let me list a couple that I know of:
• My mouth/jaw gets in the way because I am known to enunciate quite a bit and with an up-tempo song too much extra work makes the song an unnecessary and tiring workout.
• Unlike with ballads I find that I sometimes don’t have the time that I need to readjust and relax my mouth, jaw, and diaphragm ceasing to breath because of my tension; running out of breath and energy for the remainder of the song.
• I get excited about the song and have ideas on how it should be performed but that creates stress and tension that gets in the way of learning the song.

I finally put the song aside, resigned to the fact that I just am not cut out for these types of songs.

Recently I have realized that I have been lifting my soft pallet but not high enough, and on top of that I wasn’t really singing all words and notes in a forward placement. Once I focused on both of these issues one at a time and then slowly began to work on them together did I finally make a break through. I still revert to old muscle memory and bad habits but I finally have some hope for performing songs other than ballads.

What are some issues you are confronted with when learning new and challenging material? How do you tackle these issues?

Frustrations

As a singer I don’t know about you but I find that there are many things about this art form that frustrate me to no end. Some days are better than others and then a block comes up. These blocks sometimes enrage me so much that I convince myself that I am going to give up. Yet I still keep coming back, because singing is something that keeps calling me back. I am hoping that through this blog I will be able to share some of my solutions that I come across and get a discussion going with other singers (professional and non-professional) who feel that they are stuck and don’t know how to proceed.

Here is a list of frustrations, in no particular order, that I have had to deal with that I hope to slowly tackle on this blog: (If you have any that you come across let me know and I hope to address them as well.)

Singers who “GET IT” and can sing by just opening their mouths.  I wish that was me.

Teachers who have a one-size-fits all approach to training their students.

Thinking too much when singing

Finding my type of voice as late as I did

Having a small mouth.

Carrying my tension in my neck, shoulders, and throat.

Having had speech therapy classes in elementary school that actually created many of the problems I have singing today.

Being pigeon holed into a vocal range early on and finding out later that it was wrong but can’t seem to get the old voice out of my head.

Non-singers disregarding how difficult singing actually is.

Not getting all aspects of singing to sync every day.

Nerves

Thinking I understand what a teacher is asking and/or taking it to literally.

People who think one way of singing is the only legit way. (I had issues with some teachers early on that created unforeseen problems later on in my techniques)

How one song is simple to sing yet the next song with the same range or even lower is so difficult.

How you need to manage confidence of technique and “letting go” for a good performance. How do you figure that out?

When I rehearse by myself it is sometimes an uphill battle yet with others I fair much better

How you can loose rack of even the most rehearsed songs lyrics

The lack of understanding from fellow performers

When I finally began to understand how my mind works is when I felt even more hopelessness because I was finding teachers didn’t understand how I was thinking.

How more information/views for many is threatening

Not everyone having the same type of voice.

Not being able to accept my type of voice initially.

Forgetting how to have fun (the reason you began singing)

Why the very talented give up after a while but many less talented succeed.

Under Construction

I have just started this venture and will be getting some things up and rolling in the next month or so. Please check back later.

Thanks,
Jim