Not-so-good things

[rsc]

As some of you know, I've been singing with the Boston Cecilia for close to 30 years. Cecilia has a long-standing policy of reauditioning all singers every 3 years.[1] This was my year, and I had my audition a couple of weeks ago.

Unlike many -- I would even say most -- of the singers in the chorus, I've never gotten particularly stressed about these auditions; I'm confident of my musicianship, and while I know that I don't have a profressional-quality voice, I've felt that it's in reasonably good shape, especially since I've been studying privately and learning more about how to make my voice do what I want it to.

So I was somewhat alarmed, last Wednesday, to get a phone message asking me to call the chair of the auditions committee.[2] It seems that the committee is troubled by a tendency to sing just on the low edge of the pitch, which creates a blend problem because my voice is "prominent", but has very little vibrato. (There had been what I saw as a passing mention of this on an earlier audition report, but it seemed to be a divided opinion, and since I wasn't hearing the problem myself I basically ignored it. Bad idea.)

The upshot is that I didn't pass, and will have to try again at the beginning of next season (late August/early September) in order to continue singing with the group. Needless to say I find this rather disturbing, and also somewhat puzzling, since (with very occasional exceptions) I don't hear a tendency to flat on the recordings of my voice lessons, and my teacher has never mentioned it as a problem.

So of course I discussed it with my teacher on Friday, and she was also puzzled. But during the course of the lesson some possible explanations developed. The thing we spend the most time working on is a tendency to "press", that is, to use muscle tension to try to project the voice instead of letting the breath do all the work.[3] When I press, the tone is duller, and does tend to be a bit flat. It's possible that when my teacher isn't there to correct it, I'm doing this a lot -- perhaps especially under the stress (however unstressed I may think I am) of an audition.

So I think, at least, I know what I have to do. For one thing, I want to talk to the conductor (which I can't do until July, since he's out of town) and perhaps get some more details, and in particular to find out whether he hears this as a problem during rehearsal and/or performance. (I'm guessing the answer is yes, since he attends the auditions, and if he didn't think there was a general problem he would presumably have said so.) And I have to pay a lot more attention to how I'm producing my tone when I practice. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to tape some of my practice sessions as well as my lessons, so I can tell what I actually sound like when I'm on my own. It certainly seems that I'm doing something different in terms of tone production in the chorus from what I'm doing in my lessons.

So we'll see what happens. Maybe I shouldn't have worn my "DIVA!" T-shirt to the audition.

[1] That's a bit of an oversimplification. but it's good enough for the purposes of this post.

[2] They don't call with good news.

[3] This is essentially the alpha and omega of singing technique, at least for a classical singer.

Comments

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know about "insecure". The basic idea is to maintain the (high) musical standards of the group, bearing in mind that voices change over time, and eventually (usually) deteriorate with age. Or as I remember the conductor saying once, in a discussion of this issue, "I worry about us all growing old together."

[fj.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, and a deteriorating voice needs to be considered. Except that nobody except this committee is hearing your flaws in the way mentioned.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know that, and I won't until I get a chance to speak to the conductor.