Subject: RE: why do singers take so long to start?
From:
Don Firth
Date: 19 Aug 15 - 09:38 PM
Good comparison, Good Soldier Schweik!
It isn't a matter of not being "open-minded," mauvepink, it's a matter of concern for those who never even attempt to ride their bicycle without the training-wheels and taking the chance of a possible tumble and a skinned knee or two. You are voluntarily limiting yourself to the point where you will never achieve what you could achieve.
To mix metaphors a bit, if you insist on using the crutch all the time, you'll never learn to walk without it.
When I first started singing (back in prehistoric times, it seems—in the early 1950s), not all that many of us had professional aspirations, but when we brought a guitar or banjo—or just ourselves—to a "hoot," none of us brought songbooks or notebooks or crib sheets with us. Unless it happened to be a list of the titles of songs we had learned, and that was generally taped to the side of our instrument. Our repertoire may have been small, but it was carried in our heads.
Everyone had his or her own way of going about it, but the way I learned a song was to listen to the record repeatedly while copying down the words in longhand. By the time I had the words written down, I had heard the song several times, and the tune was pretty solidly in my ear, as were some of the words. Then, over the next couple of days, I would carry the words around with me (usually folded up in a shirt pocket) and try to sing the song through, taking the words out and checking only when I got stuck.
Or if I was learning it out of a song book, I would copy the words in longhand, which helped me memorize them, and although I'm not the greatest sight-reader in the world, I play the tune on the guitar until I had it in my head—then put the two together.
At night, before going to bed, I would quietly sing the song in my head or quietly to myself, checking the words only when necessary, and often fall asleep that way. That put the old subconscious to work.
Generally, within a couple of days, I had the song memorized. Generally, after a day or two, I would work out a guitar accompaniment and attempt to put the song and the accompaniment together. And I would run the song through my head both with and without accompaniment
Usually, within a week, I had it. And would cinch it down at the following hoot or session. And if I did happen to blow it, strangely enough, the world didn't come to an end.
AND
Among other things, if you are singing from memory and you do blow it, you can often cover it. Once, on live television (no teleprompter or cue-cards), I did forget the words. It was a version of The Gypsy Davey. About three verses into the song, I blanked out. I suppressed a coronary while I launched into playing the melody on the guitar. I was using a sort of Carter Family strum, and I picked out the melody with my thumb a la Maybelle Carter, and prayed to Orpheus to let me remember the words. By the time I reached the end of the verse played on the guitar, the words had come back to me.
Afterward, I asked people who had watch the show. Nobody had noticed! They just assumed that I normally put an instrumental interlude there
I once saw Andres Segovia goof in a concert. He got all bollixed up on a Bach transcription. Without missing a beat, he started the passage over again. I spotted it because I knew the piece, but he covered his goof so smoothly that I doubt that more than three or four people in an audience of a couple of thousand even noticed!
You don't learn how to do this sort of thing unless it happens to you.
And you're not going to learn this sort of thing with your nose in a book!
C'mon! Take the training wheels off your bicycle and give it a shot! You might surprise yourself!
Don Firth
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