There is an expression in Spanish with which many are familiar that translates closely to “I’m sorry.” We English speakers say “I’m sorry” so much (especially those of us in customer service) that I wonder if we’re becoming desensitized to its meaning. Think about it… I have sorrow… I feel miserable and downtrodden, sad that you have so much pain. The commiserating expression in Spanish, however, translates as “I feel it.” We don’t say in Spanish, “this is the condition that I’m in,” we say, “I actively feel the hurt that you feel.”
Schoolchildren are taught that humans have five basic senses, which, if one recalls the wave/particle theory of light, all have to do with physical contact… smell particles, light particles, taste particles, sound waves, and texture.
Through my work in choral music, I am discovering how much I know that I didn’t realize, knowledge that came to me gradually through my commitment to attending my classes and participating in choir, and, thus, being part of quality sound. I learned these things without always thinking about them, but I learned what they felt like. I hold a degree in formal music education, but I believe that that omnipresent teacher, experience, teaches all of us, often imperceptibly. There are things that we know without anyone having to tell us which we don’t discover that we know until we’re questioned about them. Largely as a result of my belief that we often know things without ever being told in words, I had an epiphany recently.
I attend karaoke nights at local cantinas regularly, and I, as my returning readers will know, am seeking out ways to bring more people into the Barbershop Harmony Society, a prominent singing organization. Since I feel that people have a sense for realities without always being cognizant of their awareness, I now present to you two statements that one often hears when encouraging others to sing. The first, that I hear at karaoke nights: “Maybe if I get really drunk.” The second: “I only sing in the shower.” For a time, I felt that I was hitting road blocks every time that I heard these statements, but then, about two weeks ago, my aforementioned epiphany graced me with its presence.
In etymology, we learn that, if a word doesn’t make sense to us, we often can trace its origin back to the physical world. For example, while tutoring this past school year, I learned that the word “auspices” comes from two Latin words meaning “bird” and “to look.” “Auspices” has taken on a metaphorical meaning, “under the protection of,” and, if we think about what people might look at birds for, remembering that members of our species have long observed that certain animals seem to have senses to know when dangerous things are coming, a "bird-looking" was a method of trying to divine the future. University professors might get a little more egotistical if they realized that their university thought that they could predict the future.
In my struggles to overcome people’s reluctance to sing, my reflections turned me, too, to the physical world. Combining my physical-world-has-many-answers mentality and my belief that folks know things even if they don’t know how to express them, I asked myself the simple question, “What do people know about their body that tells them that they’d sound good only in those two states, liquored-up and in the shower?” The answer, as it often does when questions with functional brevity are asked, arrived swiftly like the proverbial “thump on the head.”
We take the epiphany for both venues, first bar singing, then shower singing.
For bar singing, yes, of course, there’s the liquid courage, but where does liquid courage come from? Alcohol is a depressant, relaxing muscles and saddening our mood. When our mood is saddened, and we’re pushing ourselves toward a deathlike feeling, we do things that make us feel alive, that bring out our senses. Since singing is a powerful and personal form of expression, I submit to you that drunk singing is a body’s way of saying, “ I’ve gotta get this out before I die, so that someone, somewhere, will know at least a little bit about what it was like to be me.” Emotional release is part of it, but, as a semi-pro vocal musician, I lucidly understand the importance of relaxation in good singing. Tension in the throat and jaw severely limits free production of sound. In other words, what drunk singers know is that they do sound better when they’re drunk because their voice is freer! But, before any reader goes rushing off to take shots before a concert, remember that, while alcohol relaxes muscles, it also dehydrates. In cave –man speak, dehydration bad. Massaging of the jaw, face, temples, and throat is a much more preferable way to gain the necessary relaxation for quality sound.
As for shower singing, similar to bar singing, there are two aspects (a-“spect”. There’s that Latin root of “to look” again!). The first is audibility while the second is the steam factor.
If an individual has been listening to music all his/her life, said individual is accustomed to hearing pitches. So, if we sing, at least to ourselves, we’re accustomed to trying to match the pitches we hear with the pitches which we produce. The smooth walls of a bathroom provide us with the constant feedback to ensure that the pitches that we expect to hear in songs are the pitches that are coming out of our mouths. Until a singer becomes truly advanced, knowing what different pitches feel like, it’s of paramount importance to hear the sounds that are coming out, to hear what our voice sounds like. In vocal training, singers are often instructed to record their voice and listen to it. The goal is to start to hear the difference that using technique can make. Singing in the shower gives the un-trained singer a ready-made way to accomplish this goal. As to the steam factor, this one provides a practical physical aide to improve vocal quality. The un-trained singer spends little time thinking about the environmental factors which negatively affect the voice; air conditioning, stress, soda (and alcohol), recreational drugs, milk, and lack of exercise (especially the aerobic variety) can all negatively impact a singer’s sound. The steam from showers helps negate these effects and facilitate a positive singing environment; the warmth of steam relaxes the singer, the humidity moistens the vocal mechanisms, and sweat rids the body of toxins (not to mention the pleasant, constant sound of falling water which can relax the mind and provide a steady rhythm). The un-trained singer may not realize that he/she is taking advantage of good instincts, but like the bar singer, it is highly probably that the shower singer does sing much better in the venues of porcelain and pewter.
All this established, for leaders of vocal groups, I suggest the following hypothesis:
If we draw attention to what un-trained singers know intuitively, perhaps we can succeed in encouraging them to control their environmental factors and, perhaps, lead them to our joyful form of self-expression.
Let’s get the whole world singing.
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