Life is a Cabaret

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.

Here’s the 411 on our Vocal Technique Performance:

Tuesday, November 11th @ 7pm

Don’t Tell Mama - 343 West 46th Street

$15, plus two-drink minimum/cover

For reservations, please call 212-757-0788 (after 4pm) or visit their website: www.donttellmamanyc.com

*Also, please note that Don’t Tell Mama is a cash-only establishment!

I attended The Singer Symposium this past Saturday, and although it was a long day (and the break-out rooms were extremely warm) I had a good time overall and came away with about 10 pages worth of handwritten notes - this is the condensed version.

First, my over-all general notes:   I enjoyed the day, and even though I wrote down pages and pages and pages of notes, once I got home and reviewed, I realized that over half of it was stuff I already knew.   I didn’t talk to too many people - one because I was still feeling icky and two not too many people were alone like I was.  I picked up a few things from the exhibitors, but not too much - the most interesting were The Alexander Technique teacher and Singers Express (an online database for singers and producers).  I will be delving more into their websites to learn more about them and their services.    I’m not sure if I would attend again - the break-out sessions would have to be really specific (something really exciting or something I really wanted to learn about) for me to go back next year as I just felt a bit “on the outside” the whole day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whoa!   We only have one more week left - where did the time go?

I wasn’t feeling my best, but I was feeling better than earlier in the week, so I didn’t work too much, but I did work more on my Heatwave song.   We finished up the arrangement and decided not to add any of the lyrics of Fever into the song, but just the general feel into the music - it works really well, and now I just need to learn the words and allow myself some time to play and get the feel of being quiet, seductive, flirtatious, and fun - I need to forget about being “perfect” with this song and just try things - letting the mood of the song affect the phrasing.    It’s going to be a fun song and one I hope to work on for my show.

Sorry about the short blog posts as of late, but this sickness really has affected my entire life and it’s starting to really drag me down to the depths of depression.   Hopefully, I will start feeling like my normal self and can finish up my classes next week on a wave of Health!

Note:  I will be attending The Singers Symposium this Saturday (Oct. 25th) so expect a nice long blog post afterwards.

Unfortunately, my sickness returned, and I had to miss this class.   

It was another full class - this bunch is a crazy bunch I tell you!  I love it!

Since I missed last week, I missed some people starting on their Motown songs - but I got to enjoy the fruits of their hard work - they were really great!  This show in December (still not sure about the exact date yet) is going to be amazing!    Some of the arrangements were slightly different, just giving a different point of view and some were really different - making the song mean something very real and personal to the person singing it - truly amazing!

When it came time for my turn, we sang through the song as it was originally written - just to get a feel for the actual song.  Then we discussed - what does the song mean to me?  How do I see this song?   What kind of a feel or flavor should we add to it.     My song is “Heatwave”and I mentioned that it reminded me of a Pepto-Bismol ad, but that really didn’t help matters.  I also mentioned the song that goes, “Doctor, Doctor - give me the news, I got a bad case of loving you” - but when we tried that with the original song, it sounded exactly the same. HA   So, then Lennie and Steven mentioned a Latin flair and that was okay, but then Steven tried “Fever” and that was it!    Basically, the song isn’t much different, but Fever is played in the background - giving me freedom to slow down, get sexy, and be flirtateous with the song.  So much fun!

With only three more classes we talked again about our show - which is Tuesday, Nov. 11th at Don’t Tell Mama — I’m not sure of the time, but I assume 7pm.  We are each doing two songs, that hopefully will show our progress to those who know us well. 

Singing was so much FUN during class - so much FUN!  I was just having a blast singing - I wasn’t worried about how my voice was going to sound, or what was going to happen, I just thought of my story (or saw the video in my mind) and I just sang - for the pure joy of it!   So awesome!

I worked on three things - although we didn’t do much work as they were all pretty good (I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but sometimes it’s necessary - I totally rocked it out on Tuesday - which was nice, as I really have worked hard the last two or so years with Patrick really getting to that juicy mix with my voice - and it’s showing, which is delightful for me!).    I first sang, I’m Not that Girl from the musical Wicked, then came There’s a Fine, Fine Line from the musical Avenue Q (which I have worked on in Lennie’s class and is a definite for my solo show - but haven’t really sung it through in awhile and wanted a refresher), and then went into Unwritten (my pop tune from last week).    And we did have a bit of work here as I was rushing, clamping down on the words - and it is a wordy song and the chorus is repeated about a million times - so we did work on that a bit, but even with that - it felt more like tweaking than fixing.   Again, I’m impressed with myself - which doesn’t happen very often.

I know for sure that Unwritten is going into November’s show, but not sure about my 2nd choice.   Next week I’m going to be pulling some older stuff and going back over - things like I’m Not Afraid of Anything (Jason Robert Brown) and Disneyland (Alan Menken) - they are also very long, wordy songs - so probably not a good match as a 2nd piece for the show, but fun to work on none the less - and it’s been awhile since I’ve sung both of them.    I’m going to have to look through my stack of stuff and see what else I’d like to work on the next few weeks before the end of class (sad face).

These weeks have really flown by, but it’s so much fun, not only to see my own process of growth, but to watch it in others - people I either didn’t know at all, or barely knew - and to see the progress in them in just a few weeks is amazing!   I think that’s the best part about doing these classes as apposed to one-on-one with Patrick.  I think the one-on-one training really helped me with a lot of my singing issues, but really watching him work with others brings home the point more often than not of what I myself am working on.   Amazing!