 I’m a baritone. I’m a tenor. I’m a baritone. I’m a tenor.
Crossroads
Today, I am a tenor. With all this lift stuff, I walked into my lesson and found that I could sing high C sharps with no problem whatsoever. My teacher, who had up until today had serious doubts about me being a tenor, saw the light so to speak. I then sang through “Recondita armonia”, “Ecco ridente” (with an interpolated high C) and some Brahms and Schubert songs in tenor keys with no problems whatsoever.
The idea that I could sing some of those great tenor arias and play some great roles is very exciting, but it’s also frustrating. If I wake up tomorrow, and today was not just some fluke, then I have some serious issues to deal with.
First, I was considering doing auditions sooner rather than later, and that will have to be put on hold while I relearn how to sing and gain stamina in a new fach. Also, I have to decide how to sing some upcoming performances. I am scheduled to sing in NMSU’s opera scenes next week as the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro. So I will still have
…[Continue reading Tenor? Baritone? Oy…]
In my last post, I was very excited about lift. Still am. But I have found some dangers.
It is important to note, for example, that a new technique does not render invalid all old techniques. It’s not necessary to sing with the most ring all of the time. In fact, in some settings, singing with too much ring in the voice is the worst thing to do (in choral settings with tight harmonies, for example). Be flexible.
Bad habits will tend to become problematic while learning a new technique. You may think that you have mastered them, but then they come right back up when you add a new technique. For me, it’s my tongue and jaw. For my students, their breath collapses or their neck becomes a tight wad of veins and tension. It may be different for you. Be careful.
For some reason, when people find a way to be louder, they concentrate on the loudness rather than the pathway to doing it. Be careful while practicing “lift” that you don’t get decibel happy and push with all your might from your abdominals. Remember, the point with this technique to to not have to use excessive amounts of breath pressure.
…[Continue reading Thoughts on "Lift"]
Thanks, Rockwell Blake!
One day, I walked into my teacher’s office, and he, excitedly, showed me this video:
Despite his having seen it before, we both sat there exclaming and cursing and brain storming aloud what could have allowed Rockwell Blake to have such breath control (Since then, I must have watched it thirty times and have still been impressed every time). We came up with a few ideas:
He bares his teeth.
He never allows his rib cage to drop.
He wrinkles his nose.
He rides the “thin string” of the voice. He never allows his voice to get heavy sounding.
He points.
In the interest of brevity, I will focus only on part of his technique.
The Introduction to Lift
A couple of weeks later, I performed “Von ewiger Liebe”, and in listening to the recording, I became frustrated. I thought my voice sounded inconsequential next to the piano. I lamented to my teacher, who took me outside and instructed me to find “lift” in my voice. I’d had some experience with this before, but this time he was insistent. So I lifted and lifted, and he became more and more pleased. Other students of his remarked positively.
So I proceeded to practice on my own and
…[Continue reading Story: Rockwell Blake and "Lift"]
(This is totally paraphrased)
“You want to know the secret to having a career? Be a great singer. If you do that, then they (companies) will make sure that you get the experience you need.”
This is a vocalise that my earlier teacher Dr. Day taught me. He never presented it as being hard or anything. It was just the relaxing vocalise we did at the end of every warm-up. It also probably helped that he played pretty plagal cadences underneath me (as I have notated in the piano part).
Of course, the messa di voce is hard. It takes a ton of breath, breath support and a bit of micromanaging.
In this variation on the familiar exercise, the singer moves between two closed vowels. The way we did it was to move from either extreme ([i] or [u]) and then move to the next closed vowel ([e] or [o], respectively). We would also move in an “up a fourth” “down a third” movement so that the voice never sat too long in one range.
What you are aiming for is the sensation that your voice “locks” into some place that feels better than the others. In that place you can easily crescendo and decrescendo.
Enjoy!
I will be away working on all sorts of stuff this week since it’s Spring break, so there will be no posts. There will be a new vocalise though this weekend.
Until next week, have a happy start to Spring!
 This is a fun vocalise that is a variation on one I found in Berton Coffin’s Sounds of Singing. The difficulty lies in the quick movement of major seconds. Maintain the accuracy of your pitch while moving quickly.
[I figured out a way to post the file so that there is no distortion in notes relative to the staff, and I removed the .pdf link as you can now print this from the image URL itself]
Here is another selection from my upcoming recital. This is “A Last Song”, which is somewhat ironically the first song in Barber’s cycle Despite and Still. Phoebe Joy and I performed this on March 9 here at New Mexico State along with “Von ewiger Liebe” by Brahms (which will be posted on here as well in a day or so).
I absolutely love singing this piece because it feels so good. I can really lean into the phrases and explore. Barber himself was a singer (a baritone at that), and his songs tend to work well in the voice. I also feel like the first few lines “A last song, and a very last and yet another, oh when shall I give over?” are so clearly in the composer’s own voice (he actually changed the words from “A last poem” to “A last song”) that it almost feels like I am singing for him.
Thoughts?
 So, I am beginning to advertise my graduate recital in a modest way. Here’s the poster:
Now, I am a cheap graduate student, so I put this together very cheaply. I used my phone’s 2 MP camera, a desktop wallpaper, GIMP image processing software and some time. Obviously the phone picture is not going to be the best, so I disguised it with transparency in GIMP and used a picture that did have better resolution. I then used Google Picasa to do the last little touch-ups, and there you have it.
I discovered GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Progrm) during my time using Linux (which is also free!). It’s a free program that has much of the functionality of Adobe Photoshop. It’s really very nice. Some of the shortcuts are different than Photoshop, so don’t expect there to be no learning curve at all. But if you do have a computer, then this is a very cheap way to change your photos without having to go out and blow hundreds on the expensive stuff.
Anyway, my recital is on April 3 at the New Mexico State University choir room. Composers whose work is being performed will include Haydn, Argento, Brahms, Faure, Chausson,
…[Continue reading Recital Plug]
 Personally, when I first began taking lessons, I had no idea how to go about learning music. This made singing and performing very stressful. I now have a technique for learning music that has made singing much more fun. The advice offered here is not meant to be exhaustive. It does not include techniques such as coloratura learning techniques, or diction learning techniques, but I do hope that it may serve to be a starting point for learning how to learn.
Preparation for Learning Music
Some questions to think over before you begin working on your new song:
Do you like the song?
What is the theme of the song? How does the composer handle this?
Who is singing it? Is the character someone you could perform credibly?
Do you have the technical abilities to sing this piece? Can you learn those abilities in time to perform it?
If applicable, does your accompanist have the technical abilities to play this piece?
How much time do you have? Decide if it is reasonable to learn your piece in certain amounts of time. For example, I had to learn “Eilt! Ihr angefochnen Seelen” from Bach’s St. John Passion. It took me months of work to feel confident on
…[Continue reading Learning Music]
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About 
Beginning Singer is about the challenges of becoming a professional singer.
My name is Ian Sidden, and I have been performing since I was a very little boy. I have always sung, and whether it was in musicals, rock bands, choirs or operas; I just couldn't shut up. I just completed graduate studies in Vocal Performance, and now it is do or die time to attempt a professional career.
Within this blog there will be writings on my own singing experiences as I live them, writings on singing technique and pedagogical observations, interviews, book reviews, and all sorts of singing related material.
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