Sore Throat

So, since about Tuesday night I've been noticing it harder to sing in my upper range, and my throat getting smaller and smaller. Definitely a question for a lesson is warming up and keeping your throat open. I just woke up with a really sore throat and I think I'm catching a cold. Do singers know four days in advance that they're catching a cold? Part of me thinks it could be the cold air coming in my window last night, I'm assuming that would close up your throat. But I know that being in the cold won't actually give you a cold (contrary to what anyone could ever convince my grandmother). A cold is a virus that you actually are infected with. The term "rhino virus" comes to mind from an episode of House MD. Anyway, I just had a hot shower that helped my throat a bit. I think the next plan of attack is some chicken noodle soup (although it has no scientific basis more reliable than my grandmother's thoughts on "catching" a cold, it does feel good on the throat). I guess this will be a good day to read psych instead of singing scales…
Thanks for reading,
Trevor

The Beginning...

A bit about me and my musical history. I started piano lessons in grade two and hated it. In school I started trombone in grade seven and in grade eight I convinced my mother to let me switch from piano to guitar lessons. In high school I played at many different things inside and outside of school mainly on guitar. At this stage I’d always wished I could sing to have more choice in the material I did and to make different collaborations possible. After high school, I focussed mainly on trombone and composition while in the Jazz Program at the University of Toronto. After university I knew I wanted to become a teacher, but I wanted to take a couple years to do the professional musician thing. So I worked for Carnival Cruise Lines in the showband, I did a bit of studio stuff, I played electric bass on a tour (that ran out of money and ended abruptly), and various other gigs (restaurants, etc). Now I’ve moved back to Toronto for teachers college. I left my trombone at my parent’s house (because I know I would spend too much time practicing it if it was here in TO with me), and I brought my guitar with me.

So, one of my favourite musicians is John Mayer. I have a degree in jazz performance, I’ve worked as a professional musician, I’ve been on tour, I’ve recorded in studios and one of my favourite musicians is John Mayer. A lot of people think he’s just sugar pop. When I first heard John Mayer, I hated his music. “Your Body is a Wonderland” is one of the lamest pieces of music I’ve ever heard (in my opinion). BUT, one of my close friends made me sit down and listen to his other stuff and damn, that boy is heavy. If you’ve never listened to the John Mayer’s music that isn’t on the radio, I personally feel that your time would be well spent doing so. He’s absolutely the best guitarist in pop music today. Possibly the best acoustic guitarist pop music has ever seen. Check out any of the acoustic versions of “Neon”, check out the live album “Try” where he does some great blues stuff with amazing musicians Pino Palladino and Steve Jordan, and to get a broader idea of what he does, check out the live album “Where The Light Is” (which opens with an amazing version of “Neon” (which is on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_M5cNcRcMk). Just to clarify why “Neon” is so amazing, the low E string on the guitar is tuned all the way down to a low C and actually covers the bass range, there’s a tapping pattern that serves as a drum beat on top of the rest of the guitar part, and John singing. So by himself, he covers four instruments. And it’s also just an amazing piece. Another youtube thing pertaining to John Mayer that I love is a clinic he did at Berklee, the video quality isn’t so hot, but the content quality is amazing. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDrdXj6pdD4 (there are many parts to this clinic).

So here’s the plan. For my music teachable class at teacher’s college, we have to pick an area of music that we think developing will benefit us as a teacher. As soon as I heard the assignment I was excited and knew exactly what I wanted to do. I’m going to finally focus on singing. It’s one of the skills that I always seem to put off working on. Sight-reading and playing in tune is what pays the bills when you’re working as a musician, but now I finally have a motivation to work on singing.

So, how am I going to work on singing? A lot of people join a choir. I honestly don’t feel I’m at that level yet. Maybe later in the school year, it all depends on the speed of my progress. I have a guitar in my apartment. Right now the plan is to mostly work on singing and accompanying myself on guitar. Guitar is a perfect instrument for providing chordal accompaniment and it takes up way less space in my small apartment than a piano. One of my friends from undergrad, Shannon Kerr, is an amazing vocalist and I got a lesson with her a couple years ago, more lessons is definitely a part of the plan. I’ve already spent some time playing scales on the guitar and matching the pitches with my voice, which definitely gave me some positive results. I’m also hoping to trade lesson skills with other teacher candidates. I can teach arranging, composition, brass or guitar lessons in trade for vocal lessons, so we’ll see if I can make that happen. I’m a very big fan of getting lessons from different people. Two points of view are definitely better than one.

As I said earlier, I’m a huge John Mayer fan, so, the list of tunes I want to work with is quite dominated by his music. Please feel free to leave a comment and suggest other tunes that would work well in the vocal and guitar context. Please keep in mind that I have a LOW voice. Here is my tune list:

Why Georgia – John Mayer

Comfortable – John Mayer

Love Song for No One – John Mayer

Tracing – John Mayer

Man on the Side – John Mayer

Why Did You Mess With Forever – John Mayer

Come Back to Bed – John Mayer

Neon – John Mayer (if I can get the guitar part up to speed, it’s really hard)

Sucker – John Mayer

Wind Cries Mary - I know it originally as a Hendrix tune, but Mayer does an amazing version as well

Californication - RHCP

Better Man – Pearl Jam

Tears In Heaven – Eric Clapton

Texas Flood – Stevie Ray Vaughn

A few comments on the list: I’ve tried out all of these tunes somewhat. One of my big problems is my range, it’s very narrow, and very low. That’s definitely one of the areas that needs attention. Singing “Tears in Heaven” down an octave actually sounds really creepy, so, that needs to be doable in the recorded octave. Sometimes I’ve found that moving things down an octave gets very muddy, another reason to expand the vocal range upwards. “The Wind Cries Mary” seems like it should be a really easy tune to do, but in all actuality, it seems to give me the most trouble of anything on the list. I can’t even identify what the problem actually is, that will probably be on the agenda for my first lesson. Some of the John Mayer tunes are only recorded as bootlegs, and if there are any John Mayer fans out there that haven’t heard of some of these songs, that’s why.

OH, and a quick thought on transposition: I’ve always hated when singers want to do a song in a different key. This happens all the time in the jazz world, and yes, I understand that often there are some ranges that don’t work, in which case, transpose a 4^th or 5^th and get on with it. My big pet peeve is transposing a song a whopping semitone. Seriously, that almost always puts you in a ridiculously hard key, and it’s usually not necessity, but range preference. Like “it just makes my voice a little more stressed at the climax of the song”…too bad… Ok, so that’s my feeling on the subject right now as a complete non-singer. Maybe as this project goes on further I may completely change my mind, or at least be more understanding of this.

So that’s the plan, I hope to be making posts here fairly regularly with updates on my progress. Please feel free to comment with song suggestions, technique suggestions, exercise suggestions, or whatever else. I have every intention of posting audio clips and maybe even video clips up here, but for now…I just don’t like how anything I’ve recorded sounds. I understand that it’s hard to hear progress without contrast material, but…I just can’t bring myself to post anything yet.

Thanks,

Trevor