Life After Lynn
Saturday 9 March, Debbie and I attended a post-life ritual that marked the end of a very theatrical teacher. We remembered Lynn H. Wilke with family and friends at his church. As we arrived, my wife and I joined a gun dealer in the west side back pew of Lynn’s musical/spiritual last venue. Lynn used to visit this gun guy quite regularly, but now he’s never going to visit that gun shop again, but his presence there, in the past, is remembered and was spoken of in appreciative terms in our hearing while we were among those who celebrated his life.
Now that Lynn no longer walks among us, we walkin’ around types could do with some reassessing of walking around. Some of us notice a difference in the complexion of the pathway we walk.
Rear view mirror on my High School Path.
I guess Lynn’s departure might look to some of us like a big un-patchable pot hole. Given my understanding of Entropy, it seems likely that many life paths are populated by numerous pot holes, major bridges in disrepair and some totally burned down happy structures never to be seen again. Lynn was one of those very happy way stations on my path.
There I found lots of provisions to stuff in my luggage. His memory figures large in my mind which means that I only have to glance in my rearview mirror to see him looming like a big oak tree shading the path I already traveled. Like some kind of squirrel, I treasure the acorns I gathered from below his branches.
Me and my plunder!
He gave me a living example of what an imagination can accomplish. His ability to imagine what he might do next, courage to do that which was often the most unlikely, and the brilliant recklessness to share his creative thinking are some of the largest of the little acorn nuts I gathered while in his shade. What I did with these little treasures helped to make my path more successful as well as more interesting. I hope to keep them smooth from use until my walk comes to God’s ultimate stop sign. Hopefully, if He hears my prayers, it will be just around the last of many more interesting bends.
No STOP sign ahead, yet!
For those of us who remember him happily, putting Lynn’s examples to good use, as we pursue our own paths, could be the best way to honor his memory. After all, he seemed always looking forward to the path he had not yet traveled. What he imagined he would encounter only he could tell, but he inspired me to imagine a path for myself that seemed fantastic to the back woods boy who once sheltered in his shade and my imagination couldn’t envision just how fantastic my path would turn out to be. Had I not seen Lynn’s example of courage to follow inventive thinking no matter where it leads, I may have chosen the path more traveled.
Lynn and Trombone
A friend of mine, who is also a Lynn cognoscente, often says “You can’t make it up!” That is to say that reality is always more fantastic, weird or crazier than you can imagine. Lynn was a person whose memory should stand as an example of this truth. No one but God could have thought him up, and I’m glad He did.
Read MoreThe Technique and The Method
Recently Debbie and I watched a Public Broadcasting remembrance of a fascinating Frenchman who made the USA his home and adopted nationality. The AMERICAN MASTERS program “Jacques Pépin: The Art of Craft” structured the story of his yet to be completed life into a beautiful biography. The truth of the “Old School” manner by which this unquenchably curios and ever ambitious achiever assailed life shined through in a manner that inspired Debbie to insist I make a blog about it.
This man’s significance to the world of food is already well established and I hope he will keep feeding posterity from his larder of knowledge and cornucopia of inspiration. I’m interested in him because I believe his life to be a great rerun, in the food world, of Manuel Garcia’s life in the opera world. He hasn’t attained to Manuel’s longevity, but he has certainly matched Manuel in the realm of universal respect in his industry.
There is no doubt about his convictions concerning the technical foundation for his “Art”, and so refreshing to read his humble words of estimation of his “Art Form” in the interview, “Blue Collar, White Hat”, in The Columbia Journal of American Studies. One of the parallels I see to Garcia’s time line; Pépin might never have written his books “La Technique” or “La Methode” without a disaster forcing a hard turn for his ascending star as it traveled through time with us. Pépin almost died in an auto accident. It forced him from behind the stove at his restaurant onto a path of advocacy for his “Art Form”. I would say the world of food is richer for this turn of events, even if Pépin had to suffer. He serves society in a much larger way now than would have been possible to him as a chef in even the most celebrated restaurant on earth.
Disaster struck the Garcia family when Manuel Sr. was robbed by bandits in Mexico. They took the fortune he had amassed in the New World from him before he could get it back home. 
What little money the bandits missed in their search of the Garcia entourage was about enough to pay for their passage back to Europe. The great tenor had to start from scratch to build a new nest egg. When the old man got back to Paris, he had little time to wait before his son recounted his disastrous debut in Naples, and announce his desire to begin building a life outside of music. In the fullness of time the elder Manuel’s voice began showing signs of age and the singer, still short of the nest egg lost, had to turn to teaching to make a livelihood and about this time the younger Manuel set his sights on supporting himself while traveling the world. His mother talked him out of it, and I thank God she did. Papa Garcia had already founded a school of singing in Paris and Garcia Jr. signed on to help his dad. Disasters; dad’s forced contribution to Mexico’s benefits for bandits program, young Manuel’s failure to launch as an Opera Star and papa’s voice surrendering to the pressures of Father Time, set the stage for Garcia’s stellar teaching career and his two wonderful books. Garcia’s “Ecole de García” part one and part two could have been called exactly the same titles Pépin used for his two books. Maybe Pépin had a better editor.
Garcia lived 101 years. I pray that Pépin, if he so desires to endure, may exceed Garcia’s record. Given the content of the interview to which I link above, I’m inspired to pray that he keeps talking, teaching and writing. Old School is really hard to find.
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Torino: Once More with Feeling!
My ticket is purchased and the dates are set. I will be working with singers with whom I have already collaborated. It will be a singular pleasure to hear how each has progressed since last I heard them. I am eager to guide them toward their goals.
There is still room for more participants, and if anyone of you has been interested in working with me, this Master Class would be a good opportunity:
10 – 16 April, 2017 Sede dell’Accademia della Voce del Piemonte
Please come and give me have a chance to help you.
Rockwell Blake
Read MoreLight and Airy
I mentioned in my last blog a video found on You Tube that features a singer holding a note as if she were showing off a superhuman ability. When a singer does an easy-peasy thing like singing a sustained tone and receives such approbation, I wonder about her competition. Does she have any? It is just plain funny.
No matter how long a singer holds a note, it will always be nothing more than a trick. I have already told a long note story: HERE. It was one of my tricks, and I have to say that I am not the only one in life who could do such things. I was present for just such a show off performance by another trickery expert.
Bruno Campanella
Once upon a time I was in Paris to do Arturo in “I Puritani”. I learned a ton of stuff in that production, suffered terribly and totally entertained myself all at the same time. Our conductor was my favorite, Bruno Campanella, who was a joy to work with and the number one part of my entertainment. My suffering came from a terrible flu that really put me down. I passed my tenor baton to my team mate Aldo Bertolo who sang my dress rehearsal and I think even my opening night. I suffered and recovered, got back to work on stage, and then June Anderson fell victim to the same flu that put my voice down for the count. She was forced to cancel one show and because her tag team partner, Michelle Lagrange, was doing synchronized sneezing from the same virus, the Salle Favart flew in Mariella Devia to take the strain of keeping the ticket holders happy. Bruno knew her, told me I would love her and in that prediction he was a perfect prophet. At the end or her aria she took her final high note on a walk into the wings. I have no idea how long she held the note, but it was long enough to make me smile and expect every decibel of explosive applause that resulted when she finally stopped singing or maybe she
Mariella Devia
just closed the door of her dressing room. Experts are hard to find, and she has continued to confirm that she is an expert high on a very restricted list.
One can be an expert in almost anything, The Petomane comes to mind. He became famous just down the street from the Salle Favart albeit in a previous century. I know about this particular performer from my wife’s family. Her Great Grandfather knew about and wrote about him because he was of the same generation and owned a string of Vaudeville theatres in the American west. It is sad that Debbie’s Great Grand Dad never had the chance to book The Petomane for a tour.
Getting back to notes long held, once upon a longer time ago than the Paris “I Puritani” with Mirella, but nowhere near as long ago as The Petomane’s explosive career, I was privileged to work with an expert bass-baritone who hails from just north of me in Quebec, Claude Corbeil. He is an expert stage personality with a richness of voice a tenor can only admire. One of the many fun incidents I have in my memory bank that include this great and flexible artist is wedged in among my many memories of doing “Il Barbiere di Siviglia”. We were cast together in Ottawa and an opportunity for this tenor to show off 
and have fun presented itself in a rehearsal. Because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control, Claude missed a few late staging rehearsals leading up to our Orchestral Stage rehearsals and no one seemed to have given him the word about how the staging had changed while he was away. I was already initiated into the great tradition of On Stage Pranks, and when we reached the “Buona sera, mio signore.” in the third act quintet, Claude was way on the other side of the stage from me. He was doing a great job of maintaining his Don Basilio character while pestering our Don Bartolo stage right. The newest staging called for Basilio to shake the hand of my Almaviva,,, sorry,,, at this point in the Opera, still my Lindoro doing Don Alonso, well you get the picture.
I’m supposed to sing “Buona sera” to him. Then he was to go shake Rosina’s hand as she sang her “Buona sera”, then Figaro’s hand during his rendition, and finally to Bartolo when Don Basilio himself has his turn to sing the melody. The four of us were equidistantly spaced across the stage with me far stage left. At first, I thought I’d wait for Claude to make his way across the stage before launching into the new section of the Quintet so that he would have a chance to do the stage movement required by the Director. The silence that ensued, as I waited, became pendulously pregnant, as our Don Bartolo seemed unwilling to inform Claude of the new traffic pattern. I began to feel the eyes of our conductor burning holes in the left side of my head as I watched
Claude do what he does so well. When a cat is in doubt, he grooms, but Claude improvises. At the moment the burning sensation of eyes upon me overcame my admiration of Claude’s unflappable stage presence, I was hit by malevolent inspiration. I took a deep breath, extended my right hand, for shaking, in the direction of stage right and launched into the first note of “Buona sera”. Now Claude is one to carry his character throughout anything, including disastrous on stage train wrecks. So I was confident he would figure out the situation and make his way over to my outstretched hand so that the melody could continue and our stage movements could return to the pattern that our traffic planner had invented. I made a bet that I could hold that note long enough for Claude to travel all the way across the stage before I ran out of air. As it turned out, even with Claude greeting a few people on his way across the stage while maintaining the character of his very memorable Basilio, I survived the wait. When our hands met, I still had enough air left over to carry on singing the first phrase of the Quintet while furiously shaking Claudes hand. To an outsider it would have seemed all part of the plan. I loved it. No idea what anyone else thought, but this improvised stage traffic did not actually get incorporated into the production. So…….
Claude is a model acting expert. I encountered many more experts and I may get around to unpacking a few more memories of super fun, silly, happy, fulfilling and warmly appreciated events that pepper my time line. I hope you like reading about them. I’m now over my thousand word limit. So I have to stop here.
I’ll be back.
Read MoreAir – Part 4
OK! We have air. We need to use it wisely. We have a system for converting the potential energy of pressure we apply to the air in our lungs. It is called the larynx.
I once upon a time had a video embedded here but it has disappeared from YouTube. The illustration of all the various parts of the vocal structure was really good. I am on the lookout for another example.
The conversion center is so complex that one could despair of ever understanding how it works. There are labs at prestigious Universities populated by hyper intelligent people seeking to nail down an explanation of how these structures really work to produce the human voice. Until they are able to formulate a real time theory of all the muscular activities as well as the air pressure being converted into sonic energy they will not be able to offer a recipe of muscular activity for any of the millions of different noises we humans are capable of making. So we might just give up thinking about this critical feature of our anatomy and get on with life. You know, go to lunch, catch up with your text messages, do your peer reviews, take in a few YouTube videos, organize the dust on your desk, memorize the music in the program you plan to do next week or struggle to keep your eyes open while your department head, voice teacher, stage director, agent or even your most dedicated fan talks at you.
There is really no value, beyond the fun of knowing things, in being aware of the structure of your larynx while you sing. The knowledge you need as a singer is quite different from putting names to every structure in the larynx. It is the sonic knowledge most everyone has, but very few acknowledge as having any value at all. What I’m talking about is best understood as an ability to hear content or meaning in the tone of voice. It is the “subtext” of our communications. Just remember the times your mother said to you something like: “Don’t you speak to me in that tone of voice!” We speak it and we hear it. All the bits and pieces of our larynx provide about half of that subtext, and the anatomy of our ears collects this toning of our words. Our brains processes what our ears collect, and it is sad to say that many of us are tone deaf. If you cannot hear the subtext, you are particularly disadvantaged at air conservation. Forget about interpretation. What you cannot hear, you cannot imitate.
The key to air conservation is your ability to recognize your tone of voice. The lock you must open with that key is maintenance of your tone of voice. If you can recognize the subtext of the sound you are making and you can maintain it as you change things like vowels or volume or registers for that matter, you will be employing everything described in the above video in a balancing act that no singer can execute as a matter of will or factual understanding.
So listen to the key. Listen to yourself. Hear the sound you make on an easy note in the middle of your voice at medium volume. I ask students, who need to be introduced to their voices, to display joy and satisfaction as they sing one note for me. Do the same for yourself. Sing one note as if you are one of the happiest people on Earth. See how long you can hold the note without losing that joyous tone of voice. That is to say, time it. Keep repeating this happy singing with your stop watch. Joy and note longevity are the goals.
For the guys, please sing in Chest Voice. You will have to explore Falsetto later, but for now it’s all Chest all the time on one note at one volume.
When you have the ability of hold your happy tone of voice in one volume on one note using every bit of air in your lungs, I believe Garcia would have moved on to making the student sing using up all available air while dividing the time in three equal parts. On third on the original note then one third on the upper neighbor then the final third back down on the original note. This subdivision would progress along the scale for as many notes as Garcia saw as necessary. In the case of our focus on air conservation, I think we can risk going straight for the jugular.
The great test for air conservation expertise is the “Messa di Voce”. Start with one of the pitches on which you have already sung and measured with your stop watch and found yourself able to hold it for a long time without producing a noise that sounds like you are getting bored or forgetful or disinterested. Start to sing on that pitch as if you were going to just do the long note again “with feeling” as you have already done successfully many times. The difference this time will be that you will make a diminuendo for half the time you know yourself able to hold that pitch in full voice, and then at the halfway point start a crescendo that will bring you back to the same pitch, sound quality and volume with which you started the exercise. The original rule to maintain your tone of voice: happy and satisfied, is to be maintained through the diminuendo and the crescendo. You will find the exercise really difficult as long as you are unable to do this tone of voice maintenance. You will find that your ability to stay with the program while doing the “Messa di Voce” will be equal to your ability to match the “Messa di Voce” length to your sustained tone singing of the same note. Guys! Guess what? When you do your diminuendo, you are going to find singing in Falsetto unavoidable and you will be forced to explore Falsetto as you sing softer and softer. Within this exploration the key is to carry your original tone of voice at the beginning of the note all the way through the exercise. Have fun.
An old friend sent Debbie, my wife, a You Tube video link for a singer who starts an aria in a concert with a long held note during which she slightly varies the volume. She presented the note as if she were doing something as difficult as a gymnast standing on his hands walking around with his feet in the air and then standing still on just one hand. After she finished her “show off” trick she acted embarrassed at having made such a display of vocal prowess which is, after all, not called for by the composer.
Yugo for you?
Ferrari for me!
I’m sorry to say that her display is more like a car salesman selling a Yugo to a guy who wants to buy a Ferrari. Now that would be a good trick. A hand standing gymnast (for the girls) would have deserved the applause that she got. The note that this soprano sang for her audience, almost anyone can do, and for far longer. I can understand how some misguided students of singing can convince themselves that if gathering applause is that easy, the road to fame must be really easy.
Do that “Messa di Voce” thing and don’t give yourself an easy time of it. Many of the secrets of singing are waiting for discovery inside this exercise. 
Every one of the muscles in your larynx has a part to play. I’ll be back to talk more specifically about them.
Air – Part 3
After we organize our breathing system to maximize our capacity to engulf air, we have to pursue the next goal: Conservation. It is a simple word and simple minds may think it to be a simple operation. The truth is quite complicated. It was Renata, my voice teacher, who put the truth about air conservation in my ear, and that truth is still an echo in my head. They are her words: “If you want to sing “Bel Canto”, you must learn to sing long phrases.” It was not more than a month later that I figured out one part of the equation and started using my dad’s bowling ball to do “Pull Overs”. When you don’t have the money for good equipment, you improvise and I knew I needed to make space for more air. My dad got tired of me playing with his bowling equipment and bought me my own bowling ball. I still have it.
If I could afford lessons, why couldn’t I afford a dumbbell set?
Renata comes to Iesi for Il Pirata
Lessons with Renata were affordable because she never charged me anything. It cost my dad a few $ for gas to drive me to lessons. Did you know that gasoline was affordable once upon a time? She even gave me the scores to use for study. I was poor, because my dad, like his dad, was a hard worker in an industry that payed peanuts for his time and effort. I ignored the many social justice weeds behind which we Blakes could have hidden. Some carriers of the Blake DNA from my generation found those weeds quite attractive, but I was happy to work toward searching out my gifts and turning them into economic success.
How to improvise.
I learned about “Pull Overs” from a magazine my dad allowed me to slip into an almost overflowing shopping cart. My aunt was filling it with groceries as she pushed it down the aisles of the old Grand Union on Margaret Street. Every Friday after work he would drive us to downtown Plattsburgh where he could cash his check and pay for the food that would feed us over the next week. Our house sheltered a small platoon of assorted generations. There was my Grandmother, Grandad, two maiden aunts, my dad and me. We were poor, two of us old enough to receive a Social Security check, and like many of the families of the friends I had in the neighborhood we liked to eat. That means that one shopping cart full of food was sometimes not enough to keep us going for a week. By the way, that’s why there wasn’t a lot of money hanging around for fun stuff like dumbbells.
So my dad was serious about conserving the few dollar bills he still had in his pocket when we got back from Plattsburgh on a Friday night. His effort to make his leftover cash meaningful in our lives was a great example to me for how we should conserve air.
Singers are faced with a gargantuan project. Let’s list a few expensive, in terms of air, items that a singer must pay for:
Consonants can cost you a bundle.
“T”s propel air like guns shoot bullets or blanks, depending.
“F”s can fritter tons of air.
“S”s are just as bad as the previous example.
“P”s can be just as penetrating and wasteful as the “T”.
Etc. etc. etc.
So we have a double edged sword to deal with. No one should hide behind the memory of modern victories over consonants and emulate some of my colleagues. Evading the consonants all together gets you off the hook of consonant costs but leaves your listener wondering what the words are all about.
Singing in falsetto at high volume throws a big bundle of air away. It would be like shredding currency into confetti rather than buying the stuff to throw at your favorite Holiday parade with your AMEX card. I did a little dance on this problem in “What’s the buzz”.
There are other vocal technical deficiencies that dump air, but I really want to direct your attention to how I believe Garcia wants to help you establish the most efficient use of the air you inhale. He tells us to do his vocal exercises in every color, volume and key possible to our voices. He gives license to the beginner to add pauses for necessary breaths. He doesn’t explain how to reduce this necessity. Renata, you remember, my voice teacher, knew this to be important. I believe Garcia expected that telling anyone about this fundamental artistic ability would have inspired people of his day to laugh at him. These days I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry when I hear singers run out of breath before they finish a composer’s phrase.
So how do we learn to conserve? We must convert into sound, as we sing, the maximum percentage of the potential energy we create when we pressurize the air in our lungs. Whatever the volume, whatever the color, whatever the notes, whatever the words and whatever the key may be, if we can phonate the exercise or the melody at hand comfortably, we must get to the end of it. We then make it longer. We slow it down, or we add more notes to sing. The time you can sing without coming up for air must increase. As much as I would like to delineate the physics and physiological manipulations that must take place, I don’t have room to do it in a blog. Besides, I know that there is no amount of knowledge of the conservation particulars that will empower a singer to sing a longer phrase. Focusing on only one or two of the many particulars of this conservation game will do no more than ruin the sound being produced. So why risk it? No pain no gain. No risk no reward.
The only way to establish efficiency of air use while you are singing is by tedious practice. The two key factors are quality and duration. Measure the length of time you are singing while you are singing. As you sing the phrase or exercise stay aware of how much air you have left. Try to mark the half way point. Keep going until you run out of air. That is, sing the exercise/phrase and hold the last note to use up the last bit of air. Do it again and again until you find the tempo or number of notes that use up all your air. Sorry, keep a minimum with which to finish the phrase/exercise gracefully. All the while you are doing this timing thing you must pay attention to the sound you are making. Measure it well. It must never be less than really good. Start simply.
For an exercise:
One vowel, one volume and one color. Then do the other vowels and get the same time result. Then do clearer and darker and louder and softer always getting as close to the time result as before. Then start mixing these things together. ie: Clear to dark. Dark to clear. Clear to dark at the mid point and back to clear at the end. Loud to soft. Soft to loud. Well, you get the picture. Mixing everything together while managing to keep your good sound quality is the apex of air management.
For any melody:
Do the same as above with one addition. When you are at the apex of your air management abilities with the melody, you get to add the words. Follow your instincts about how the character you are impersonating would express the words at hand and when you are able to mix all those variables already mastered into making the words vibrate with meaning without speeding up or taking extra breaths, you have reached the apex of technically perfect artistic interpretation. If you find that singing the words make finishing the melody without extra gulps of air impossible, well, you have to know that if you are truly gifted, your gifts will overcome. So don’t give up and try the next trick. Use only the vowels of the words for your interpretation. Follow the consensus between the composer and librettist but only with the vowels. When you can finish your melody with all the various vowels in place, you then have to make war with the consonants. That war is not absolute. It is more like what gardeners do with fancy shrubs, or what gets done to vines belonging to an expensive Bordeaux label. What Michangelo did to that monster block of marble in which he saw David. Those consonants need to be there, but they need to add to your effect on your audience so you can take their breath away, not allow your “T”s and “S”s to take yours away.
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