“I can’t make it to rehearsal tonight, but it’s ok, I know all the notes, it won’t make a difference if I’m not there”

Over the years I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this comment from choir members in various choirs, mine and others.

Sometimes choir members forget that a choir is an ensemble.

Ensemble: (ŏn-sŏm’bəl)

n. A unit or group of complementary parts that contribute to a single effect

Ensemble is a French word which means “together”.

Now, if ensemble means “together”, then how do we create one if we are not there?

If creating a great musical group, an ensemble could be done simply by collecting a number of people who knew the notes, and putting them together for a performance,  things would be very easy for a musical director!  Or perhaps, we could completely get rid of people altogether and simply leave music making to computers to create virtual ensembles of perfect mathematical harmonies, would they not sound just as good? ….No…? Why is that?

Remember at the advent of computers over 30 years ago? Society became paranoid that computers would take over the world, replace humans in their jobs?  Musicians were scared that MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) sequencers and synths would replace them completely.  Yet it hasn’t happened. Why?  Because computers can only emulate creativity, musicality, they cannot create, and they are only as good as the person inputting the information.

There is something unique, something magic, something creative which occurs when all the parts of an ensemble come together to rehearse.  The act of making music occurs.  This cannot occur in isolation.  Try though we might to create “virtual choirs”, like Erik Whitacre, the result is the same, and it is not musical.  Don’t get me wrong, the “virtual choir” is very cool, I love it, I love technology and all that it brings.   It is a technological marvel, but not a musical one.

The mathematical, the technical side of music, is but one facet of music.  The beauty of music is that it is a linear art form, and it occurs over time. You will never hear the same piece of music twice in your lifetime.  You will never sing the same piece of music twice in your lifetime the same way. For music to happen, the sum of the parts must all be in the same space at the same time.  It is the energy, frequency, experiences, issues, emotions, musicality and beauty that each individual brings to the group which creates perfect harmony, and beautiful music.  Indeed, this is what speaks to us, as singers, as musicians, and as audience members.  This is what makes us want to rehearse, it is the interaction of the creative process, we take from, and we give to others a part of ourselves in the creative process.

Unfortunately, too often we get bogged down in the technical, and mathematical side of music, the learning of the notes, the plunking… oh the plunking…  We read the notes, instead of creating the music.  We cannot disconnect from our brains, the cerebral, mathematical, harmonic side of music.  Yet ironically it is only when we can get past this, when we can know the music so well, that we don’t need to read, to think, to analyze, that we begin to communicate, and what is music but communication?  Many groups, and indeed many “musicians” actually never get past the technical, and though they can be very proficient, perfectly blended, perfectly harmonized, they nevertheless miss the mark when it comes to creating music at all.

As a musician, I am never satisfied when it remains cerebral, beautiful harmonies if that is all they are, are indeed math over time, and though beautiful to the ear, do not translate into music at all. There HAS to be more, there HAS to be an emotional connection, I have to feel something as a musician and my listener too has to feel something.

I love to watch Benjamin Zander when he talks about music, to paraphrase, he said something to the effect that, when you are bored in a classical concert has it ever occurred to you that it’s the musician’s fault?

As a choir director I expect each person to excel to his or her personal best, to come prepared to rehearsal, so that we, as an ensemble can make music when we get together.  The math homework can be done at home, and when it is rehearsals become fun, uplifting, and energizing, and everyone can go home feeling great, and happy they came out.

Do you bring your personal best to your choir every week?  Imagine what would happen if every single person in a choir did this every week?  Just imagine…..

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.

Does this mean all those people are tone deaf? Well think about it.  Most of us, who have not taken voice lessons for years or had singing experience, have a 5 note range.  (even those of us who have taken voice lessons, would probably prefer to sing in a 5 note range… hence why Karaoke bars are full of country singers).  We can all sing 5 notes really well.  Then above and below those 5 notes,  we get a little stressed out.  Now think of all those songs that we have to sing,  ”Happy Birthday”  (one octave), “O Canada” (one octave), the American National anthem… egads, stretches to a 10th…. (an octave is an 8 note range).

So why does that guy sing O Canada or Happy Birthday in 5 keys?  Well, my guess is that he’s trying to fit that one octave song into a 5 note song.  Is that because he is tone deaf or musically moronic? No, it is because he/she has not learned to stretch the voice past that 5 note range…

Of course I have no scientific studies to back up my opinion, just 20 years of experience in the music industry and a fascination with aural perception.   The voice is such a personal thing, if it sounds horrible we do take it personally, so we want to sound good.  We can’t blame it on the instrument if we suck, so of course, it is the one musical skill that we think we are either good or awful at.

Practicing avoidance is the best way to avoid being humiliated by singing in public…. “oh no.. you don’t want to hear ME sing”… “really you don’t”….. but give yourself a break, give it a try, it’s so much fun to sing, and think of what you are missing by not trying.   You can’t expect to be a yogi master at your first yoga class, you can’t expect to be an NHL hockey player your first time on the ice, you can’t expect to be a wine connoisseur if you open one bottle of Baby Duck on New Year’s eve.

To develop refined perceptual skills, whether you are refining your palate for food and wine, your eye for visual acuteness, attention to detail, colour, sensory, or auditory, it takes practice and focus on the task at hand.  With singing, not only do you need to develop your auditory skills to listen more acutely, but also your vocal mechanism to respond to the messages your brain receives when it hears certain chords, pitches etc.  It is no simple task and though for those who have done it since a young age it seems like a natural talent,  there is a great deal of skill, training and focus involved, whether that came from being immersed in a musical culture, or training years as a classical musician.

It’s never too late to start.  In five years you will either be where you are now, or you will have progressed at something new that you decided to learn.   It’s your choice.  Get out and try something new.

Tone deafness: Definition (from Wikipedia): “Tone deafness is the lack of relative pitch, or the inability to distinguish between musical notes. Being tone deaf is the difficulty of being unable to correctly hear relative differences between notes that is not due to the lack of musical training or education.”

I am going to challenge this notion that tone deafness is something innate that is “not due to the lack of musical training”.  Do we all have different levels of talent with music? Yes.  Do we all have different levels of talent with anything? YES. Some of us a mathematical, others are kinetic, some are intuitive, others are logical.   I admit it, I am not a natural talent when it comes to gardening.  Does that mean I should never pick up a pitch fork or a flower bulb? “Oh but, I am completely agrnonomically challenged”…

There is this fear in music of being ridiculed for being “tone deaf” so those who think they are, are very quick to be self depricating, so as to avoid embarrassment.

Having worked with people over the years who think they are “tone deaf” has made me realize that this is an over-diagnosed symptom.   It is one that comes from lack of musical training, specifically vocal training, not from a innate inability. This then develops into a full fledged insecurity, mental blockage which can often last a lifetime.

I have what is commonly called as “perfect pitch” – “absolute pitch” is the PC word… not a blessing but a curse in many ways for musicians.  People confound this with great musical ability when really it is simply the ability to recognize frequencies as certain pitches. People used to always say to me  ”sing an A”… I rarely could hit it accurately.  Why? Because singing an “A” actually  is a different skill altogether. That involves a muscle memory in the voice, I would imagine most opera singers could do this without having perfect pitch. I can recognize pitches the way others recognize colour.  But does recognizing colour make us all artists? No. Neither does perfect pitch make one a good musician. Sure I flew through ear training in university, but to be honest I have met pop, folk, gospel and blues singers who have better natural ears than most of my university colleagues,  who do not have “perfect pitch” nor do they have a theory degree in music.

I was at a workshop recently where someone said to the clinician, “I am tone deaf”… the voice teacher asked this person to sing 5 notes, C, D, E, F, G… the person sang C,C,C,C,C… he then whistled 2 notes and said “can you whistle those notes?”… the person did just so, perfectly in tune.  The teacher then said “well, if you were indeed tone deaf, how could you have known to match those two notes?”.  This got me to thinking that we often as musicians and teachers confound the concept of tone-deafness with lack of musical talent.  When really… the ability to replicate pitch is only a skill.  Some of us have better skills and some of us have lesser than skills.

Musical pitch replication and musical talent are not synonymous. This is why I do not audition, it is not to fill my choir with “numbers”.  Personally I would much prefer to have lively people with great spirit and enthusiasm, and who love to sing in front of me each week, (many of whom by default are fabulous singers)  than those who I have screened to have a skill which is irrelevant to the act of “Playing music”.  I do however understand why some choirs audition and that there are all different levels of choral singing, some of which do not lend themselves to having untrained singers.  I am not criticizing auditioned choirs in any way. My intention here is simply to say that “tone deafness” should not be a label applied to people which then allows us to dismiss them and not give them permission to enjoy singing, and learning music.

Playing music should be just what it is… “play-ing”.   As a result people have told me that singing has transformed their lives, that it is only because I let in the “tone deaf” that their lives have been altered, they have sought out singing lessons, and improved to the point where they now could audition for an auditioned choir and would be welcomed in with open arms.  My job is to bring out the best in each singer regardless of musical training and skill.  Music is all about passion, love, and joy, and skill can be developed over time.  Passion is far harder to come by.

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Dominique

http://www.alfiekohn.org/miscellaneous/sondheim.htm

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• Invigorating
• Athletic
• Fun
• Interesting
• Creative

So… why is it that more men don’t get out and sing?  I see you singing in the car as I drive by,  ”I’m Freee….. Freeee falling”…. so maybe you just never had time for music lessons, or maybe your music teacher was boring, (I had a few of those) or maybe someone told you that you don’t have talent, to stick with soccer or hockey, or maybe your parents just didn’t think music was for boys, whatever the reason, the only singing you did was to the radio, or maybe at cubs or another camp where the counsellor got out his guitar and sang some Neil Young songs.

When I started the choir people said to me, “Make it a women’s only choir, it will be so much easier to find singers!”… but I wanted to hear those great mens voices in my choir, I love full sound I get when I get the entire spectrum of notes/frequencies from the mixing of those men’s voices and the women’s voices…

So all I’m saying is that if you LOVE singing, forget about that little voice that says “you can’t sing”, and come give it a try.  Just the experience of being in a room with 100 people singing is amazing, and then when you open your mouth and join in… it’s fantastic!  Just like you learned to skate and you learned to ride a bike, you learned to talk, you will learn to sing if you don’t think you know how, and then you’ll wonder why you waited so long to try!

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