Guest blog by Jeanne Marie
Proud Teacher, Part 2
Monique is 50-something, and grew up in a household that did not enjoy or experience music. Her dad did not appreciate “noise” of any sort, so her family did not play the radio, or listen to records, or play instruments in the house – nothing of that nature. Nevertheless, when she was in junior high school, Monique decided to sing in choir. After a few rehearsals, her choir director told her she couldn’t sing, and therefore should drop choir and take up the clarinet instead.* Things you are told by important and powerful people like teachers tend to stick with you, especially when you are told those things at an impressionable age. Monique believed her junior high choir director, and stopped singing entirely for nearly 40 years.
One Friday afternoon, almost six years ago, Monique sat next to me in our mutual chiropractor’s office. We discovered that it was the secretary’s birthday, and I led the office in a round of “Happy Birthday” – but, Monique didn’t join in. When we finished the congratulations, I turned to Monique and asked why she hadn’t been singing with us. “Oh, I can’t sing,” she responded. “Yes, you can,” I replied. “No, really, I can’t sing, “ Monique insisted. “I’ll bet you five dollars a week you can sing,” I asserted. After a bit more bantering, Monique took my bet and my phone number, and did indeed call me to schedule her first ever voice lesson.
Roughly two weeks later, Monique and I had her first voice lesson. I asked her about her musical history, and she told me about growing up in a silent house, and about the impact of her junior high choir director. She told me about playing clarinet,** and about not having done much of anything musical since then. She told me that she had always WISHED she could sing, because she liked music, and wanted to participate in singing.***
When I begin working with a new student with a non-musical history, I always start by checking to see how accurately they can actually hear different pitches. I ask them to close their eyes, and I play two notes on the piano, asking them if the first is higher or lower than the second. Monique was mostly accurate, except on half-step intervals. We then worked on listening to the differences in sound between matching versus non-matching pitches – I would ask her to sing or hum any note at all, and then I would match it. We did this a number of times, so that she could hear what it sounded like when we sang the same pitch. Then, I’d ask her to sing a note, but I’d intentionally sing a half step off, and ask her to listen and describe how that was different from when we were matching pitch. This kind of work has never yet failed to help students of mine, even previously non-musical students, begin to match pitch with greater accuracy.
Next, we did sirens – vocally sliding up and down the scale, as far as possible in each direction. Not only does this serve as a vocal warm-up, it also teaches how to adjust when you aren’t matching pitch accurately. I would do these vocal sirens with her, then we worked on stopping the siren at a single pitch, and I taught her how to slide her voice up or down, just as we’d done with the sirens, until she was matching my pitch. To her utter astonishment, I informed her that she was NOT a low Alto, which she had always assumed, but was in fact a soprano!
We sat on my piano bench side-by-side, and sang through a couple of hymns that she was familiar with from her church, and I asked her to listen especially carefully to my voice, using the skills we had just practiced, to see if she was accurately matching my pitch. By the end of the first lesson, she had become confident enough to sing hymns with me, even if she wasn’t always matching pitch accurately.
Because of her study on the clarinet, Monique was familiar with scales, so I decided to teach her solfege* as a way to increase her pitch-matching accuracy, and as a way to work on music reading skills and on hearing intervals. She took to it immediately, and found it very helpful as we worked on singing hymns and folk songs. She would look the music over and would write the solfege syllable over the notes, then we’d sing through the piece using solfege syllables, and work on specific intervals as needed. After a few runs with solfege, we’d switch to the text of the song.
It has now been almost 5 years since Monique began voice lessons. Her confidence level has gradually but steadily improved, as has her ear and basic vocal skill. She has progressed to being able to sing with me with MUCH better breathing and greater pitch accuracy. With her stronger confidence level has come the willingness to experiment with singing in front of people other than me! She led an office party rendition of “Wild Thing,” and this Christmas, she asked me to help her make a CD for her mother.
Monique is the kind of singer I most appreciate teaching. She loves music, and loves to sing, but for so long, didn’t think she had “permission” to sing. Teaching her has been so moving for me, as I watch her levels of confidence and self-respect grow, and as I watch her catch fire about music and singing in a way she had not been able to before. Her willingness to be vulnerable, to sing with me, even when she believed she couldn’t, is a real testament to her indomitable spirit, her courage, and to the fact that you are NEVER, never, too old to do something if you really want to do it.
So, if you can talk, you can sing. Don’t believe me? Ask Monique!
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* no offense to clarinet players, but GRRRRRRR…
** she stopped clarinet classes after less than two years
*** I didn’t discover this until much, much, much later, but just weeks before meeting me, Monique had sent out into the Universe the desire to find a music teacher…ask, and ye shall receive!
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge. I’d had this conversation with Jeanne Marie and she was going to explain solfege and then I lost the plot and she got engaged, http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2009/12/18/guest-post-by-jeanne-marie-4/ and it’s now midnight-thirty on a Saturday night when I need a guest post, so wiki will have to do. Apologies –ed.
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