I do think that she understands: Shylo lesson 1 report, 16/11, 1000-1100
Two weeks of frustrating delay. One other huge event tonight (even if it does involve merely pressing a button twelve times). And yet this is still undisputably one of the biggest moments of the academic year thus far for me. Finally, the first lesson with Shylo.


The long walk there took me past Avenue St Andrew's Church, location for a potentially even more influential event - the choral concert on December 8. It also took me past the former sites of football and cricket in the city; flats, inevitably, occupy each. This area is so clearly upmarket that one wonders why the Dell was ever here anyway. Eventual arrival at another block of flats, a rather smaller one of at most 15, and Shylo's in one of them.

Frustration with the intercom as I arrive. I later discover her intercom is not working. Ah. Useful thing to know now at least.

Warm-ups were perhaps a little less comprehensive and a little slower than I would like, but I think this is adjusting to new exercises that Gemma did not do; things will change in future, I am positive about that. Only warmed up the range Bb2-Db4, which Shylo is now referring to as my 'basic range', interestingly. I have lower, and she hasn't got a clue how much lower; as for the other end... well there's where things really, really get interesting. But we'll come to that.

Four songs have been chosen for me. In ascending order of my excitement about them:

* Yesterday - as persistantly ubiquitous as one can imagine...
* Moon River - eh. Not quite sure here.
* Georgia On My Mind - can't judge the song, can approve of jazz being introduced to me.
* Iris - she didn't think I'd be familiar with this. Wrong! It's one of my 75 most played songs on this PC.

Given a free choice as to which to learn first, and with the suggestion it was 'something you're more familiar with', there was only ever one option. Iris it was.

At this point, we had a brief talk about the general rubbishness of pop music at present, and of certain cover versions - she'd forgotten that Iris was one of the best examples, and I think she had bad thoughts when I reminded her; she hadn't forgotten the 'dancified' version of another song from the same movie, Uninvited.

Then she played through the song off her laptop and asked me to sing along. And here comes the interesting bit. Gemma once pointed out how I used to inadvertently sing things in falsetto up an octave, mildly rebuked me for it, and then faching pigeonholed me. And I had a year of that.

Guess what? I missed the octave leap into the chorus (yes, it's more subtle than Schwartz's large intervals, but...) and inadvertently sung it an octave down. Oh, what have you done Gemma?

(In fairness, two extenuating factors.
1. Fresh from last night's karaoke were memories of an intermittently dreadful rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water - complete with Heresy backing track - and that's a song Gemma had me sing, but with a one-octave downward transposition, which these singers (and, I would presume, Heresy) threw in too. Rule 6 does apply here on a technicality, for these were female singers, and the song was written for male voices.
2. More pertinently; I had the music in front of me, written in the treble clef, could see it soar up to an A and mildly paniced.)

About a minute after that, sung through the second chorus in falsetto, and a revelation that completely and utterly confirmed I made the right decision.

Shylo actually talked of falsetto as a usable part of my range, and indeed as something to strengthen first. Remember, the classical dichtomy has no place for that kind of thought, and as you well know, on this issue Gemma followed the classical dichtomy slavishly. Of course, it's not something to be overused (comment box, there), but something to be left unused it is not.

With that rabbit pulled out of the hat, and a suggestion that stretching the chest voice upwards would come next and would be time-consuming, came another. She agrees with EM et al, there is more potential for upward expansion of range than downward, quoting the latter at one or two semitones. (And when she hears the full extent of my lowest notes, she'll probably say that's as low as I'll ever go, and I shan't be arguing about that.)

And then another. Forget the rest of the arrangement - despite the fact she does have backing tracks - she's going to teach me this as a piano ballad. I swear she was reading my mind, I had the vaguest thoughts of that before, and this is not atypical of me.

As written - and as performed by the Dolls - the song is in D major, and a first runthrough (of the first verse and chorus) was done here, Shylo playing little more than the chord sequence (thus creating what she called a 'blank canvas', and I heartily approve). This necessitated singing the chorus in falsetto, which worked mildly well at the very least, and it's safe to assume this is the 'forgotten' part of my range and hence has more potential for improvement. A downward transposition was tried out... Shylo eventually settling on B major, down a minor third. Another runthrough there... aha, now we see what she's doing, and it's yet another rabbit out of the hat. Now the first two notes of the chorus as I'm singing them are B3, and the next one is F#4. There is only one register I can realistically sing either of those notes in, and it's not the same one... thus, I have to 'flip' between registers, and that was entirely what Shylo wanted me to try. Again, reasonably productive, and much to practice now in the next week.

(Besides which, the chest-voice upward expansion is something I'm effectively volunteering myself to do through my choral part-swapping, for I am deliberately choosing tenor parts if and only if they go no higher than E4, and I've yet to see one fail to go to Eb4 - which is also the highest note in the song I've written for the concert and am set to perform, and the highest note in Ghost of Corporate Future once transposed an octave, and hence a note I would very much like to be consistently usable; I'm not quite sure it is yet.)

Lots of things to think about. May consider transposing Iris to Bb (Shylo was about to, before settling on B). For a start, F4 is as high as it'll go in that key, and that makes singing it there in one register viable in the medium term. More pertinently (for otherwise, why not Ab, which would have the same effect now), I'm considering arranging this for piano and clarinet (hey, I need the arrangement practice), and Bb would be (obviously) the easiest key to write such an arrangement in.