Garth Greenwell on escape, and finding himself...
October 18, 2017 2:15 PM Subscribe
This is really good. I am not—and never will be—an opera singer, but my personal goal this year was to record myself singing a song a day, just to see where it would get me. Life has intervened, and I'm falling far short of that, but I've still built my lung power, improved my pitch, generally increased my vocal performance, and gotten in better shape as a result. I also began writing words to original songs, which has been rad when I've had time for it. Women who don't look like the leading lady aren't often encouraged to pursue singing for fun or profit or envision themselves as a lead in a band—in fact, a high-school acquaintance born on the same day does look the part of the leading lady and did become an opera singer, so perhaps I feel that all the more acutely as a result. But it felt empowering to just decide I'm worthy of singing so other people can hear it and quit judging myself preemptively. I should give props to a friend who proved a very good listener to my early efforts this year, because that significantly helped me just get started.
That feeling of your voice changing, and changing with it as your technique improves, is real and lovely. I love the way Greenwell found a path to value who he really was through this, to bolster and channel his own natural expressiveness, then to take that back to his writing as well. I've also been dealing with some weird hormone changes and life stuff, and singing has actually given me both a really good gauge for what's going on and a way to own it. My range has deepened somewhat even over the course of this year—I can sing Anthony Kiedis' vocal range in almost its entirety right now, or the whole range on a song like Radiohead's "Creep"—and I can tell, week to week, how what I'm doing in terms of exercise or practice makes a difference. It's definitely a full-body thing. It reminds me of a video that made me really happy earlier this year, trans singer Charlie Peck's duet with himself, with the higher part recorded at the very beginning of his transition.
This week, of course, I'm sick, for like the fourth time in as many months, and I'm off my game. I also owe a collaborator a MeFi Music post, which I hope to get up soon. But yeah, I loved this account.
posted by limeonaire at 4:34 PM on October 18, 2017 [6 favorites]
That feeling of your voice changing, and changing with it as your technique improves, is real and lovely. I love the way Greenwell found a path to value who he really was through this, to bolster and channel his own natural expressiveness, then to take that back to his writing as well. I've also been dealing with some weird hormone changes and life stuff, and singing has actually given me both a really good gauge for what's going on and a way to own it. My range has deepened somewhat even over the course of this year—I can sing Anthony Kiedis' vocal range in almost its entirety right now, or the whole range on a song like Radiohead's "Creep"—and I can tell, week to week, how what I'm doing in terms of exercise or practice makes a difference. It's definitely a full-body thing. It reminds me of a video that made me really happy earlier this year, trans singer Charlie Peck's duet with himself, with the higher part recorded at the very beginning of his transition.
This week, of course, I'm sick, for like the fourth time in as many months, and I'm off my game. I also owe a collaborator a MeFi Music post, which I hope to get up soon. But yeah, I loved this account.
posted by limeonaire at 4:34 PM on October 18, 2017 [6 favorites]
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posted by leslies at 3:04 PM on October 18, 2017