I'm an E!

Yes, I know this, now, and I am quite pleased. To know.

You know how some women obsess over their clothing size? I've always wanted to know what my natural range actually is. I've always suspected it was a 0, because I'm just that limited in my capabilities. >:) But now I know it's an E. Which is nearly a 0.

I did always suspect an E, come to think of it. (Same way I always suspected lavender and me went together.) Well, now I know, without a shadow of a doubt. Thank you, Tim. >:)

Tim had a recording assignment: kids' songs. Yes, I know you're thinking "it's about time!" Well, I really don't feel this silly singing voice is quite as useful as you may think it is, but considering my penchant for creating kids' entertainment (aherm -- "entertainment" is quite relative, I know), I was quite pleased to have the opportunity to record lasting music for children. Yay!

Well, it was just a demo, so we'll see if the (very particular) lady likes the sound. I learned a few good things about enunciating, making vocals for (little) kids extremely simple, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If they want my voice, it'll be fun to do the final recording and hear the final product. Of course, in this day and age, everything sounds much more "perfect" than reality, since you can alter and fix digitally, so although I know I'm not very good (yes, I can sing in the shower and living room, but recording is an entirely different thing, aherm -- and this is my very first shot at it; THANK GOD it's kids' songs, ahaha), hopefully the end product will be passable and not (to quote someone[s] -- if you know what it is, then you know what it is) "B grade voice". :)

I can't stand hearing my voice. Besides it not being all that pleasant, I can hear all the flaws. Gaaah!!! It's what you get when you have no training/experience and a not-so-particularly-spectacular instrument to work with, but we do what we can and we use what we've got, amen? :D

Well, if nothing else, it was a good experience. I learned a lot of very useful things...

-For songs for small children, keep the notes and words short, instead of drawn out
-Enunciate! Again, for small kids: the "t" in "heart" needs to be heard; this is actually quite difficult to do -- sing the following line, which I just tenderly made up, to the tune of "London Bridge is Falling Down": If you want to find a frog, find a frog, find a frog, find a frog to be a prince, put a monkey in your heart; did you say "heart" with the kind of "t" that to a non-English speaker might make "heart" sound like "hard"? now do it with a hard "t" at the end, and yet, without making it sound too much like a cymbal... gaaah! exactly
-According to Tim, if you remove one side of the headphones so you can hear yourself, it looks much better to put it behind your ear, instead of in front, ahahaha; that sure made me laugh and I complied and felt much more stylish...

Okay, well, I started writing all that last week, when I went down for the recording, which turned out to be recording a demo. So today I went down, mid-work-day (ugh! but it all worked out in the end, as their connection is suuuper fast and I managed to get in an hour of work, yay!), for the real/final recording.

Boy, do I have things to learn. I've always known I'm not a spectacular singer. I can be weird, yes. I can even pull out one or two melodic notes. I can harmonize pretty solidly. But I am NOT a singer. I'm not skilled. I'm not trained. I've always wanted to be all of those. In fact, as a child, I wanted to be an opera singer. And a ballerina. It was a real toss-up between the two. Should've been/done both. Sad fact of the matter is I never told my mom about either, so I just dreamed and pined away about it all in my private Pisces world and nothing ever came of it. Of course. Let that be a lesson to all you piners! Make something of it! Now! While you still can.

Well, here I am, becoming a singer. This bodes well for my presumably-upcoming-next career as a ballerina, ahahaha.

It's actually quite disturbing to be getting into singing at 32. Nearly as disturbing as it would be to get into ballet, fresh, for the first time, at 32. Only, not quite as disturbing as the latter. :D

So, I have 0 training and 0 control. I've always known this. I guess I could've self-taught and improved, I just haven't had the immediate know-how and resources, which makes me immediately lazy and unproductive. Unless there's a need. Really good at identifying the problems. Really bad at fixing them. That's me. :)

Now there's a need. I know I need to learn and improve. Especially if there will be other opportunities.

And when you prepare for opportunities, the opportunities do happen to happen.

At least, that's the way things have been working recently.

The weird thing is... when this whole Offensive thing started, I started to get this sneaky feeling/suspicion that something would begin to happen with the creative side of my personality. I've mastered the sitting-at-the-desk side, haha. I never suspected I'd do anything else. But it's coming. In small, rolling waves. Won't go anywhere major, to be sure, but it's pretty fun and exciting to use other personal "resources". Know what I mean? You don't? You need to do it! I think it was even in a GN somewhere, way back when this thing all began... that the Lord would ask some of us to use talents we have that we've never used before... or something like that?

Anyway, I don't consider any of this "talent" and after today's session, I'm pretty convinced it's not. Maybe it's average ability that could come about after a lot of hard work, haha. But I learned a lot.

-Children's music is non-slidey/slurry/expressive; it's very set and you don't slide between the words and the notes with your voice; that takes a lot of control; I don't have a control; I need control, to be able to hit just the one note with each change; ugh; will work on
-On the other hand, music for children needs to sound happy and I have a deeper voice that does not naturally sound squeaky-happy, which means my "happy" enunciation STILL doesn't sound happy and then when I try to make it sound happy, I make the graph spike up to a pop, which means having to re-do it, back away from the microphone even further, which results in sounding like I'm further away (duh)... microphone way too sensitive... etc., etc... oh, for the good ol' Taco Cabana busking environment, ahahaha
-But the fun part was the harmonies! we got mildly creative, all thanks to Tim's ideas and I guess they're easy for me to pick out and replicate; it's sheer beauty seeing that put together to sound harmonic! a melody, a high and a low, all with your own piddly little voice; I've always wanted to tinker with that and put it all together! maybe this is showing me I have more of an ear for hearing what's wrong, rather than actually making the music myself, haha; I've noticed a lot of musicians are like that, in my estimation: they don't sound all that perfect to me, but they sure are good at telling everybody else how imperfect they are, ehe; well, he was doing all this stuff digitally and I got what was going on and it was pretty fun to get in there and observe
-I've discovered that I can't hear the 3rd beat; my rhythm is tolerably good for the 2 and 4, but I can't, for the life of me!, hear the difference and entry of the 3rd; well, we discovered that last week, much to Tim's dismay, when he wanted me to do an airy, disco "aaah" at a certain part; I couldn't get where to come in on the non-2-4! I was so disgusted with myself; I mean, if I had studied music, I'm sure some of these things would come more naturally/knowledgeably; anyway, I kept trying and trying and drove him crazy (more the continuing to sing to myself than anything); I gave it up; then today, although he said we wouldn't do it, when that part came up and we were counting out the beats, after giving it a try in my head, then sortta out loud a couple times, it worked! this old dog CAN be taught! I still can't tell you what or where that beat is, but I found the place for this one sound for that one song! we capitalized on that "aaah" and put in a couple harmonies and it sounds swell; THAT was fun
-Way all over the place with the notes, not hitting them solidly: partly unsure of self, largely not being able to hear self well enough; mostly lack of training; I could tell you everywhere I was off before seeing proof of it, then the computer and its pretty little graphs confirmed it; of course, this is quite normal, apparently -- even I've noticed some guys' voices sound PARTICULARLY off in real life and then they go and fix them moderately okay; so we did a bit of fixing and I heard all about what kind of fixing "real" singers undergo, even with their live and supposedly non-lip-synced productions

Alrighty, well, enough of that... as you can see, it was quite fun and interesting and exciting for me! And if there will be other opportunities, all I want to say and affirm to myself and all y'all is that I will study and be a better and more skilled metal worker the next time around, that I may shine more brightly and firmament-ly than the stars forever and ever for two seconds in a song. Amen.

Sort of like that time I decided to join in on the marathon relay and really got into pushing myself for a whole month in advance... and here I sit, with only mild pushings of runnings on a regular basis, because there is no marathon relay in sight...

All of this yields valuable insight into the questionable personality.

And now...

Must find bed.

To sleep.