Like many people I know, I never really had to try at anything growing up, and so I never learned to try. I never had to learn how to ‘study’ because I always aced tests regardless, and honestly I still haven’t figured it out. College was a lot more challenging, and when faced with that I basically gave up on learning and just half-heartedly tried to survive.
So these aren’t novel ideas, just reflections on deliberate learning from someone who has never really had to do it before.
Story
In my first week of college, I tried out for a bunch of a cappella groups. I’d always had a good raw singing voice but had very little training – I’d taken a handful of private voice lessons, but I’d never sung in a choir or anything. Even during the auditions I could tell that I wasn’t going to pass. I especially struggled with matching a series of pitches played on the piano. It was so obvious to me that I wouldn’t get any callbacks (and I was right) that I scheduled a hangout with a friend during callbacks.
Despite not getting into any groups, I stayed close to the a cappella scene and latched on really tightly to one group in particular. They even let me sing with them sometimes in casual social settings, and I learned so much just from observing them, their processes, and the things they focused on when learning and giving each other feedback. That – my first year of college – was when I really started getting serious about deliberately improving my singing. The summer after first year I took three months of voice lessons (which still wasn’t enough for me to pass a cappella auditions) and bought myself a Blue Yeti.
Throughout college I recorded songs on my computer, started to learn harmony parts by ear, and invented harmonies to sing with myself. When I listened to music I would improvise harmonies over it, and honestly, most of them were terrible for about the first five years; it’s only in the past two years that I’ve gotten a good enough hit rate on harmonies to do this aloud when other people are around. I also learned some hard bits from Hamilton just by repeating them hundreds of times in the shower and while walking around campus (e.g. Eliza’s runs in Helpless, and the 123456789 sequence from Ten Duel Commandments). By the end of college my solo voice had improved a lot but I still had a lot of technical issues that I knew I needed to work on.
After college I joined the Bayesian Choir, which is a pretty good environment for skill building because the rehearsal structure is that every week you have three hours to learn a new song from scratch and then record it at the end. At my first rehearsal I was one of only two altos who showed up, and luckily the other one was a lot more experienced because I was absolutely and completely lost. I could only sight-sing insofar as I could tell whether we should be moving up or down. A year later, I was confident enough to sometimes lead the alto (or tenor) sectional. The next year I went to a jazz camp where I ‘majored in’ singing, which supplemented my more structured choir experience with a healthy dose of improvisation and fun.
Three years after college graduation I music-directed my house’s production of Hamilton, which involved things like coming up with vocal exercises to help my ‘cast’ with specific problems, teaching people to harmonize for the first time, and a small amount of arranging. I think I understand music a lot better now.
Uh oh
But here’s the part that I hadn’t really encountered before: I’ve now reached a point where I’ve corrected the obvious problems and can easily sound good in most situations. But now I’m trying to do harder things like learning Beyoncé runs, singing entire a cappella arrangements with just myself, and ‘finding my voice’ (rather than just emulating the style of the original of what I’m singing).… and I now feel like I’m a terrible singer and can never get better.
My friend from college gave me a vocal exercise (intended for my Hamilton cast) that requires quick precision on weird intervals, and while I can do it if I focus, it highlights to me how large a gap there still is between me and her. Why do I lean on vocal scoops so much, especially when switching registers? It can be a stylistic choice, but I’m doing it inadvertently and that’s just sloppy. Wasn’t my range bigger in the past? Will I ever sound genuinely good in the soprano range? I still struggle with rhythm and that probably means that I will always-for-the-rest-of-my-life struggle with rhythm. I could definitely still do with better breath support but I’m too lazy to train it, and it feels like I will never get the hang of that Beyoncé run.
I’m pretty sure there are books about this (like Robert Greene’s Mastery and Seth Godin’s The Dip)that I just haven’t gotten around to reading. I just feel more down on myself about singing than I’m used to (even though I still believe that I’m good at it and I still have projects I’m excited about). I think the more I know about singing, the more obvious the differences between good and bad singing are to me, and the more obvious it is how far I am from being Beyoncé.
I think the bad news is that yup you are now in the valley of Good Taste and Medium Skill and if you’re trying to run the “minimize feel bad about not being able to do everything”, alas, that’ll be awhile.
But, good news is I think the set of things you’re currently talking about are indeed achievable. It may take a few years though, depending on how hardcore you’re optimizing your life for this specifically.
(FYI, 10 years ago I formed the goal of “be able to improvise musicals and get people to sing with me whenever I go in the world”, and… discovered it was impossibly hard. And then last year I noticed I… almost could do it, well enough that when I listen to an episode of Off Book I can see the gears of what choices they’re making and why)
Thoughts on skill-building
Background
Like many people I know, I never really had to try at anything growing up, and so I never learned to try. I never had to learn how to ‘study’ because I always aced tests regardless, and honestly I still haven’t figured it out. College was a lot more challenging, and when faced with that I basically gave up on learning and just half-heartedly tried to survive.
So these aren’t novel ideas, just reflections on deliberate learning from someone who has never really had to do it before.
Story
In my first week of college, I tried out for a bunch of a cappella groups. I’d always had a good raw singing voice but had very little training – I’d taken a handful of private voice lessons, but I’d never sung in a choir or anything. Even during the auditions I could tell that I wasn’t going to pass. I especially struggled with matching a series of pitches played on the piano. It was so obvious to me that I wouldn’t get any callbacks (and I was right) that I scheduled a hangout with a friend during callbacks.
Despite not getting into any groups, I stayed close to the a cappella scene and latched on really tightly to one group in particular. They even let me sing with them sometimes in casual social settings, and I learned so much just from observing them, their processes, and the things they focused on when learning and giving each other feedback. That – my first year of college – was when I really started getting serious about deliberately improving my singing. The summer after first year I took three months of voice lessons (which still wasn’t enough for me to pass a cappella auditions) and bought myself a Blue Yeti.
Throughout college I recorded songs on my computer, started to learn harmony parts by ear, and invented harmonies to sing with myself. When I listened to music I would improvise harmonies over it, and honestly, most of them were terrible for about the first five years; it’s only in the past two years that I’ve gotten a good enough hit rate on harmonies to do this aloud when other people are around. I also learned some hard bits from Hamilton just by repeating them hundreds of times in the shower and while walking around campus (e.g. Eliza’s runs in Helpless, and the 123456789 sequence from Ten Duel Commandments). By the end of college my solo voice had improved a lot but I still had a lot of technical issues that I knew I needed to work on.
After college I joined the Bayesian Choir, which is a pretty good environment for skill building because the rehearsal structure is that every week you have three hours to learn a new song from scratch and then record it at the end. At my first rehearsal I was one of only two altos who showed up, and luckily the other one was a lot more experienced because I was absolutely and completely lost. I could only sight-sing insofar as I could tell whether we should be moving up or down. A year later, I was confident enough to sometimes lead the alto (or tenor) sectional. The next year I went to a jazz camp where I ‘majored in’ singing, which supplemented my more structured choir experience with a healthy dose of improvisation and fun.
Three years after college graduation I music-directed my house’s production of Hamilton, which involved things like coming up with vocal exercises to help my ‘cast’ with specific problems, teaching people to harmonize for the first time, and a small amount of arranging. I think I understand music a lot better now.
Uh oh
But here’s the part that I hadn’t really encountered before: I’ve now reached a point where I’ve corrected the obvious problems and can easily sound good in most situations. But now I’m trying to do harder things like learning Beyoncé runs, singing entire a cappella arrangements with just myself, and ‘finding my voice’ (rather than just emulating the style of the original of what I’m singing).… and I now feel like I’m a terrible singer and can never get better.
My friend from college gave me a vocal exercise (intended for my Hamilton cast) that requires quick precision on weird intervals, and while I can do it if I focus, it highlights to me how large a gap there still is between me and her. Why do I lean on vocal scoops so much, especially when switching registers? It can be a stylistic choice, but I’m doing it inadvertently and that’s just sloppy. Wasn’t my range bigger in the past? Will I ever sound genuinely good in the soprano range? I still struggle with rhythm and that probably means that I will always-for-the-rest-of-my-life struggle with rhythm. I could definitely still do with better breath support but I’m too lazy to train it, and it feels like I will never get the hang of that Beyoncé run.
I’m pretty sure there are books about this (like Robert Greene’s Mastery and Seth Godin’s The Dip) that I just haven’t gotten around to reading. I just feel more down on myself about singing than I’m used to (even though I still believe that I’m good at it and I still have projects I’m excited about). I think the more I know about singing, the more obvious the differences between good and bad singing are to me, and the more obvious it is how far I am from being Beyoncé.
<3
I think the bad news is that yup you are now in the valley of Good Taste and Medium Skill and if you’re trying to run the “minimize feel bad about not being able to do everything”, alas, that’ll be awhile.
But, good news is I think the set of things you’re currently talking about are indeed achievable. It may take a few years though, depending on how hardcore you’re optimizing your life for this specifically.
(FYI, 10 years ago I formed the goal of “be able to improvise musicals and get people to sing with me whenever I go in the world”, and… discovered it was impossibly hard. And then last year I noticed I… almost could do it, well enough that when I listen to an episode of Off Book I can see the gears of what choices they’re making and why)