Which came first music or technique?

Burstin’ with Broadway is now in its 7th full season, and when I started the choir I made it non-auditioned because I had the belief that there were a lot of great singers out there who either 1. could not read music, and 2. were too scared to audition.  At first some people thought I made it non-auditioned simply so I could grow the group quickly, and then once established I would change it into an auditioned group.  Or that it was an “easy” way to start a choir, don’t ask for any pre-requisites, what could be easier?

As a student at McGill, I had met a great deal of technically proficient players who never made a note of music, and as a waitress I had met a great many waiters who could sing like “all that and a bag of chips” but could not read a note of music, yet they could harmonize to a melody and clearly were very musical.  After our shifts we would gather round the piano and sing show tunes, and they would sing their hearts out, for the true love of singing and making music.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a great deal of talented musicians at McGill, who had both amazing technique and amazing talent, and those who did, went on to careers in the classical world, and a great deal of them in jazz.  Many of them are well known jazz musicians here in Vancouver, and other cities.

I remember attending a graduation recital for a Master’s in Piano performance major, and the performance though technically proficient and amazing, was not moving in the least.  A musical typist, you could have called her.

In my experience directing Burstin’ with Broadway over the last almost 8 years, I have learned that if you give people the permission to sing, to learn music without any pre-requisite, that though at times it means helping someone learn to match pitch or to “sing in tune”, and sometimes it can be difficult for a section, the flip side is that it teaches tolerance and creates community, people will come together to help someone learn.  Most people who have joined my choir and have found singing and matching pitch to be difficult have sought out voice teachers and have improved at an astronomical rate.   Some have gone out and joined a second “auditioned” choir, for extra challenge.

I really enjoy seeing the glee in peoples’ eyes when they discover how fun singing can be, and what a safe environment singing in a choir can be, a great place to discover one’s voice.  I have had many choir members tell me over the years that the choir has lifted them out of depression, that it is the light of their week, that joining the choir has brought out a passion for singing that they didn’t know they had.

While I can greatly enjoy listening to technically perfect groups sing tight harmonies with beautifully blended sounds, (Take6 is one of my favourite groups) and can really appreciate the skill it takes to achieve such choral balance, nothing gets my mojo going more than hearing and seeing a great group of people smiling and bopping to some music together, and learning to really perform any given song, in the style that it was written.  Each person striving to reach the next level in his or her own personal musical training  education.

So often as adults we feel that if we didn’t learn something as a child that we are not qualified to do it as an adult, whether it is singing, playing hockey, soccer, dancing.

Everyone can sing, if you can talk you can sing, no one is “tone deaf” and everyone can sing in tune.  It is just a matter of learning which muscles are needed, and to learn to make the cognitive connection between hearing a note and singing it.  I keep saying this over and over again, because I continue to hear the comment “I know you think everyone can sing but you haven’t heard me/my husband/my friend/my brother…..etc etc”.  We are so quick to judge people who “can’t sing”.  Let’s stop judging and making fun of people who “can’t sing, who are tone-deaf”, you will only make them mute, instead encourage them to learn to sing.  Everyone has a voice, by laughing and making fun of people for their singing, we are attacking their very beings.  The most damaging of all, is to tell a child that he can’t sing, or that he doesn’t have musical talent.  He will carry this for a lifetime.

In other countries, Africa for example, everyone sings, it is part of the culture, and there is no judgement made, it is equal to talking.  We don’t make fun of peoples’ speaking voices, so lets give the same honour to their singing voices.

The art of making music is made better by learning technique, but music can still be made by everyone,  as we become more technically proficient we can take on bigger challenges, more difficult music.  Do we forget about learning to ski simply because we cannot ski down an olympic run on the first try out?  No, we start on bunny hills, and then progress as our technique becomes better.  So should it be with music, find a group to sing in,  where you learn some basic technique, then seek out more technique and when you outgrow the group you are in move to a more technically proficient group, and so on.

So which came first?  Music.