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The Practice of Practicing

I’ve threatened to write a post about how I practice for a while, and I think now is the time. I’m preparing right now for a performance of György Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds with the New York Philharmonic, and I thankfully was able to get my hands on the music before rehearsals have begun. I flipped through the score and my eyes bugged out when I saw this:

Ligeti-1

I’m not a fan of reading manuscript, especially in the age of digital music. Even though the score was published by Schott, who normally prints lovely, legible music, I have a feeling there hasn’t exactly been enough demand since its premiere in 1973, for them to go through the trouble of republishing a proper, printed version.

That being said, I think I should be able to at least read what I have to sing. That squiggly line you see going through the staves? That’s the bar line. And with everything so squished together, it’s essentially impossible to see what beat goes where. This is a sight-reader’s nightmare.

After I posted this picture onto Facebook, several of my friends suggested that I transcribe it into Finale to make it more legible. With over 200 measures of 12 staves each, I wasn’t too keen on transcribing the whole thing, but it would certainly help me learn the music if I transcribed some of the harder bits.

Here is the same passage, only legible (click on image to enlarge):

Ligeti-2

Now that you can actually see it, you may notice that each part only sings two notes: G# and F#. The trick, therefore, is not trying to find the notes themselves, but making sure you sing those notes at the right time. This is what all the parts sound like together:

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Music/Clocks_Clouds_excerpt_piano.mp3]

It’s not so easy to tell which part is yours, is it? In situations like this, I like to use a feature on Finale that changes the instrument a particular staff is playing. Since I’m singing Alto 2, I’ve switched my part to “Oboe,” and all the other parts to “Choir Aahs” (very cheesy MIDI sounds, I know, but they do the trick). This is what the same passage sounds like, only with my part pulled out of the texture:

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Music/Clocks_Clouds_excerpt_oboe.mp3]

I practice like this all the time when I’m at my computer, especially with difficult passages like this. I can also turn on a click track to remind me where the beats are, and I can play different passages at different speeds, depending on what I want to target during my practice session.

I don’t only use this technique with difficult-to-read music; I am also a terrible pianist, and I can’t afford to pay a coach every single time I want to rehearse something with accompaniment, so I use Finale to practice my regular rep as well (I’ve written about my accompaniment tracks here).

I do happen to have several very useful skills in the singing world: 1) I’m a good sight-reader, and 2) I have perfect pitch. That means that most of the time, I can show up to the first rehearsal, pick up the music, and sing what’s on the page without very many mistakes the first time around. But I’m certainly not perfect, and when I can get prepare my part ahead of time, it makes the entire rehearsal process go more smoothly.

So, that’s my “process,” such as it is. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section. And if you’re just starting out and need some advice: learn how to sight-read. That one skill will make you ten times more marketable than any other tool in your vocal toolbox.

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Link Love

I want to encourage anyone and everyone who makes it over to this blog to check out this week’s Indie Ink writing challenges. There is some seriously good writing going on here, and I don’t want anyone to miss it!

UPDATE: This list has also been published on the Indie Ink website!

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Dark Highway

Well, the Indie Ink Challenge is here again, folks. I have to say, I’m having a great time reading all of the responses to the challenge, and these new ideas are doing a great job pushing me out of the rut I’ve been in.

This time, my challenger was Jason Avant. His challenge to me was:

You’re driving alone, on a dark highway, in the middle of nowhere. Music? Or silence? And why?

It took me a little while to get my mind wrapped around this question. I tend to take things very literally in real life, so my first thought was to tell a story about me driving home from a gig in the middle of the night. But then I reread the challenge and realized that I’m in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere? I think this challenge just got harder.

I hate driving at night.

I’m a morning person. I’d rather take a nap until 3 AM and drive in the wee hours of the morning than stay up all night driving. There’s not enough coffee in the world that can keep me up that late, even when I’m wired from a gig or angry from an argument or excited about something new. Nighttime is not my friend.

I sigh and examine at the inky expanse in front of me. A two-lane highway, stretching off into the dark, with nothing on either side to stimulate my mind. Well, nothing except grass. And cows. Okay, I can’t see the cows, but I can smell them. I know they’re there, lurking.

Do cows lurk?

I check the speedometer. 70 mph: a little bit over the speed limit, but not quite enough that I’ll get pulled over. I could probably go 95 or 100 on this road; there is nobody in front of me, nothing in my way. But if I do go that fast, Murphy’s Law will inevitably be invoked, and the next thing I’ll see will be flashing lights in my rear view mirror. No, best to stay at 70. I set my cruise control and shift a little bit in my seat.

I yawn.

Oh crap, that’s the first sign of sleepiness. I reach for the coffee in my cupholder and start to drink. It’s warm and sweet and tastes like morning. I love mornings. Morning is the point in time where yesterday meets tomorrow, where all the plans for today are laid out, and everything is fresh with no mistakes in it yet.

Not like nighttime. In the night, the darkness confuses things. The day is done, all your mistakes have been made, and all you have left to do is fall asleep and dream of how to fix those mistakes and build things anew. Falling asleep and dreaming of a cow standing in the middle of the road.

A COW IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD????!!!

I slam on the brakes. Before I come to a halt, I realize that there is no cow, only road, and I’m still driving.

Goddammit.

I get my speed back up to 70, set the cruise control again, and open the window. The sound of the wind rushing through the window is a bit like white noise, and although I know cold air is supposed to keep you awake, all it’s doing is making me shiver. So now I’m sleepy and cold.

The smell of cows is fading, but it’s now been replaced with the much more pungent smell of skunk. I quickly roll up the windows.

Nothing, there is nothing on this road. And it’s so straight! Not even a curve to keep me on my toes. I turn on the radio. Nothing but static. I search through the stations, but this late at night all I’m getting is country music and smooth jazz, neither of which are to my liking. I sing along to the tail end of “Dude Looks Like A Lady” on a hard rock station, but I then drive out of range. I can get snippets of BBC World News, but the signal is messed up, and from what little I can hear, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Ugh, how depressing. I can handle depressing news in the morning, but not at night. Not when it feels like the darkness is closing in on you and you’re the only one alive and aware in the world. Not when you’re not sure you’re going to make it until morning.

My phone buzzes in my purse. My phone! Oh thank goodness, I can talk to someone, anyone, so that I can get through this ride, get through the night.

I search through and pull it out. Glancing at it, I see someone has left me a message. I plug in my earbud and listen to the voicemail: “Hey, it’s me. I thought I’d try to catch you because I’m driving home and I need someone to talk to. Give me a call when you get a chance.”

I quickly redial the number, but I go straight to voicemail. “It’s me. I just got your message. I’m driving too, so give me a call.”

After I hang up, I wait for a few minutes, excited and waiting for the phone to ring.

More minutes pass. I dial a few more numbers, leave a few more messages. I wait.

Nobody is going to call back, are they?

Fog starts closing in, making it difficult to drive so quickly. I slow down to about 45, but the fog is getting even thicker. The light from my high beams is bouncing brightly off the particles of water, and I have to switch to the low beams. I can see only about 20 feet in front of me now. The road is beginning to curve now, and I am regretting wishing for something other than straight road, because it is so difficult to concentrate when my mind is this fatigued. I am trying not to hallucinate, trying not to see those mystical forms taking shape in the fog. Slow down into a curve, I remind myself. Accelerate out of a curve. And whatever happens, don’t fall asleep.

Don’t fall.

Asleep.

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Round Midnight

I remember the first time I ever met him. I had just finished a performance of Carmen at the San Francisco Opera, and as I climbed into the car waiting outside the stage door, I heard a strange sound coming from the back seat.

“Look who I have with me,” my mother said with a smile. She pulled a box from the back and handed it to me.

There was something moving inside the box. It meowed.

Of course I knew I was getting a kitten. This was my gift from my mother for turning the ripe old age of eight, and I had actually visited the family of kittens a few days earlier to pick the one I wanted. When I had played with them all, I had decided on a gray striped kitten who had been very rambunctious. I knew that I was going to call him Tigger.

I opened the box with anticipation and found…a tiny black kitten.

No Tigger.

Confused, I looked up at my mom and said, “I think you got the wrong one.”

She sighed and apologized. Apparently, by the time she had gotten to the family’s home, there was only one kitten left, so she took him. “But,” she said, “he is Tigger’s brother, so I am sure he’s also going to be just as fun.”

I started petting him and he purred loudly.

“Plus,” she added, “black cats are way cooler than other cats. Some people think they have magical powers.”

A magical cat? That sounded like a trade up to me. “But…what should I name him? He’s not striped, so I can’t name him Tigger.”  My exhausted eight-year-old brain was trying to come up with clever names. All I could come up with was “Kitty,” and I knew that was just dumb.

“What about Midnight? He’s as black as midnight, after all.”

Looking at this tiny little black ball of fur, I nodded in affirmation. As we drove home, I started telling him that his name was Midnight, and that we would be friends. By the time we had made the hour-long journey home into the far reaches of Marin County, I had dubbed him Sir Midnight of Forest Knolls.

As I grew up, he was my best friend. He comforted me through convalescence after a broken collarbone, a dislocated knee, and numerous sprained ankles. He loved watching me garden, and did his best to kill any bugs, newts, or birds that got in my way. His favorite napping spots were the porch, the laundry basket, and the roof (which he reached by climbing the plum tree that grew next to our house). He was incredibly intelligent, and learned how to open the sliding glass door for himself to let himself out.

We could never teach him how to close that same door, much to our chagrin.

When my mother’s boyfriend tried to molest me, Midnight knew. After that incident, he spent more time with me, on my lap and in my bed. When I fell into depression, Midnight would come over to me and sit on me. He would look at me with those big green eyes and tell me that he wasn’t going to let me kill myself, and if he had to sit on me to stop me from doing it, that’s what he would do.  He weighed 20 lbs. He was not a small cat.

When I went away to college and my mom started dating a woman who was allergic to cats, Midnight had to leave the only home he had ever known. He lived with my dad for a year, but my stepmother complained bitterly about having a cat in the house. And so after my second year in college, it was decided that I would bring Midnight back to the East Coast to live with me in my new apartment.

I know he was traumatized by the plane trip, especially since the tranquilizer we had given him had worn off by the time my delayed flight finally touched ground in Boston. The poor cab driver had to hear him yowl all the way from Logan Airport to Powderhouse Square; I tipped him extra for his trouble.

Midnight lived for 13 years. He died of intestinal cancer that I had not been able to catch early on (I was a poor college student and didn’t take him to the vet very often). I wasn’t even there when they took him to the vet, because I was at a summer apprenticeship program. When my subletter/catsitter told me what was going on, I borrowed a friend’s car and drove from Rhode Island to Somerville. The vet explained that they could do surgery, but there wasn’t a very good chance that he’d have a good life after the surgery…plus, I couldn’t afford all those expenses; I could barely afford the cost of putting him down!

It was an extremely difficult choice, but I wanted Midnight to be happy. I could tell he wasn’t happy at all the way he was, and after all he had done for me, I knew I needed to be strong for him.

I watched as the doctor injected him. I petted him and told him I loved him.

He purred loudly. He knew I was there.

And then his purrs got quieter. His breathing slowed.

And then he was gone.

My pencil sketch of Midnight (1988)

I cried a lot that night. I drove over to my boyfriend’s house and spent the night sobbing in his arms. Midnight had been everything to me as I was young, and I blamed myself for not taking care of him better as we both got older. But I was still young then, and he was very old, and I know now that it was just his time to go.

I’d like to think that he’s still around, watching from afar. My husband and I now have two wonderful (and crazy) cats, Itchy and Scratchy, and I like to think that Midnight has given them tips on how to deal with me.  Just because they’re not black cats doesn’t mean they don’t have magical powers, too.

(I wrote this post because I was inspired by someone who will be taking her dog in for surgery today. My thoughts are with her.)

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Calla Lily

Responding to a tweet last week from my friend MightyHunter, I joined a writing challenge from Indie Ink. I’ve been experiencing some writer’s block recently (not a great thing when all I do is write grants all day), and I figured this might help loosen me up and help me write a little better.

Of course, when my husband found out about the challenge, his first reaction was, “Like you don’t have enough shit to do?”

And he was right.

I’ve already read some of the challenge responses here and here and especially here (my challenger), all of which make this challenge seem more daunting to me. Never mind the fact that I am more comfortable writing fiction, but I decided to answer my challenge with a non-fiction piece.

Nevertheless, I know that if I keep self-judging, I’ll only get in my own way, so here goes…hopefully I’ll get better with the next few challenges…

My challenge from Christine:
Get a piece of paper and a pen. Close your eyes and put the pen to the paper. Keep your eyes closed and draw for 30 seconds. Write a piece, fiction or non about your drawing. The piece should include the words “diffuse” “clarity” and “depth”. Take a photo of your drawing and include it with the piece.

Sure, I guess I have a fairly decent hand at drawing, which I developed over the many years in my childhood when my mother dragged me to her rehearsals and stuck me in a corner with a sketchbook. But then, as now, I have been very particular with my figures, preferring the clarity of realism to an abstract subject.

Having only 30 seconds to draw wouldn’t have been so bad either, if it weren’t for the fact that I had to keep my eyes closed. So in order to keep things simple, I decided to think of a straightforward image, something with clean lines and very little depth.

Remembering a high school art class where I had drawn a still life of calla lilies, I kept the image of a single calla lily in my mind and started following the curves of the flower in my head as I put the pen to paper. Once I lifted my pen up, however, I realized the image was beginning to become diffuse in my mind’s eye; not only could I not remember what I was drawing, but I didn’t know where my pen was in relation to the paper.

I had to let go. I doodled some signature scrollwork (just check any of my college notes and you’ll find the same curls in the margins) and offset it on the other side with some decisive diagonal lines. My 30 seconds were up, and I opened my eyes.

My first reaction was to start over again. I wasn’t pleased because it didn’t really look like anything; certainly not at all a calla lily. A second look revealed to me a pseudo-cubist view of an eighth note on a staff (leave it to a singer to see music in anything). But it wasn’t until I started writing this piece that I realized that my picture doesn’t have to be anything.

I spend so much of my life trying to make things perfect, trying to follow all the rules and stay within the lines that I often forget that sometimes there are things that don’t fit neatly in little boxes. And it’s nice to be able to relax and let things just be.

So, what does it look like to you?

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The Diva is in the Details

This afternoon, I had a very productive conference call with two friends who had decided to join me in my quest for self-improvement. Abigail and Amy are helping to keep me on track (while I keep them on track as well). In addition to giving each other encouragement and ideas, we’re considering creating a podcast to talk about our experiences in the biz (don’t go looking for it on iTunes yet, though!). But the three of us left the meeting energized and looking forward to our next meeting, at a “Boost Your Acting Career” workshop by Dallas Travers in New York next month.

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Winter Blunderland

This blog post comes to you from the Department of Snow-Related Complaints. Be forewarned that much whining and gnashing of teeth will follow.

Having grown up in San Francisco, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to snow. I do like the way it looks when I’m inside and I don’t have to go anywhere, but I am not a fan of driving in the stuff. My cute little Honda Fit doesn’t have four-wheel drive, and it’s not especially heavy, so it doesn’t do well in slippery, icy conditions.

When it snows, the street that I live on is usually the one of the last in my township to be plowed, and my next-door neighbor has a tendency to park his van on the street even though there is an ordinance requiring all cars to be moved out of the street when there is a snowstorm. As a result, when the plow finally makes it to our street, they have to plow around my stupid neighbor’s van, and the portion of the street in front of our driveway doesn’t get cleared.

This morning, before it began to snow, I took a picture of our neighbor’s van to see if it would be in the same place tonight.

When I got home tonight, I found that not only was the next-door neighbor still parked illegally…

…but the neighbors on the other side of the house were just as inconsiderate.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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New Year’s Resolutions

I jokingly posted this tweet on New Year’s Eve, and unfortunately (but not surprisingly) I didn’t win the lottery.

In lieu of a windfall, I didn’t have many other resolutions to offer myself come midnight. Yes, I’ve got to continue with my weight-loss goal. Yes, I need to continue singing more. But are these really resolutions? They’re more like continuations.

Last night, I spoke with my friend Abby, who reiterated to me what I had been saying to myself for a while: I need to audition more. So does she, she said, and we decided we should keep each other on track and accountable in a sort of blogger’s pledge.

So, here we go: starting next Monday, I pledge to make at least 5 new contacts to the singing industry per month. Contacts can include an audition or sending out materials. I’m not exactly sure how to keep track of this on this blog (I’d prefer to keep the contacts confidential, for obvious reasons), but maybe Abby and I can write about what happens as a result of these contacts?

Any suggestions as to how we can keep each other accountable?

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Internet Sensation

When I answered my phone yesterday morning, I never expected I’d be asked to do an interview on Fox News.

Last month’s Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Random Act of Culture (the “flash mob” Hallelujah Chorus at Macy’s in Philadelphia) made such a splash on the internet that a whole bunch of similar events are popping up from Toronto to Jacksonville. The Toronto group made such a splash that Fox News did a segment on it yesterday, only to be barraged with emails telling them that OCP was the originator of the idea…which led Fox decide to air another piece about Philadelphia’s flash mob today.

Hence the phone call.

Fox had asked to speak to someone from OCP administration as well as a singer, and I guess my laughing face in the Philadelphia Inquirer photo made me a good candidate to be the face of such a joyful event. “They’ll be sending a car service to pick you up,” OCP told me. “You will be on the air at 6:50 AM.”

When I got the car service confirmation email, I saw that the car would be picking me up at 5:20. Sheesh. Good thing I didn’t have a late night rehearsal.

So I went to bed early and woke up at 4:30, took a shower, put an inordinate amount of product in my hair to make it do the pretty curly thing, and slipped into the outfit that I had painstakingly picked out the night before. I made sure my make-up was just so (I had no idea what to expect: would there be hair and make-up people there? Probably not, I figured; after all, my segment would probably be less than 5 minutes long), and was wide awake and ready for the car to pick me up.

5:20 came and went, but no car. At 5:25, I called the car service company, only to find out that dispatch for the company was in Los Angeles. They patched me through to New York, where dispatcher knew who I was right away because apparently my driver was lost. That didn’t bode well, I thought. Worst case scenario, I could drive myself.

At 5:30, a sedan pulled into my driveway and idled for a while. I knew the driver was supposed to call me, but I couldn’t wait any longer, so I stepped outside. He saw me and stepped out of the car — he was wearing a tuxedo! — to open the car door for me. What service! He apologized profusely for being late and blamed it on his GPS (I’ve never had a problem with GPS finding my house before, but okay). He kept apologizing the entire 40-minute ride to the television station! I managed to get him to talk about something else eventually, but he even apologized as he was letting me out of the car. Oy.

We finally got to the station, which wasn’t the major Fox outlet that I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a bustling news room and a table full of pastries and coffee (I was getting hungry). Instead, it was just a small video company that does satellite links to news stations (among other things). They had a tiny bit of coffee left, which OCP’s Executive Director, David, shared with me, and about a dozen large jars of candies and pretzels. I popped a mint into my mouth while we were waiting.

Fox and Friends was playing in the waiting room, and we heard the first teaser to our segment: “Coming up: we talk to the pastor that started the Messiah in a mall trend.” Pastor? I looked at David.

“I think he must have said ‘master,'” David said. We both shrugged it off.

All too quickly, they were ready for us to get set up for our interview. The actual show was going on in New York (where I’m SURE there were pastries and coffee!), and we would be joining them through the magic of television. We were ushered into a dark, windowless room with nothing but two chairs, a backdrop of the Philadelphia skyline and a remote-controlled camera. The woman who was running everything (the only person in the office!) helped us put our microphones on and earbuds in, but she would be controlling the audio and visual feeds from outside the room.

I thought for sure we would see ourselves or the anchors on a monitor, but everything was turned off. So I stared into the black hole of the camera and listened to the newscast through my earbud. We heard another teaser for our segment: “Coming up next: we reported on the flash mob Messiah yesterday; now we meet the pastor who started it all. Filled with God, he joins us live.”

David and I looked at each other and giggled.

Every once in a while, the audio would be interrupted by a producer asking us to count or say our names for a sound check. David made sure to mention he was the Executive Director of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, not a pastor. And about a minute before our segment started, the anchor who was interviewing us (Steve Doocy) asked us a few questions about ourselves and the Random Act of Culture at Macy’s.

And then we were on. It went by so fast. Keep smiling, Maren. Keep your answers short. Be yourself. I had a few things that I had already planned to say in my head, and they came out almost exactly the way I wanted them to.

Success! Three minutes later, we were done, and the producer was burning a DVD. I got back in my black sedan, resisted the urge to say, “Home, James,” and arrived at my house before my husband had even gotten out of bed.

Not bad for an early morning, if I do say so myself.

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Isn’t It Ironic?

I sang with 650 people at Macy’s a few weeks ago for a “Random Act of Culture” organized by the Opera Company of Philadelphia in conjunction with the Knight Foundation, and got a few seconds of face time on the video…and suddenly I’m being recognized by strangers in Lancaster. So I guess my choral work, not my solo work, is what’s making me famous?