The Problem is the Product
So let’s get down to basics. Is there a problem? Yes. What is the problem? Apparently we are suffering shrinkage of opportunities for singers and musicians to make a living. The arts, as a jobs program, is getting very weak in the knees, and a search for leg braces seems to be getting under way.
I think the search for leg braces is destined for failure. Those who are in the know about the problem seem to be trying to figure out how to market “The Arts”… that is, arts organizations’ need to deal with funding short falls and diminishing audience attendance. Almost everything I see being discussed in public about the action needed is off point. Arts organizations are being advised to find new ways to dress up the concert hall and design events relevant to an audience which seems willing to spend money, but not on tickets to “The Arts”.
Another big problem is a discussion today among deep pocket donors, which is bubbling into public view here and there. It places those who support “The Arts” in a difficult defensive position. I can imagine it would be very hard to argue the survival of “Classical Music” as being as important as alleviating some of the suffering of the starving among us while sipping Champagne in opulent surroundings. I wouldn’t think it possible to survive making such a case in many soup kitchen lines that are set up across our own still relatively prosperous country. My opinion on what these 1% ters ought to do with their bank accounts aside, I do believe the problem for the 1%ter is much the same as for the ticket buyer.
If you are selling a product that does not outshine your competition, then your result is going to be less impressive than your competitions’. I have seen some grudging admission that “The Arts” are really part of the entertainment industry, even if turning a profit seems to keep almost everyone else in the industry afloat. I see “The Arts”, “The Press” and just about any other form of communication as entertainment when they are not essential to a person’s survival. I have a friend that has a police scanner for entertainment. Lawyers may think of scanners as tools, but my friend has a toy. Tracking communication among emergency service personal is serious business, especially if you are going to chase the ambulance your scanner catches being sent out to gather victims of a traffic accident. It’s all about billing, about money, about survival.
Life is not “a box of chocolate”
No one can guarantee anyone anything, and the entertainment industry can only offer you opportunity. It can only offer an empty box that you must fill with what you have to offer in order to attract an audience. Artists might like to be able to define the product they are producing in terms of cultural values, but there is only one system of valuation that makes any difference at all. The price someone will pay.
If you are seeking to feed yourself and your family in the entertainment industry, you need to view the crisis, if you believe in it, from the point of view of anyone seeking employment. My first visits to the Guidance Counselors’ offices at Peru Central School, most likely during the time I was first getting to know my Renata, were dedicated to searching through employment categories in the catalogues strategically placed in the little waiting room outside the counselors’ offices. I trolled those catalogues in order to overcome my ignorance about the job market. I wanted to study something that could be my magic carpet to ride out of the life style to which my extended family had become accustomed.
I didn’t find my ultimate choice in those catalogues. I dedicated myself to the art and craft of singing without really knowing how risky a choice it was. I found out, when I applied for unemployment benefits just after leaving my military service with the Navy. I didn’t know what to write in one of the blanks on the application form I was filling out. The big book of job titles in that office gave me the approved wording to insert in the appropriate blank on the application form that I successfully filled out. It was: “classical singer”. Forget the fact that I was an unemployed “classical singer”. I was happy to be classified as one.
Needless to say: I found work and my little magic carpet revved up and carried me to many parts of the world I never dreamed to be able to visit. Oh! And yes. My life style never resembled the comfortable hard-working lower middle class life style of my dad, which now seems to be disappearing. You may not have noticed, but there is a crisis there as well.
Back to the product: be aware that there is only one honest way to make a living. Deliver value for the fee you collect. My dad bought himself his second new truck (I bought his first new one for him.) with money he earned by proving his labor valuable enough to become an employee rather than a jobs program participant. He was long past youth, but still full of energy. He loved the job he landed after the fur farm, where he worked most of his life, died, and his new job funded his life to the end of it. Artists and Arts Management personnel have to prove themselves just like my dad did and just like I did.
People will buy tickets, subscribe to and donate to whatever inspires them. If you want to make a success as a performer, you must entertain. If you want to make a success of an organization that presents the efforts of performers, you have to know what will entertain.
Last week-end I found an example of just the sort of entertainment I believe to be the cure for the “crisis”, if you believe there is one.
The Allant Trio at Hill and Hollow.
Read MoreConcert Tonight
Tonight at E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium in Hawkins Hall the Master Class participants with whom I have been working will be giving a concert. It is a free concert that will begin, August 16, 2014, at 7:30 pm. Sorry that our organizers thought to put a price on the tickets and had some in the media report this decision. I’m sorry because some of you may think any price too high to pay to hear some young aspiring artists attempt to entertain you. Well, the real reason the tickets are free is because making this a pay to get in event may violate US law. The singers will entertain you enough to make your trip to Hawkins Hall worth every drop of gasoline/diesel or electricity your individual conveyance utilizes to get you there. The trip has been worth it for me. I gladly fill my tank and show up each day to help these youngsters grow toward becoming great artists. I can tell you that these singers are also good enough to make you forget you paid for one or two of the tickets, if the organizers had actually put a price on them.
For those of you who may pause to consider your electric vehicle which you forgot to plug in last night, go out and plug it in now. All you need is enough charge to get to Hawkins Hall. Our little university is almost as up to date as Kansas City. The parking lot adjacent to the hall has an electric vehicle charging station for two where you can acquire enough power to get back home, or even to a nice restaurant like Anthony’s after the show. Sorry, I think our event is the only free offering in Plattsburgh tonight, so I wouldn’t want anyone to infer that my favorite restaurant is going to team up with us under the FREE label. OH! By the way, if there are more than two music loving, absent-minded electric vehicle owners in my North Country, I will personally see to the transport needs of those who fail to find an open charging station.
It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with these youngsters, and it is going to be fun to share them with my fellow North Country citizens. Please come and applaud, if you are moved to do so, anytime you are moved to do so. I’ll be the first to join you, even if the moment we choose to applaud might annoy the strict concert etiquette traditionalist who might also show up.
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Lesson 1.002
So what should we do next? Tomorrow I start doing a master class here in the North Country, but that is what I am going to do next. The question is really what should be the next step in teaching someone how to sing.
Garcia gives us a lot of advice about the difficulties voices will present to teachers. It’s up to the teacher to sift through his information in order to follow the correct Garcia suggestion relevant for each individual. We have to discern and understand each problem as it is presented, and I can attest to the fact that every exercise of increased complication will likely uncover a new vocal fault or difficulty. So, now that we have the student singing the best “A” vowel that the student’s voice is able to produce, we can begin to complicate things a bit.
Because it was so long ago that Renata made me do all that “old school” exercise work, I don’t remember having any trouble doing two consecutive pitches. This may be why I am always surprised at how many students of singing have trouble with this mini hurdle. My advice concerning Garcia’s exercises includes challenging the student to bring what he/she has learned in each previous exercise to the next exercise. In this lesson the challenge is very simple. Make those alternating pitches sound as stable as the previous lesson’s single pitch. How hard is that?
Given the evidence, it seems to be very difficult indeed. Let’s talk about just a few of the little problems that can,,,,, let’s be clear, do crop up.
The bump: when moving the voice from one pitch to the other, the student, especially with woodwind instrument experience, will sometimes have the habit to do a little accent with every pitch change. You know how those hollow bits of wood or metal we call woodwinds have holes and keys with pads. Well when you are learning to play one of those things with your fast moving fingers, each hole or key that gets closed at high velocity gives off a sound. Something like that seems to be a necessary accessory for some students when they change pitches. This needs to be taken care of immediately. I have run into this habit that I call “Walking on the notes” in students who have been studying voice for a long time. They seem unable to sing “Legato” at all. Catching this defect early and making sure the bump does not appear when the pitch is changed will go a long way in teaching legato vocalization.
Going straight: just before changing the pitch and for a short period after changing the pitch the vibrato will often disappear. It is a wonder that so many singers today stop their vibrato and don’t even know they are doing it. I know that the Baroque crowd seems to believe in making straight sounds as often as possible. I do not. In any event, there is no need to announce the arrival of a pitch change with a straightening of the tone… you know.. stopping the vibrato.
Push-ups: The moment before the pitch change, instead of going straight, some students will begin a small but noticeable crescendo which will continue into the higher pitch, and the return to the lower pitch will have the opposite effect added. This one is less common than the above, but is just as serious and annoying to hear if unchecked early on.
Slurpee’s: Slipping and sliding from note to note is something that often shows up with young ones, but be careful about the cure for this fault. I have noticed in some “trained” individuals a habit of stopping the sound between notes. I don’t expect anyone to admit to teaching this particular stupidity, but the students who have shown me this maneuver had to have learned it somewhere. In order to cut everyone a break, I am willing to believe it to be a confusion inserted into the mind of the singer by virtue of… sorry…. by mischief lodged in the language used to seek to correct this slimy style of ignorant singing. “Precision” can’t be “Perfect”.
These are just a few things from my list of faults to watch out for. Garcia’s list is shorter than mine, but printing costs were rather high in his day. Come to think of it, the costs of printing are no laughing matter even today.
I had a note just the other day from a reader who wanted to know if I was forgetting about all you who care to read tenor thoughts. You are all well remembered, and maybe I should clue you in.
The world of singing is in a bad way, and that is the reason for this blog and various other activities in which I engage. If anyone has never heard: “Art reflects life and life reflects Art” please ponder this pomposity. Next, I want to tell you that life itself is in a bad way, and I am hard pressed to ignore it. In as much as I am able to engage the trends in society that I recognize as negative movements, I must act with that gift of ability to resist the push that moves singing toward bad and life toward feudal servitude.
Resisting the slavery our social contract seems to be approaching is why I have been a little slow…. please allow my understatement…. to get out a new blog.
Where my mind and body has been investing the greater portion of time and effort has been tax resistance, political action, gardening and home repairs. We have a wonderful garden, a house that our North Country weather keeps pummeling and a local, State and Federal government that sees us little people as an inexhaustible source of revenue. This I resist with the help of others in a website I manage. We have a candidate for United States Congress that my wife, Debbie, and I are supporting and also a candidate for New York State Assembly for whom I put up a website. There are a few family oriented events that we manage to shoe horn into our daily doings as well.
Life is good when full.
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Stolen Goods
Last Tuesday was a big day for me. I discovered what to say about the work ahead of me and I had a wonderful time rummaging through my dustbin of memories because Meg Le Fevre invited me to participate in an interview. She is working for The Northeast Group who publishes a magazine, Strictly Business, for which Ms. Le Fevre writes and they intend to produce an arts issue. I guess I fit the profile for inclusion, especially when she asked me if I called myself a singer or a musician. I puffed up my chest, and in my best rendition of self-importance, I declared myself an ARTIST.
It was so much fun to be back in the career saddle again. Tenors are always talking about themselves and enjoying it like no one else can, except a politician. It has been a nice long hiatus for me. I have managed to avoid that interview thing for so long that turning on the entertainer this time was a reminder of how it felt way back when interviews first became part of this singer’s life. Note: I said “singer” and not “artist”. There you have a small diagram of the self-awareness with which I am gifted. In those first days of becoming a professional singer my tenor presumptions included ARTIST status for self, but…… Well, even tenors can develop standards. My memories shook off some dust and I was able to entertain myself while handing out answers to uncharacteristically good questions. Ms. Le Fevre didn’t ask me even one boring question, like,,, you know: “What’s your favorite Opera?”
I’ll let my interviewer put order to the questions and answers in Strictly Business while I tell you that one of her questions really inspired me. Unlike many interviewers I have encountered, she actually did her homework. She read a few pages on this website of mine and printed out a few paragraphs to read back to me. One of them put some old memories into direct contact with present plans. When these thought connections happen in my head I know there is a God.
If you have visited my Master Classes page lately, you know that I am planning to participate in an educational event in my North Country enclave of cold tolerant folk. Making an announcement for that event started troubling my mind the day after Jo Ellen Miano said she was going to try to put it together. I left Tuesday’s interview with this blog just about written in my head. God is good!
As Ms. La Fevre read the second paragraph of ”How I Started” many memories of how I stole so many tricks of the trade from so many Great Artists flooded my thoughts. Those memories of theft and my hopes to help young people on their quest to become ARTISTS coalesced into an idea. Why not call what I have to offer at this Master Class “Stolen Goods”.
Before Tuesday’s sun set (it’s going down later and later up here) I thought to check my email. Ms. Miano informed me that our event had been opened for participants. All I had to do was write down what was already rattling around between my ears to announce this event. So why did it take so long to get this posted? Well…. You know.
Please Come to Plattsburgh and I will do my best to turn my artistic tool box upside down on the floors of Glenn Giltz Auditorium,
beginning on 9 August and I will hand out as much of the contents as you can carry with you, even all the stuff I had to purloin way back when I was only just a singer. That is if you can carry it all.
It is a shame that my idea for a title came too late to offer to Ms. Miano for her use, but then we all know how it goes with tenors.
Read MoreWisdom by Fortune Cookie
Not but a few days ago my wife, Debbie, and I crossed our little lake to visit my favorite mother in law. After various shopping activities, we landed at one of my favorite eateries. The food was superb, plentiful and more than we could manage. While our waiter prepared the remainder of our bountiful meal for transport to our refrigerator at home, we three satisfied diners broke open the cookies that our waiter traded with us for the food we hadn’t eaten. If you clicked the link “one of my favorite eateries” above, you would understand that the cookies had to arrive. The tradition is inescapable, even if the style of cooking in this eatery predates the cookie tradition by several centuries. Those cookies contained such interesting fortunes that this blog became as inevitable as the cookies themselves.
I think Dot, my mother in law, opened her cookie first. She is a strong proponent of dessert, to the degree that she often repeats the proverb: Eat dessert first; that way you will always have room for it. 
Not that she lives out this proverb in my observation. I couldn’t say what she does when I’m not around, but then it isn’t any of my business. Back to the cookies. She passed the fortune that fell out of her folded sugar cookie to me and I read: “Be brave enough to live creatively.” That Dot should get advice about how to live, struck me as laughable. She has already used up almost 90% of a century doing a bang up job of living, and seemingly as if that advice had been delivered back before she had gotten through the first 15%.
Debbie got her sugar fold out of the obligatory plastic wrap, broke the cookie open and passed me the little slip of white paper on which was printed: “Nothing is a waste of time if you learn something from it.” Debbie’s activities as political guardian angel of our little town by the lake
has born much fruit in the learning category, even if many of the locals would call what she does a waste of time.
Now that I had read the cookie fortunes liberated by my wife and my mother in law, I got down to breaking the seal on the cookie in front of me. The little slip of paper protruding from the cookie came out willingly. I read it and passed the cookie carcass to Debbie. She really likes those little folded and baked bits of carbohydrate a lot more than I. My fortune was the kicker. “A person of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.” OK! OK! Got it!!
I will not give up cultivating nettles every day as I run out of gas when the sun sets, but as long as I have the energy to think thoughts (hard for a tenor) and move about, I will keep following the wisdom these cookies handed out. I have been doing that creative thing that Dot was advised to do even if it has been for two thirds the time Dot has been at it, and I never thought I was wasting time,,,,, even while cultivating nettles. I don’t call myself a talker, and, until I started putting words into blog form, I didn’t think of myself as a person of words. Given my inability to spell most words worth more than two cents, I used to think I had recourse only to deeds. Spell check has helped a lot, but Debbie is the key to me staying on solid ground sorting out the alphabet into words to put on the internet.
Those cookies were nice little reminders of the wisdom one can find in The Book that is still awaiting reading in the night stand beside many beds in the hotels and motels of these United States. They are provided by generous people and are full of much paraphrased wisdom. Even cookies can carry little sagacious snips of wisdom pruned from Proverbs. That would be the twentieth book in The Book you can easily find on your travels in the USA or in any book store. It is a best seller, by the way, and full of wisdom.
I am no fan of Fortune Cookies, but that post repast convergence of cookie recommendations surprised me, and reminded me that common sense is just remembered tidbits of wisdom read, lived and repeated in paraphrase from The Book.
Wait a minute.
I am a tenor!!!
Those fortunes had flip sides. You know, the back side. There used to be a nice white space nothing to look at back there. It would seem the “nothing is a waste” fortune got interpreted by the manufacturer as “waste nothing” and, printed Chinese words with translations in that space.
On the back of Dot’s “creativity” counseling we find the verb: To Eat. Remember the “dessert first” philosophy Dot supports? If that isn’t creative eating, I’ll eat my hat.
The advice that all “education” is valuable that Debbie got had the flipside translation of the word: “Egg”. Debbie’s “guardian angel” work at the Town of Plattsburgh is an egg that hatched into supporting candidates to office who inspire Debbie with hope that change for the better can take place.
The flip side of the “don’t grow weeds” fortune that came out of my cookie translates: “Eggplant”.
I have the sneaky feeling that this slip of paper is trying to call me a name. You know. Like, TENOR! But that may just be because of my tenor tendency toward paranoia.
So how do you think I should take “Eggplant”? If you have any ideas, I’d love to know them. Send me a note. Please. I’ll add it to this blog.
PS. Debbie, my wife and Editor in Chief, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to remind me that she will be planting some eggplant in her garden. She just loves those purple flowers.
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