Why am I here?
I made it to Torino and am hard at work with eight singers and enjoying the company of three auditing onlookers whom I hope will receive something useful from our work.
The final concert is coming tomorrow, Saturday 20, 2014 at 6:00 pm, and I think I should explain to everyone what I think it’s all about. My name isn’t Alfi, but I do have an answer.
When the youngsters, I’m trying to help, face the public we have invited to come to the Circolo della Stampa di Torino to hear our little concert, they will fulfill the spirit and substance of what it’s all about: No matter how hard we may work together during this Master Class, in the end, it is what happens in the performance that counts.
I am here to do everything I can to help these young people make that performance as close to perfection as possible. What do I intend to see happen? Well, let me try to explain myself by listing my employers. I know I am not an authorized employee of anyone on my list, but I feel the same responsibility as if I had contracts with all three.
- The Singers:
Everyone seeking to be a singer by profession is eligible for employer status. For example, this website is for you, if you are trying to find your way to that small spotlight center stage where you will have to stand and deliver. My being in Torino is part of my effort to walk the walk. After all, this website sure is a lot of talking the talk.
- The Great Creator
My most important employer is the most creative person I know: My God. Now, I know me saying I believe in God and His creative power may seem to many of you to be an aside. It is, however, central to everything. Singers have voices because God forms them while the singer is in the womb, not because of a chance digestive event during the singer’s gestation. Not for any other reason than God’s gift. So I am happy to say that I am working for God to see that as many as possible of his gifts of voice to singers receive loving care, and that He may enjoy the product of those gifts as my singing students engage in their creative work. By the way, I also believe that we are creative creatures because God is creative.
- The Audience
Unlike the theaters of the world, I do not forget that “elemental employer”, the audience. I believe that without other peoples’ ears there is no performance. It is always just a rehearsal, or worse; a hobby. I am working for the people still warming the seats. Singers are remarkably hard to convince of the peculiar relationship an artist has with his fellow human beings. Anyone wishing to be a professional using his or her voice for a creative purpose has to understand that the voice is for communicating and as such a communication must take place, and it must be with an audience. Eventually, we’ve got to sell a sufficient number of tickets for participating in that communication to justify the professional level fees for services that theatres are finding harder and harder to pay these days. I stand as ambassador from the ticket buying public, and do my best to direct each gifted singer toward an interesting and satisfying conversation with my employer who continues to buy tickets and hopes to be entertained.
The theater directors of the world seem to forget the audience, and I believe the crisis in the performing arts has its majority explanation in that forgetfulness. It is perhaps the largest problem for a singer as well. Forget your audience, and it will forget you….
Oh! Let’s not forget all those audience regulars who have decided to stop buying tickets. I have no idea how to get them back into the seats, but I know why many of them decided to stop keeping those seats warm.
Singers who only fear their audience are shoulder to shoulder with the theatres of our day, and together they are the ones who can bring about the future feared by everyone who loves the performing arts.
We sing for an audience because that’s what professionals do. You can’t leave God out of the equation. He can certainly listen in while we’re at it, and, by the way, He can even hear and enjoy the voice of someone who only possesses enough courage to break out in song in the shower. That individual would not be my ideal student no matter how beautiful the voice. I don’t argue with God, but a great voice is often just not enough to make it in the professions.
Read MoreStolen 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 MoreReplacement Pedagogy
I’ve been chewing on a bit of Ha, Ha trivia I received in recent light conversation (Remember, I’m not so young, so “recent” is a relative term given my 63 years of hanging about). I have a friend, well plugged into the World of Opera, who described for me an unbelievable proposal made by a gNATS big wig. I’ll keep my source anonymous because being called a friend by a tenor can be harmful to one’s professional life in some circles. I think I will use the name “Jack” for this Opera Operative.
Jack attended a major gNATS/Singer Employer confab this century. It was also attended by a soprano I worked with back in the day. This soprano was a joy, because she had it all. Good voice, especially good personality and intelligent mind. Let’s use “Jill” to refer to her. I bet she is a card carrying gNATS member who may not like having her name dropped by a tenor taking pot shots at The National Association of Teachers of Singing.
The President of gNATS stood up and spoke…. Tenor moment…. It could have been the President Elect or the Past President, Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, yah, there are four of them, or even the Secretary/Treasurer given my tenor memory, but it was someone BIG in the hierarchy. So let’s label this gNATS bigwig “Harry”.
Anyway, now that the players are all described, and named, the play can begin. Harry got up and essentially declared gNATS a consulting business ready to help the non-teachers in the crowd. It is logical to assume that a professional of high standing in gNATS may hold in low esteem the abilities of people who actually get their hands dirty putting together entertainments based on the employment of vocal talent. I believe the membership could support Harry believing that employers need a lot of help to discern good singers, and gNATS membership could applaud being offered as the staff of Harry’s consultancy. However what Harry offered elicited no approval from Jill.
Jack told me that Jill lost control of her jaw at the moment it became clear that Harry was declaring his faith in technology. Harry let all those non-teacher attendees know that gNATS was ready to point out future stars for the Arts Industry by processing submitted recordings with Voice Analysis Software. All those tiresome, leave the office, travel across the county or down to the auditorium, rent a hall if you don’t own one, organize pianists and spread the word about auditions could be, like, so yesterday. Harry was suggesting that Arts Organization Management stop wasting time, and let gNATS’s computers lead the way to the new Renata Tebaldi, George London, Maria Callas etc.. Jill’s jaw dropped. Jack did not mention applause.
We have seen an early version of the techno helper (Click Here) that Harry seems to regard as a mature technology. Just because they don’t use pen and paper anymore doesn’t really mean that the present “advanced” state of the technology is any better at replacing “Ears“. Silly is as silly does. I wish gNATS’s Consulting every success among the stuck on stupid, but what about the rest of us?
I believe that Jill’s jaw dropped with surprise because of the outright silliness of the proposal. It is one thing to play with computer toys and even create University departments to house them. It is another thing entirely to try to sell the idea that a computer could replace the discernment of casting directors in Opera houses.
If I were a gNATS member, and dependent on teaching voice as a means of paying the mortgage, the rent, for food on my table and keeping the tax man happy, I would feel very uncomfortable with a high official in my trade association suggesting a mechanical or electronic replacement for auditioners. By un-silly extension one need only travel a little to arrive at Harry telling Universities that the same techno- service could replace voice teachers. Last I heard, the standard work load of a Music School voice teacher was a one half hour lesson once a week for each student. If one can replace a few of those sessions with “Voice Lab” under the tutelage of a technician then the staff at the voice department could shrink a lot. Where will all those gNATS members, replaced by Computerized Voice Coaching, go to earn the money necessary to pay their dues? Oh! I forgot. Maybe teaching advanced courses in Vocal Analysis (oops, not at MIT,,,, yet).
By pushing the above silly logic a lot farther down the road, a future “Harry” might suggest that gNATS could populate Opera auditorium seats with the future tech voice terminals that our present “Harry” might expect to see available. They could be programed to applaud the singers who had received training from their sister terminals at major Universities. Given ticket sales trends around the world, there should be plenty of seats available by the time those Voice Appreciation Appliances become objects of admiration of future “Harrys” at gNATS.
I’ve waited a while since I heard about Harry promoting his Opera Star Recognition Software. I just wanted enough time to pass so that I could stop seeing RED when I thought about it, and for the real name of my insider friend to become hard to discover. No one should suffer for talking with a tenor, or even singing with one.
More links for believers:
http://www.nemesysco.com/technology-lvavoiceanalysis.html
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/fft.html?gclid=COGnud_p7rwCFdJ9OgodymsA7A
White Christmas Extended
Remember the Water Walk in White Christmas? That white ice is still mostly there. We just need a little snow to refresh the attractiveness of that walkable water, and our Frozen North would again look pristine. Some other northerners up here wish for Spring while I pray for decorative snow, but one wise citizen of these here hills proposed we should be grateful. While a fellow Plattsburghite and I were blocking an isle at Sam’s Club exchanging pleasantries that included opinions on the weather, my interlocutor proposed that we should be thankful for Global Warming. “Can you imagine how cold it would be without it?” Siberia might come to mind.
Frozen Strandberg
Just a few days ago we had sonic events that disturbed the peace and tranquility of the evening. These booms that brought a few of us curious northerners out into the dark with flashlight or oil lamp in hand were reported as cryo – something events,,, “seisms”,, blamed on moisture, some of which is visible as white stuff scattered about us, and freezing cold that insists on penetrating the soil. We had little mini earth quakes because the ground is freezing under our feet. I guess Global Warming, manmade as it is assumed be, has some self-help blessings most of us just never considered, like saving us Rock Eaters from the permafrost suffered by Siberia, but I’m wondering if the thaw will be accompanied by the same sort of unsettling seismic activity in Plattsburgh and in Toronto, Canada. If we do, I expect someone will be thanking or blaming Global Warming for it just like the freezing that brought it.
OK, I’m back from the edge of politics and ready to talk about the important things of life. The snow may still be with us, but our Christmas tree is down, and in storage, so we have more room in the…… Wait… I said important things, didn’t I? OK! OK!! Let’s regroup. How about a question? Like: What should follow “Lesson One.001”?
Dividing lessons with such minute decimals would seem ridiculous but for the problem of keeping within my own blog size limitation. The word count necessary to cover everything I want to say may be inestimable, but I count on my word processor to warn me when I’m going overboard in a blog. My wife, Debbie, is good at it too, but Microsoft Word just keeps adding up my words for me in the lower left corner of my screen as I type my thoughts. Rules, rules, rules. If I make them, like: 1000 words per blog, shouldn’t I follow them?
Label the rest of this blog “Lesson One.001-A” because it’s about the vowel “A”. So here goes. I’ve got five hundred and fifty one words to go. Wait, I just used eleven of them. Ooops there goes another seven… OK! I’ll get to the point.
The “A” vowel is the best vowel. It is the central station of vocal color. The full character/personality/beauty of any vocal instrument is best heard in that vowel. It is true for everyone and not just certain voices. When that vowel is just the best for the voice at hand then we can advance to the rest of them.
So what is the “best”? The best is always a hyphenated best: Personal-Best. Each instrument has a personality. Something really brought home to me when Bruno Price presented a violin blind tasting party after Soovin Kim played a whole bunch of Paganini
for LCCMF at the home of the Vermont Youth Orchestra in Burlington, VT. Mr. Price came packing a trunk load of violins. Jessica Lee and Nelson Lee played each of these instruments for Soovin’s Paganini audience. It was great to hear the differences among the violins and compare the results that two different expert players could get with these precious violins. I was totally blown away. Unlike humans, these instruments couldn’t be bothered to try to sound like the
one that the majority of the audience picked as having the best sound, the Strad. Singers, however, face a vocal world today that invites bad choices even at this “.001-A” early stage of training. Tenors will try, or be advised to try to emulate the “A” vowel of Pavarotti, for example, when to do so is to distort the instrument with which the tenor is gifted. Some of the non Strad violins I heard in Burlington might be “improved”, somehow, with chisel, sandpaper and varnish to bring them closer to the Strad, but such work would destroy the personality of each and every one of them. Among the lesser violins played for us was a southern Italian number that truly fascinated my ears. I won’t get into the why or how of it here, but, because that Neapolitan grabbed my mind, the whole affair refuses to leave the premises.
In the day, nothing has changed, violin makers did the best job they could to fulfill their ideal. The collection that we Paganini appreciators heard in Burlington gave evidence that mans’ hands are capable of wonderful things, but every craftsman producing a Strad, even if it were desired, is not Historicity. Those violins all sounded different, and refused to change character even under the influence of the pros playing them.
In the day, a lot has changed, voices were appreciated for the individual character that each displayed. No parallel here, right? I heard within the differences among those violins the best examples of what pedagogues are told by Garcia to discern in voices. The beauty of Pavarotti’s “A” vowel may have been our Strad of the day, but trying to copy it would be just as bad as dismantling those non-Strad violins, gratefully heard in Burlington, just to push their individual sounds toward the sound that the lone Strad had in the group.
28 words left.
An “A” of beauty that a vocal instrument can produce has a personality unique to itself. Promote it! Not Pavarotti, or Strad, but the beauty in vocal difference!
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Lesson One.001
My mind’s eye view of Garcia’s lessons, which I mentioned in “Lesson One“, started out with visions of this great maestro telling new students about the famous exploits of his father, the glory of the singing of his sisters, the fun he must have had, surrounded by his family in the first Season of Italian Opera ever presented in New York City where he made his Operatic Debut as Figaro in the Barber of Seville, the trial by fire of his debut in Naples where he was unable to prove himself a professional of star quality, and the new, if short lived, freedom from music he discovered when he was able to present his bad reviews of that debut to his daddy. Any ordinary maestro di canto would fit nicely into these images, but, the better I knew the story of Garcia and his father, the more I saw him as a serious professional unlikely to engage in such superficial banter. I now have an idea how he would have sought to guide his newest students toward perfecting the beauty that he recognized in the voices of each of them.
In “Lesson One” I quote Garcia telling us that teachers must deal with many “faults” endemic to untrained voices, and one could be forgiven for misconstruing the negative spin Garcia gives to: “tremulous, nasal, guttural, veiled, harsh, schrill and the “lack of power, range, steadiness, elasticity, or mellowness.” It might seem obvious to some that Garcia was giving us a list of affects that the trained voice must never display, and if one were to fail to read Garcia’s second book, then those so convinced might never find a reason to doubt their conviction. It is in that second book that Garcia describes some of these “faults” as interpretive tools. Yes, they diminish the beauty of the singer’s voice, but they were essential to the interpretive artist of Garcia’s day.
In that second book Garcia gives advice for interpretation that relies on the recitation of words separated from melody, and with this advice he makes a full circle return to using some of the very affects he has told us we will discover in the untrained voice. First, he advises that these vocal “faults” should be eliminated, but then, he wants the singer to reintroduce them as expressive tools after the singer is able to successfully avoid them. When strong emotion is not wanted then the singer should avoid those several faults which may have tainted the singer’s voice at the start of training. But Garcia is most emphatic that the singer be free to put them back into the voice when needed on the stage. More than free to use them, the singer must use them when he wants to impart the correct emotional effects of various degrees of personal disaster or delight which one finds written into the greatest music and even some of the modest music a singer might be called upon to interpret.
So what does the above full circle have to do with Lesson One.001? It has to do with how I believe Garcia sought to “discover and develop, among all the qualities of tone which the student’s voice presents, that one which combines to the highest degree all the desirable conditions.”
My daydreams of Garcia’s first lessons are full of his advice intended to carve away the “faults” presented by the student’s voice, just like Michelangelo carved away marble at “fault” for hiding his David from his eyes. What did Garcia want to chip off the voice? His sketch of things to carve off is quoted above. But why do the listed “faults” haunt and obscure the “germ” of beauty in the voices of the singers that Garcia allowed to enter his studio? Where do the faults on his list come from? Vocal faults are all traceable: some to speech patterns, some to pathologies and some to insufficiencies. Garcia was careful to tell us the qualifications necessary in a student, and if he followed his own advice, pathologies and insufficiencies would not have crossed his studio’s threshold. The student’s speech pattern is certainly another matter. The work of purifying the vocal sound, eliminating offensive accretions on even the first vowel “A” makes me think of “My Fair Lady”. The highly entertaining frustration of the elocution master in this musical stands as one of the best examples of what a Student – Teacher relationship should not be. The process I believe Garcia used for instruction was collaborative, not Warlike. Unlike Professor Higgins of the musical, Garcia did not want to make those speech pattern “faults” disappear forever, and so would seek to have the student voluntarily give them up, not avoid them from fear of reprisal.
Garcia Jr. tells us to listen to all the tone/color qualities that the student’s voice presents and guide the singer to promote those positive qualities the voice already presents while guiding the singer away from those tone/color qualities that are detrimental to the “beauty of the voice”. That “beauty” is what Garcia Sr. claims to be the most powerful tool a singer has when, seeking to “command” the attention of an audience.
Garcia Jr. never gets closer to discussing the subject of personal color qualities than the quote in “Lesson One“. I wrote about the distance he maintained from this discussion in “Why Garcia” and “Factory Made”. He does not suggest the use of Clear Timbre or Dark Timbre, and neither does he say that Chest Voice, Falsetto or Head Voice are relevant issues in this voyage of discovery. His advice is that the natural/untrained voice displays all the “qualities of tone” that we are to seek to promote. They are specific and endemic to each voice, present because of the structure of each individual instrument, and, in the case of these qualities being beautiful, they must be nurtured with the greatest of care. Not covered with Dark or Clear timbres.
This lesson is about treating the student with great care. We must understand that the beautiful voice is a rare item, and deserving of the time and effort to purify the striking qualities that it alone possesses. No teacher can create such a voice. Any teacher can destroy it.
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Lesson One
Life is full of interesting things. So full, in fact, that a tenor, like me, has a really hard time just keeping things in order. I made reference in my last blog to the cold into which we are moving with the seasonal and political climate change that is taking place in the North Country, where I live. This year’s “climate change” has been particularly interesting, and distracting for this tenor. If you care about life as a local issue, and want to have a look into the gazing pool that’s been distracting me from singing, Garcia and other important matters, come have a little look: “Public Hearing or is it Public Debate?” or “Rules, rules, rules why can’t we just count the votes?”
Many years before I arrived at retirement and the distractions of local climatology, my thoughts began to drift toward an image of what a very young student may have encountered in his/her first lesson with Manuel Garcia. This daydream has been with me for a long time and recently tugged my attention off the Plattsburgh political puddle long enough to write this blog.
First things are often not numbered #1. This happens in Garcia’s books. Chapter 5 of his first book speaks to this truth with the words “this first study”.
CHAPTER V
THE EMISSION AND QUALITIES OF THE VOICE
By this first study we prepare the tone, the basis of the talent of the student. The quality of the voice, we could not affirm too much, is the most precious element in singing. My father often said that the beauty of the voice constituted ninety-nine percent of the commanding power [puissance] of a singer. Now all uncultivated voices are, without exception, tainted with several faults, or less developed in certain regards than their usual good qualities may allow. Some voices are tremulous, others nasal, others guttural, veiled, harsh, schrill, etc., while many lack power, range, steadiness, elasticity, or mellowness. The teacher should not only correct these natural or acquired faults, and, while correcting them, prevent others from taking their places, but also discover and develop, among all the qualities of tone which the student’s voice presents, that one which combines to the highest degree all the desirable conditions.
Garcia part 1 page 36
If it takes Garcia four chapters of definitions and explanations to get around to talking about teaching the newest arrivals to the vocal life, I guess it’s OK for a tenor to take two years of blogging to get around to it!
In his writings, Garcia advises to make students work with the “A” vowel at the beginning of a student’s vocal voyage. I believe his advice is the best and the above quote gives us a wonderful send-off on our quest to discover the best “A” a student can make.
In my first lesson daydream I see a student positioned in front of the full length mirror that stood sentinel in Garcia’s studio. I hear Garcia telling the student to affect a relaxed smile and to begin singing a note on the vowel “A” with a precise beginning (Glottal Attack) and to sustain it for the duration of the breath available to the student. I can hear Garcia telling the student to keep the same volume from beginning to end of the note sung. I can hear him correcting any deviation in pitch. I have many images to insert into my daydream of that first lesson with the ideal maestro; all of them from his or his student’s pen. Considering all the years that have passed since Garcia last trained a singer, the relevant knowledge we moderns have discovered, which Garcia didn’t write down, seems to amount to almost nothing. That is why I often tell my students that lessons are not about me. They are about Garcia. As a small aside: the Garcia “secrets” are where the true danger to the student of singing resides. A teacher unaware of the secrets can ruin a beautiful voice or any voice for that matter. But, I will get to the secrets one step at a time.
Getting a student to phonate the “A” vowel I believe Garcia wanted to hear is a special task. It is a good idea to review “Round Timber” because it became one of his secrets when Garcia deleted it from the later editions of his big book. As you will note in the above quote, Garcia’s, and therefore my, first objective is to clean house. Get rid of extraneous affectations that sully the vocal instruments “natural” character. Now this word “natural” is going to be a problem for many, if not the majority of pedagogues. If you are one of them, get over it! I could annoy you even more. I could take inspiration from Garcia Sr. who “often said that the beauty of the voice constituted ninety-nine percent of the commanding power [puissance] of a singer.” The “beauty of the voice” is a gift of God, and Garcia retains only 1% of merit for the pedagogue. No one but The Creator can build a “Stradivarius” Soprano Voice.
So, what should we do with a messed up “A” vowel? Corner the singing student into producing the correct “A” without singing it. That is to say: just speak the “A”. If you know what a person sounds like when he or she expresses extreme satisfaction with only the vowel “A”, then you know what we are looking for. Have a quick look at “Trick and Treat”. In the seventh paragraph resides the advice that I reiterate here. Singing the best possible sound (most beautiful) that your voice can produce will ultimately include a message and the best one would be “satisfaction”. “Joy” would be good also, but satisfaction usually suffices. Yes, one vowel and one message may seem a piece of cake to produce, but I was surprised to discover how difficult it can be to get the job done.
So let’s get down to it. Think of a tenor, and a soprano out in the sun playing soft ball. They are so intent on winning a hard fought game that they forget all about drinking enough water to keep their mucous membranes expressing fluids that do not coagulate.
The soprano throws the final pitch and the tenor strikes out; end of game, soprano wins. After congratulatory hugs all round, the soprano makes the discovery that her mouth is really dry. The tenor eventually comes to the same realization and both head for the water cooler. The soprano is ushered to the front of the line that had quickly formed at the plastic oasis, and the tenor is pushed aside to make room for her, she receives a big glass of wonderful
ice cold water. She puts the glass to her lips and very un-daintily downs the contents in one fell swoop. When all that cold liquid gets down to cooling the sopranos overheated interior she inflates her lungs to the maximum possible and expresses the most satisfied “Ah!” imaginable. Now you have an idea of the sound I want to hear sung. I believe Garcia would have sought this sound as well.
Anyway we are coming to the close of lesson 1. One note held, expressing satisfaction with the vowel “A”. If the voice is beautiful, even just one note can satisfy someone like me, thirsty to hear the best sound the best instruments on earth are capable of making.
So, are we supposed to forget the tenor who can’t bat softballs thrown by sopranos? Yes, because the noise I expect from him is for another lesson.
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