Over the Rainbow

Last week I found myself talking with a friend, another opera singer, about my experience with the teacher who'd told me that I had no talent. She'd had a similar conversation with a voice teacher in college. Her teacher had been a little more polite, but the message had been the same. This led to a discussion on how she felt the college vocal program had let her down. 

Besides the obvious problem of not liking her voice, how had she been disappointed? In quite a few ways, actually. And I had some similar complaints from my days in college. When you are a voice major, there are certain requirements

Not long ago, I posted an article that listed the 10 most demanding college majors. They, the National Survey of Student Engagement, looked at:

• Average Weekly Hours of Study/Class Prep Time - the time that students spent studying out of class each week
• Number of Hours Faculty Expects You to Study - the amount of time that faculty told researchers that students needed to study to be fully prepared
• Percentage of Seniors that Spent 20+ Hours Studying for Class - "preparing" equals study
• Number of Hours Working for Pay - jobs to help pay for tuition

The 4th most demanding major was Arts and Humanities. Music falls under that umbrella. 

• Average Weekly Hours of Study/Class Prep Time - 17 hours
• Number of Hours Faculty Expects You to Study - 18 hours
• Percentage of Seniors that Spent 20+ Hours Studying for Class - 31%
• Number of Hours Working for Pay - 12

When I was a voice major, I had to sing in the concert choir. It was required of all voice majors, plus, my scholarship depended on that choir. The class counted for 1 credit hour. It met Monday through Friday for an hour. We were required to go on a two week tour during spring break, along with singing in many, many concerts throughout the year.  After the initial run-though on a song, we were expected to work on notes and timing on our own time. Rehearsals were for fine-tuning and learning the director's interpretation. All that for one measley credit.

I took voice for 3 credit hours. You got one, maybe two hours of time with the instructor each week, but were expected to spend at least an hour each and every single day working on your own. The main difference between the 1, 2 and 3 credit hours that you could take voice for was in the number of songs you were expected to memorize each semester and the number of times you were to perform in various venues.

We were also expected to be in each semester's "opera" workshop. Their idea of opera doesn't quite jibe with mine. They considered The Sound of Music to be an opera. Rehearsals were 3-4 hours, 6 evenings a week. The opera workshop gave you 1 credit hour. 

It takes 12 credit hours to be counted as a full-time student. Most music classes were only for 1 or 2 credits. And there were a bunch of them: Music Theory 1&2, Ear Training, Sight-singing, Vocal Pedagogy (learning how to teach voice), Directing, Diction for Singers 1&2, Improvization, the list goes on and on.  Foreign languages were a must. And we mustn't forget the rest of the college requirements: Math, English, Science and the like. Many music majors find themselves taking 18+ credit hours, or taking 5 years to get their degrees.

And for many, when they leave, they find that they really haven't learned what they needed. 

The program in most colleges centers around the various choirs. There are the basic concert choirs, jazz choirs, madrigal choirs, a cappella choirs, show choirs. . . I think you get the idea. These are great for bringing money into the college, almost like the sports teams. And, like the sports, they focus on team playing. Yes, there are a couple of star players, but overall, the goal is to play as a team. A choir must have a homogenous sound, with no voice standing out. With that goal in mind, most of the vocal instructors work toward that sound. And so, most singers come out with a "collegiate" sound, a voice just like every other singer that's out there. This sound is all about blending in and control. If the singer has hopes of a career in singing, this is not necessarily good. They are not encouraged to do anything that would help them stand out in an audition. 

And if the singer has a voice that doesn't easily fit into the cookie cutter standard, then they are discourged from pursuing this major. 

But there are other issues, too. At no point are the students taught how to audition. And by this, I mean how to how to present themselves as a hireable commodity. What to wear, what to say, or how to construct a good resume.

There is one skill that very few college voice teachers cover. I was very lucky in my second college voice teacher. Herr Weinsinger began to cover the art of singing. Not just the nuts and bolts, the technique, but the art: how to interpret a song, how to understand the period of a given piece, and then, how to make it your own.

Let me give you a f'r instance - Somewhere Over the Rainbow. To start with, here's Judy Garland.

She sticks pretty close to the printed music, although there are a few notes held out a touch longer than written. There's a little bit of sliding, and a couple of grace notes, all perfectly allowable in the era. Lovely, lovely voice; simple and elegant interpretation.

Now, if we want to leave simple far, far behind listen to Patti LaBelle.

And now for something completely different: Iz Kamakawiwo'ole

Three very different versions of the same song. There are hundreds of others: Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra, Eva Cassidy, Josh Groban, Katharine McPhee, Glee, Martina McBride, or Celtic Woman, to name only a few. 

What's my point? I try to teach my students how to make a song their own. Some of this I learned with Herr Weinsinger, but most of this I gleaned from Mike Rhodes, my teacher in Germany. I learned today that he passed away last Sunday. This is a very small part of what he taught me.

The first step is to learn the music as written. Words, notes and timing. Many never make it past this step, but, once that's done, the fun (and the real work) starts. 

You need to take the time to sit, with the music in hand, and listen to every recording you can find. Thanks to YouTube, you can now find possibly hundreds of different performers doing any song you can think of. Listen to as many as you can stand, and then listen some more. Make notes, (always in pencil!) in your music of what you like. Then every few performers, stop and sing through the song, incorporating what you thought you liked. Sometimes once is enough to decide if it's right for your voice or not. Sometimes it may take a few tries to decide. 

As you play with the song, you will probably find that your understanding of the song changes. That's exactly what we want! My goal is to make your interpretation of the song unique. I don't even have to like it! The important thing to me is that my student, the singer, likes it, and feels that a part of herself is in the song. 

This is hard work. But fun work. And scary work. You can find that the song is suddenly telling far more about you than you'd originally intended. That's when it becomes art.

Is every song worth all this work? I don't know. I would say, probably not, but just because I think a song isn't worth this much effort, doesn't mean that you need to agree with me. That's part of the beauty of any art form: different tastes. 

Why did I pick this song? One of my students has been working on it. She'll be singing it at my studio's Spring Recital next weekend. She has taken a lot of time to listen, and practice, and think about what the song means to her. She's known it since she was little, as many of us have. But, as she's gotten older, it has come to mean different things. All of those things are right there in her voice. 

Each one of us is unique. Each one of us brings a different outlook to our song. That is beautiful.