It was a Sally Field moment. They like me, they really really like me. However, I'm not holding any winning ticket or golden statue.
Eighteen hours after I got home Tuesday night, an email showed up in my inbox. I am thanked for braving the weather to audition and then the compliments started showering. Nice vocal style, pitch and tone; good connection with the music and interaction with the band. Oh, and I apparently have great pronunciation abilities. Hee hee. Yes folks, I ckannn pprronounce thingks ckqwite wellll. Ok, sorry- those are all very nice comments, but I just kinda had to snicker at that one. Anyway, the email continued on to be very gracious, almost too much. Even blaming themselves for a couple of my bobbles. I did mention how nice these guys are?
Overall, though, the point was that they like me quite a lot but.. I didn't sing loud enough. Ugh. Maybe your first reaction is 'well, they should just turn up the sound or something'. Apparently that's not quite as easy as it sounds. In a recording studio, where you can sit and mix and tweak everyone individually, that's easy to do, but I guess not so much live. At least maybe not on most independent bands' budgets? Anyway, I think it means my "instrument" needs to match the intensity of all the other instruments, which it did not. Again, they (well, he was- it's not like it was a group email) were super nice and suggested my 'holding back' was probably all just nerves. So because of that, and because I am apparently everything they seem to want otherwise, I am getting a second chance. Tuesday, Jan. 6.
Before Christmas he sent me twelve more songs from their repertoire to listen to and learn. That gave me about three weeks, which is great. These are great songs- fun, kinda obscure, and in my range. I've got lots of time to learn them, including twelve hours in a car, round trip to Amarillo. So yeah, this'll be fine.
Ok. Here's the deal.
The problem here is this is not the first time I've heard that complaint. I sang very briefly with a classic rock band several years ago and they said the same thing. That gig didn't last long at all, which really was okay because my heart wasn't in it and they were what you might call a "rebound" after leaving my first band. But that comment has stuck with me. I didn't have any idea what to do with that information- I was singing Chrissie Hynde as loud as I could. So when I heard it again a few weeks ago, presented wrapped inside the baby-soft blankets of other compliments and tied with a glittering ribbon of second chance, it didn't matter. I don't know how to sing louder. I thought I had given what I could.
So I sat with that for a few days. Started learning the songs immediately, but still tried to understand what was going on. I remembered another time I was told I wasn't singing loud enough, but this time it was on stage, in a musical, and the song was kind of countrified and twangy. Then I realized I do know how to sing louder. I just don't like the answer.
For about as long as I've been alive, I've been singing. In the church choir and then college and then the Symphony Chorus and throughout that whole time in stage musicals too. I've studied voice and have been singing classical music for well over twenty years. I'm a good pronunciationator because I've been trained to articulate well in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, German, Porter and Sondheim. I can fly on a Mozart aria. I can hold my own among forty other altos in Beethoven's 9th. I can sing loud. When it's Haydn or Mahler.
Have you ever heard an opera singer try to sing anything other than opera, like pop standards or Gershwin, perhaps? It's odd. The vowels are too big and open and no matter what they do, to me it still sounds a little grandiose. Words are articulated
too well. (
Soooomeday I'll weesh upon a starr and wake uP where the clouDz are far BehinD meeee) Even when there's an obvious effort to tone down the training, to match the style of the song, it still sounds like when you were fourteen and your parents tried to talk to you in 'your' language. The words are right, but it's just
weird.
And this is where I stand. Now, dear god, it's not like I'm Kathleen Battle trying to sing Alicia Keys. Mother of cheezwhiz, I wouldn't even put myself in the same room as either of those two. Nonetheless, even though I can throw down some Strauss, I think I have a lot of qualities to my voice that allow me to avoid sounding like a Wagnerian horn-hatted, breastplate-wearing battleaxe alto. (thank god, and, probably my dad's genes too) But this is what I'm coming to terms with- that in intimate settings, like a studio or acoustic set, I can sing however I want. To sing against amped keys, guitar, bass and drums, though, I just can't apply the same techniques. And because of that, I'm not at all comfortable with the sound that comes out. It's not acceptable to have that bigger, vibrato-y quality when you're singing U2 or The Police. It doesn't sound cool, it just sounds wrong.
Long ago, I forced part of my voice away on anything that was written in the last 50 years. Now, in time for this audition, I need to find it again. This is going to be a little difficult. Physically, because it will require singing differently, placing my voice in a way that I'm not used to for this kind of music. Sort of like learning a new way to hold your drumsticks just a few days before a gig. Plus I've been out of town and then sick for five days after, so not much time to practice. Mentally, well, see above. I have to find a way to be okay with what I sound like, and if it doesn't fit, then maybe I need to beat a different rhythm. In no small metaphor, I need to be comfortable with my own voice, just as it is, for exactly what it is. And love it. I hope they do too.
