It checks the boxes of striving to sing higher and lighter and people like it when I sing it here in FUK.
Unbelievably, according to wikipedia Guerra was visiting Japan and was
so impressed with the people of Fukuoka and their ability to dance
bachata, merengue, and mambo he wrote the song "Bachata in Fukuoka"
which became the first single on his album A Son de Guerra and became a
number 1 hit.
For days I've been trying to capture the whole suite played in one take
from memory, but I learned that this is extremely difficult.
Technically a lot of new discoveries have been made - beginning with
string tension. In college, I would play high tension classical guitar
strings because thats what my teacher used. Tension is governed by the
diameter of the string, and I think the material used measured by how
many pounds of pressure it can sustain. Harder tension strings are
harder to push down with the left hand but "yield" a louder or richer
sound in the end. Ever since my college days 90% of the struggle was in
the left hand - trying to shift form bar chords to far stretching
intervals and quick scales. Because I was always so preoccupied with
the LH I never really thought about focusing on the Right hand besides
making sure my fingernails were pretty long.
Then I switched to low tension strings and wow what a difference!
Because I didn't have to push down so hard, it wouldn't stress me out as
badly and I could dedicate mind share to the right hand pulling the
strings consistently and accurately. This is when I realized how little
I thought about the RH all along. When I got to a difficult part that
was still stressful even with low tension strings, I took the idea
further and detuned the whole guitar using a clip on tuner (that are so
popular and convenient these days), and this made it even easier. Then
as the whole piece from start to finish became easier you tune back up.
Across all the pieces of the suite I did this until I was detuning,
retuning, and then upgrading strings until I found myself back at Very
Hard tension strings again.
Pro tip - If your left hand is working too hard, try switching to low
tension, if its still too hard go ahead and detune high A from 440 down
to 430 and see how that feels.
Then I started playing the whole work all the way thru for the first
time since I began playing the individual pieces in college, and it felt
good. But when the recorder is on its like a whole different league.
Its a weird place between concentrating and not thinking about anything
at all. As soon as a complete thought enters your head, you're going to
crash. I'd usually be doing Ok thinking about people's faces or TV
shows, but as soon as I comment to myself "that was a good landing"
Boom its over, and I'd have to start back over at the beginning.
In the end, I just had to read the music because maintaining that kind
of lucid dreaming is just too .... too maddening. Oh well the goal was
to capture the entire set anyway - unfortunately reading from the music
sounds how it sounds - like someone reading from a piece of paper. I
think I have a new understanding now why some classical players can be
hostile to those who have no idea the degree of preparation and
concentration it takes. And then to top it off you do all this work and
no one even cares about classical music! Oh well.
Worst count in ever?
The dobro is doing good - I upgraded the speaker cone and
"spider-bridge" from the Chinese stock one to an American made one and
the sound is night and day. I'm considering getting a hand-made solid
wood one but there aren't really any in Japan. I'm convinced that the
thinness / quality of the cone is what really creates the sound.
I'm further exploring the 4 voices, and its pretty fun. Its tough, but
singing and picking the dobro is getting easier. Guitar is quite a
luxury. I'm discovering more and more how delicate my intonation is - any kind of stress or distraction and I go flat right away. Its really a mysterious thing.
I'm a pretty big Guster fan and am mystified why they aren't more popular!
If I look like I have a fatigued look on my face its because recording is super fatiguing. I've yet to make a recording where I didn't want to give up half way thru...
Per Wikipedia: The first historical record of the song was by ethnomusicologist John Lomax in 1909, who recorded it as sung by an African American woman called Dink, as she washed her man's clothes in a tent camp of migratory levee-builders on the bank of the Greater Calhoun Bayou River, a few miles from Houston,Texas and the University of Houston.
Its a work in progress...
I think I've discovered an interest in what I call the "3rd voice". Singing solo typically you play an instrument like keyboard or guitar and sing along which are the 2 voices you need to perform most pop songs, but I really like the additional texture of the third voice like organ, violin, electric guitar, or in my case dobro. Which is a goddamn hard instrument. My favorite band the Milk Carton kids are really great at 4 voices: melody, bass, countermelody, harmonized melody. I don't mean that the other singer serves as a another voice, I mean that you have a voice singing alone and then when accompanied by a harmonizing voice the texture changes to create a totally unique sounding 4th voice.
Trying to sing and play dobro made me realize what a luxury frets or keys are on instruments like guitar or piano. Once you set your fingers in the right spot, just apply pressure and the design of the instrument should produce an in tune note (assuming you tuned the strings before starting). But fretless instruments like violin, trumpet, and the human voice really require a superior level of intonation because your ear has to govern whether or not your technique is producing the correct pitch. In other words having 2 separate keys you can press for C and C# really takes care of a significant amout of stress.
So then heres me trying to sing and play dobro at the same time: two "unfretted" instruments and its damn hard. But its doable I think.
Its a work in progress...
This song is about a coal miner whose wife is leaving him.
The last 6 weeks have been pretty weird. I learned a few different
songs, but when it came time to record after learning all the hard parts
- I'd lose all motivation to capture or share it. I'd wonder who even
cares about this song nowadays? Why am I even learning it other than I
like it? I love learning Bach, but that answer is far more clear -
absolutely no body cares about Bach today. This is why I don't want to
be a classical musician because hardly anybody cares about it. Some
say, "but if you like it then shouldn't that be your focus?" I guess..
but is that really the point? To just play for yourself? Or even worse
- be satisfied serving as background music?
I'm only one person, and voice / guitar are great complements, so it
makes sense to fill space with these 2 contrasting instruments - but
candidly I lose interest. I think its because it doesn't maximize
enough possibilities? There are great players who add a "3rd voice" by
throwing out guitar fills or vocal ornaments between the rhythm /
bass and the melody / lyrics - but this takes a tremendous amount of
time to develop this kind of vocabulary and then deliver them at will. I
like old songs and authentic players who put the time into their chops,
but recording technology is pretty amazing today considering when I was
in college just 10 years ago it was an enormous pain in the ass to
record my consumer level laptop, so why not leverage cameras and
microphones to get all 4 voices?. I've done it before so why not? And
then suddenly I think I realized my dissertation topic for this
"graduate degree" in music I started 2 years ago.
Like a string quartet with the cello serving as the bass / root of
harmony, the first violin generally always given the melody, 2nd violin
providing counter-melodies and harmonizing at times, and viola filling
out the harmony and sometimes countering as well. This is more
interesting to me. I am interested of course in improving my voice
quality, intonation, guitar vocabulary, and live performance ability,
but honestly my number one interest has always been how my favorites
would manage textures, create melodies, and being mindful of doing more
with less - I think this is called musicianship. We'll see if I can put
out an A+ paper by the end.
I thought I decided I was done with making videos and should just make
audio, but in the end its a good way to show other musicians and get
them to want to play with me.
I randomly started reading a book called Caruso's Method of Voice Production, and it was blowing my mind by saying all these controversial things like:
- Although breath is important, it is not at all the most important component
- An understanding of Diaphragmatic breathing is unnecessary
- The speaking voice leads and serves as a guide to the singing voice
The book was really interesting for the historical context as well
because apparently in the 1920's it was common for opera singers to ruin
their voices attempting to perform the contemporary repertoire of the
time - composers like Wagner and Verdi (who were alive during the 1800's
but their music still ruled the opera world). These wrecked singers
would have no choice but to become teachers and would spread bad singing
techniques to the next generation of singers - which is why the author
says focusing on the breath and diaphragm is the main concept among
voice studios. The author interviewed Enrico Caruso and other singers,
but unfortunately the common response to why their were so goddamn good
was "I don't really know why - it just happens naturally." This sounds
like a terrible answer, but the author interpreted it to mean that
natural singing should feel like nothing is happening - therefore
unnatural physical motions like pushing out your chest, or holding out
your stomach, and all kinds of exercises are unnecessary. He also took
it to mean that singing should feel as normal as speaking.
Basically he says, the reason why high notes feel so weird is because
you spend 90% of your day hanging around the lower tones of your
speaking voice, but then give the remaining 10% to your singing voice when you practice - with maybe 1% spent on high notes you would never ever use in
normal conversation. So of course your body and psychology are going to
be resistant to it.
So I started reading books out loud instead of warming up at the
piano. I put on a Mickey Mouse voice to see just how high I could speak
and yeah it felt really weird and uncomfortable at first, but I even
started imagining I was a cartoon character and my throat started to
compensate and it started to feel normal again.
This song Snails is sang by Nate Ruess who is in the band Fun, but
used to be in The Format 10 years ago. He sings extraordinarily high
and actually has an extraordinarily high speaking voice if you listen to
him in interviews. I've sang this song for years but always 2 steps
down - and it was still really difficult and quiet / small. Nate sings
it in the outrageous key of E Major which might be OK if you sang it an
octave down, but in E all 3 of the tonic notes (Do Mi and Sol) are right
in the passagio (Italian for passage - meaning the difficult / narrow
part of the vocal range). So after reading a lot I'd try this song in
the original key and after only a few days it pretty much worked! Do I want
to sing other songs that spend the majority of the time up here? NO. But
once you can access certain high notes and have a strategy to get up
there without fear, your normal notes can feel much more secure - at least I hope
so. This has been an exercise in following instructions from a 100 year old text,
and I'm convinced! I used to have trouble singing E, but now I can get
up to high A (5 steps higher). Just to put into context, most classical choral music rarely has high A's in the tenor part - opera will very rarely have a high B-flat (1 step higher) at the most dramatic climax of an aria. There are still intonation issues, but I
gotta believe those will work themselves out over time as I continue to research and
understand as much as I can about singing.
Pro Tips
- If you can't sing high, try speaking up there for a few minutes
until you become acclimated to it. If you feel weird and are convincing
yourself to stop, then it will never normalize - you gotta really
believe in it. Perhaps it will also work if you can't sing loudly - try
speaking loudly. Speak loudly as a character like Gaston from Beauty
and the Beast.
- You can warm up some to blow off phlegm that might be on your
vocal chords, but if you run into notes that feel / sound like a violin
bow pulling way too hard on the strings, you are aggravating the tissues
and more phlegm will soon come. The only option is to rest and drink
slightly warm water.
- Singing and speaking should have the same sensation in the throat - if there is tension, you're doing something unnatural.
Focusing issues again because I wanted visual on my hands.
Pro Tip: to really minimize the chance for error, you just have to choreograph and rehearse every "shift" and every right hand pattern. What does this mean? I've been navigating classical guitar pieces for years just more or less spontaneously hitting more clean notes than rough ones, but what do the pros do? I theorize that they really conciously execute every left hand shift with thoroughly rehearsed movements - and unsual right hand patterns are identified and really practiced ad nauseam. We'll come back to all this another time.
I'm a pretty big Billy Joel fan but have never tried to learn one of his
songs. You seem like a real nice guy, but Jesus man give me a break
here!
3 hard parts about singing are: long notes, high notes, quiet notes
because they all take a certain kind of physical preparation and
"placement" of the note that has to be just right else you go flat
or strain the tone which doesn't sound good. And this song has all
three happening at the same time in the chorus. Plus the melody is real
relentless. And although the melody has a slowish to moderate tempo, the
pulse of the harmony is quite frequent which runs you the risk of rushing.
In other words, its wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it'd be. Its pretty
remarkable how he sounds so relaxed in the recording despite all these
challenges he made for himself. Good job Billy.