Monday, August 29, 2011

Recovering my (singing) voice

I prefer to get my blog posts to post by 8:00 in the morning. This morning it didn't happen. Friday morning it didn't happen. Friday's issue was a technical one. I scheduled the post the day before, but I forgot to hit the publish button, so all blogger knew was that I had started a draft. It was the reverse of my usual mistake. Over the weekend I simply forgot all about the need to prepare something to post.

Since I don't have anything else prepared, I'll tell you that Michael and I have come up with a plan to embark on my musical re-education. The plan? Study Ella Fitzgerald every day. This will involve picking out recordings of three different types of jazz tunes, a ballad, an up-tempo song with lots of scat, and something in between. I'll take the ballad form at first, listen to it carefully and regularly, and start learning to perform it the way that she does. It's a start. It hasn't started yet.

She's a good example for me I think, because her range, while impressive, isn't beyond my grasp. She isn't a soprano, and I have no worry that I might not be able to go as low as she can, though it will take some practice to get a full and rich tone. At the same time, she was a master of her instrument. I think the last time I described her voice I compared it to a wind instrument, an oboe maybe. The voice in fact is a wind instrument. If I can stick with it, it will be a beginning toward recovering my singing voice.

This probably isn't one of the ones I'll be studying, but it is one of my favorites of hers:



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