Life is a Cabaret

Okay, this post is not going to be about Cabaret or Music or one of my classes, but I wanted to write about it anyways.  I participated in NaNoWriMo this year - National Novel Writing Month.  NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge where you’re trying to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November.   And yesterday, I finished - with 50,342 words (which was 161 pages double-spaced).  I wanted to be done before Thanksgiving, and I accomplished that goal with a day to spare.

I never much thought of myself as a writer, even though I do write Morning Pages most days of the week (when I can get my butt out of bed and into gear), but this called to me for some odd reason, and I never found the writing to be a challenge or too difficult.  I loved almost every minute of it.   My story centered around a young girl who was in the hospital with cancer and her Mother starts telling her stories to cheer her up, take her mind off of things, and to engage her own imagination.    As I started to write I added characters like nurses and other children in the ward and they took on a life of their own.  It was so much fun for me to get out of my own head for while and into another world.   I swear, sometimes I thought the characters were talking to me and I was just typing - it was a wonderful feeling!  I’m glad I did NaNo and I hope to start working on editing my first novel and seeing what can become of it.

Again, this has nothing to do with music, but it does have something to do with Creativity and that’s what art is to me - singing, acting, drawing, and writing - it’s all a wonderful creative outlet for me and for my energies.  I need that, I need to be creative on a daily basis and I’m so thrilled to have found a new outlet.  Singing and Acting are great, but Writing is also pretty nifty and I hope I can continue to love it through the editing process.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!   Be safe everyone, and eat lots!

Well, another round of Vocal Technique classes have started up already - this time, a short four-class schedule to tide us over into the new year when another full round of Eight Plus A Showcase will start back up.

First, though, let me quickly discuss our Showcase from a few weeks ago - it was amazing!  I had so much fun, and enjoyed myself immensely.    Everyone did such a great job and the room was packed!  Thank you everyone who attended, you made the whole thing just wonderful - the energy in the room was great.  I love having a good audience, people who really want to be there to listen to you, and who seem to be enjoying themselves.  It’s very satisfying as a performer to see that and get that kind of energy back from the crowd. I sang “Fine, Fine Line” and “Unwritten” and just had the best time doing so, it was a real treat for me!   And I can’t wait to perform again (which will be on Dec. 6th - more details to follow).

Now, the new class with Patrick.   There were six of us last Thursday night, and it’s people I already know and love, so that was fun, almost like a reunion of sorts.   And this class is going to be really great - everyone who’s in the class wants to be there and wants to work hard and have a good time doing it, so we’re going to see some amazing stuff.

For me, I worked on Pop songs, mostly Cher’s “Strong Enough” because the Pop stuff is the one thing I don’t necessarily have a firm grasp of.  I’ve been singing musical theatre for a very long time, and only sing Pop stuff in Karaoke Bars and along with the radio in the privacy of my own home (or, back when I lived in St. Louis, the car)…but now I want to explore that sound and see how it works on my voice and in my body.   It’s fun, but challenging.   I tried a few other songs, but they weren’t really working for me.   I think for the next class I’m going to take in “Love Song” which I sang once in Lennie’s Class, but decided it was really long, but I think part of it will work great for exploratory work in Patrick’s class.   And I think Cher’s song will be making a comeback.

We have a break for Thanksgiving, then we come back to three more classes before the Holiday Break, then Patrick will start up with his normal schedule sometime in Mid-January.  I’ll keep you posted.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Last night was the last class of this 8-week session.  Again, so sad.  I really do hate when classes have to end.  The good news - we have our performance next Tuesday and it’s going to ROCK!

Lina Koutrakos, one of my teacher’s from this past summer’s Summer in the City cabaret workshop, was on hand to help tweak the show.  She didn’t say much (shocking if you know Lina at all) but did set up our order and help us all feel really confidant in our ability.

I, personally, feel amazing after last night’s class.  I went first last night (but will ultimately go 2nd in the show), and worked on my two songs - “Fine, Fine Line” from Avenue Q and “Unwritten” by Natasha Beddingfield - and they were amazing and my voice sounded really good and I had a deep connection, both to the songs and to my audience.  It felt just great and I can’t wait to get up on that stage next week and entertain the audience.    I know that performing is in my blood, it’s in my bones, and I’ll never get away from that - nor do I want to anymore.  I want to get up on that stage and share my gifts with the people (whoever those people happen to be!).

I feel so much closer to my goal of Confidence in my Singing and Performing Abilities that I am gearing up for the short 4-week inner-session that Patrick will be holding in mid-November to mid-December.  I’m going to be organizing my music and pickings some hard songs to work on for the next round.  Any suggestions?

This was our last class, so sad.  I always hate to see class end, especially when the class has been as much fun as this one was.

This class was especially wonderful for me.  I worked through my Motown song, Heatwave, with the final arrangement, adding in my own inner monologue/story and it worked really well.  I wasn’t hitting anyone over the head with my singing (as I had done last week, out of both sickness and old habits) and I had a story to tell and I told it.   I was quite proud of myself, as were Lennie and Steven.    I felt like I had made the song my own and I felt so comfortable on stage.  It was an amazing feeling actually, and one I strive for with each song, but it takes me so long sometimes.   This one only took me three weeks, that’s not too bad with such a “new song.”

The other song I worked on was “Rainbow Connection” - it went much better than the first time I went through it, but it wasn’t as polished yet.  I need to make sure I have a very real reason for singing the song, in my own mind, so it doesn’t become just a pretty song to sing the nice people in the audience.   It’s a lovely song and my voice sounded wonderful.  Lennie even commented on how much work I’ve done with my voice and how much stronger it was.  :-)   Happiness!

Our Motown show won’t be until the beginning of December (info to come later), so we were all told to keep practicing and working on our songs and that we’d have a rehearsal with Steven and Lennie sometime after Thanksgiving.    But sadly the class had to come to a close.  I enjoy working with Steven and Lennie so much.  And now, that my voice is so much stronger, and can handle so many different things, I have such a wide world of music open to me to choose from.     This is what I’ll be doing between classes (as the next round of Shut Up and Sing will start in mid-January) - working on organizing the music I currently have in my apartment, as well as searching out new things to try.    Fun, exciting, and nerve-wracking all at once. HA

Second to last class, two weeks from the performance (see post right before this for info about the performance!).

I decided to take a small break from my “performance” songs to sing something different.   I knew I had one more class to work on my songs, and felt like trying my hand at some oldies, but goodies - other songs that were difficult in similar ways to my two performance songs.  So, I sang through “Best of my Love” (the Eagles song) and “Hold On” from the musical The Secret Garden.

For Best of My Love, we tried to find the rhythm of the song, the inner beat as it were, again this is extremely important in pop songs, especially a pop song that on the radio has multiple singers and some harmony added.  When you’re singing one of these songs, they can sometimes seem boring, even if you, the singer, are not, because we’re used to hearing it a certain way.  I wanted to work on this song for that reason alone, finding the inner rhythms and beats of pop songs is still new to me, even after working on some.  I think this is because each pop song is slightly different, and I sometimes carry my feelings from one song to the next.

For Hold On, we worked on finding the pace.  This is a very long Musical Theatre song, with some repetition.  Also, this song is right in my break, where my head voice and my check voice meet and (at least try to) blend.    Last week, I was having some slight issues of blending, but kept at it and by the second time going through this song, I was sounding much better.

I’m glad I chose to work on something other than the performance songs as I have this week’s class (the final class) to work on some last minute things, as well as Patter, before next week’s performance.  I gave myself a small break, and got to sing some songs that I hadn’t sung in class either ever or in awhile.  It was nice.