I should have added-- been reflecting about this one all morning--

A well-known male vocal quartet was performing at our church one night when we hosted a community concert. We'd opened the building early for their soundcheck, made sure they got fed and had dressing space, etc., and sort of ran sound for them. During the soundcheck they also played around with some of the songs they'd be doing that evening, to come up with a few approaches for that day in order to accomodate individual vocal proclivities. You could tell that this was a normal part of their soundcheck practice, as they spoke a kind of shorthand with each other to very quickly settle some singing issues. I felt very lucky to have a chance to see and hear all this happening!

They also fooled around playfuly with some new material they were thinking about for the next year's tour. From each of them, I heard several different voices. Each of them had a couple of different ways they could get around the scale, depending on the rigors of the individual songs. I asked them, at one point, if each of them felt like they're singing most of the time in their best range... the answer, as they grinned back, was no, no, no, no, no, no, and NO. But they did, they assured me, really appreciate having a full schedule making enough money to live on while doing music fulltime, and they did appreciate being in a group where they had the collective skill and personalities to cooperate and pull it off night after night.

Though they weren't going to be songleading as part of their show, the tough schedule required by their concert appearances (as I learned in coming to know them a bit before the show) confirmed much of my own experience: when you're "out there" for the people, you don't always get to choose what key you will sing in, on any given day, according to your own best range or your most flattering key.

Just as I had found when I had a different weekly responsibility, there are OFTEN days when you just show up and do the job you've agreed to do. In that process-- just as these guys confirmed-- you learn a lot of ways of handling yourself when the worst days (or songs in the worst keys) come your way. You learn not only to suck it up and tough it out, but in a technical/vocal-skills sense, you also learn HOW to navigate around the song, the voice, and the throat you have on any given day. You learn when to tune down a half step and when to just get through a piece; you learn how to tell your partner, on the fly, what you need them to do about an expected challenge; you learn how to smile, smile, smile, and do what you agreed to do.

There comes a point when the song simply takes over, and out it comes. I've sung in ranges that I could never in a million years have said I could sing in. Sometimes it's cost me some voice (temporarily or permanently), but being able to DO IT in all kinds of crazy circumstances-- including vocal ones-- is what lends the credibility to say that you think that maybe you can do it.

The guys were very, VERY nice to make do with our tiny, meatball sound system that night; I don't think they had ever seen folding chairs used as speaker stands before. :~) For the next group we hosted, we dug up and recommended a local (professional) sound engineer with portable BIG system. But I learned as much from them, too.

~Susan