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One of my soprano students recently did the Solo/Ensemble Auditions and scored lower than we thought she would. Needless to say, she was very disappointed. Literally the week after she auditioned for one of the top music schools in the South, with the SAME song. The professors LOVED her voice. As they started asking questions about her choral and solo background, they asked how she did at the Solo competition. When she told them her score, they were shocked and obviously thought that judge graded her incorrectly.
This little (and true) story illustrates how subjective auditions are. No matter how well you sing, sometimes that one judge will not like you. This does not mean you sang poorly. It simply means that person's musical tastes did not mesh with you voice, and on any other given day, another judge may LOVE your voice. The conclusion: Take negative results lightly...life happens. Sometimes, you just get the wrong set of ears. Keep singing and find the people who LOVE your voice and want you to go far. DWS I will be posting results from the Region Solo Competition solo soon, but I thought I would let some of the judges speak about how my students sang last weekend with some VERY nice quotes.
"Beautiful performance...so expressive...love all the dynamics you added" "A superior musical performance...excellent tone quality...fantastic diction" "WOW, what a great voice...Sing in college!" "Tone is Superior...what excellent technique...so very musical in every element...such a great future!" "Excellent vowels....Nice diction" I have more but I don't want to brag too much. Congratulations to everyone for a job well done! DWS The sad fact is that auditions are a very, VERY subjective experience. No matter how well you sing and present yourself, so many factors remain out of control. The key to successful auditioning, as in life, is your attitude and how you approach both the good and the bad.
After an audition, try not to criticize yourself immediately. Go out and have a cup of coffee, read a book etc...Try to give yourself 24 hours to process the audition and gain some distance from the event. After those 24 hours, sit down and evaluate yourself. How did you feel it went? Try to list both positives and negatives. Then set some goals for the next audition or practice session. For most professional jobs, you will not hear a response, positive or negative, for weeks or even months. The most important thing is to MOVE ON, and keep auditioning. Lingering over 'what could have been' prevents you from seeing opportunities in the future. As in life, you must 'roll with the punches' in auditions. Eventually, you will hit a home run. But you DO have to keep trying. DWS Just wanted to tell my high school students to break a leg tomorrow! Good luck with your solos!
DWS After reading my last post, I wanted to make sure that it is understood that polyps and nodules do not occur often. It takes REPEATED, HARMFUL ACTION, OVER A PERIOD OF TIME to the vocal folds for nodules and most polyps to appear. So yelling yourself hoarse at one hockey game, while not good for you, is very unlikely to create nodules!
Here are the basics about polyps and nodules: 1) Polyps form one at a time on one of the vocal folds. Nodules, on the other hand, form two at a time, one on each of the vocal folds. 2) Nodules almost exclusively form with women. Polyps, on the other hand, occur for men and women. 3) Polyps usually form AFTER a vocal hemorrhage, when a blood vessel ruptures in the vocal folds. Using cameras, we can see polyps are extremely large and they greatly inhibit singing, almost always requiring surgery to remove. Fortunately, they usually occur on the top layer of the folds, and therefore can be removed without harming the voice. THIS IS GOOD NEWS FOR ADELE, HOPEFULLY! 4) Nodules, on the other hand, tend to be small and can be unnoticed through most of the voice. You can still sing with nodules, but a good voice teacher will notice that certain activities, such as singing high notes or inability to sing staccato, will occur. Nodules do not always require surgery; they can go away with better vocal technique and consult with a vocal therapist. Those are the basics. There are other types of abnormal growths on the vocal folds, but they occur less often and singers rarely worry about them. Fortunately, good technique and smart use of your instrument can reduce most of the risks. Have you noticed I love talking about the medical background of the voice? Go figure - my dad is a chiropractor! DWS PS Most of this information comes from an excellent vocal resource by Scott McCoy, Your Voice: An Inside View. If you have been reading entertainment news, you may know that the pop singing sensation, Adele, has undergone vocal surgery. I thought I might explain, from a voice teaching perspective, how such a thing might have come to be.
Singing is a huge physical workout when it is engaged on a daily, professional basis. Singers like Adele, opera singers etc...spend hours singing, practicing, or using their voices in some way to further their career. And just like any athlete, singers can have vocal injuries if they subject their vocal folds to harmful use repeatedly over a period of time. While pop singing can be done in a very healthy manner, most pop singers have not undergone rigorous vocal training, often because they fear they will lose some individuality to their voice. This lack of training, combined with the tremendous physical demands of a concert tour, may result in the buildup of polyps or nodules on the vocal folds. From a health perspective, a polyp and nodule are two different phenomena. However, they both tend to have the same cause: excessive stress on the folds due to poor technique. These polyps/nodules are simply 'bumps' on the vocal folds that inhibit the folds from closing completely while singing, which often results in a breathy or raspy tone quality. Now, please let me clear: I LOVE Adele. She writes great music and sings with tremendous passion and insight. HOWEVER, she puts herself under extraordinary stress because of the constant touring and vocal mannerisms that have made her so popular. This probably caused one her polyps to hemorrhage, and resulted in her needing to completely stop singing and undergo laser surgery to remove the polyp from her vocal fold. Thankfully, it appears Adele will have a full recovery, but she is going to need to be very careful for the next few months. Here's hoping she gets the help she needs to prevent this from happening ever again. DWS Next blog: I will talk about WHY pop singers sometimes want polyps to develop, and ask some questions of my own. Last week, my wife and I got to visit "the happiest place on Earth," Walt Disney World in Florida. It was a lot of fun and I thought I would give you all an idea on the many live, theatrical performances at Disney.
Most of the live performances we saw were at Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. I must say I was EXTREMELY impressed with the singers at Animal Kingdom. The Lion King show, in particular, featured some great voices. The dancing and acrobatics were also wonderful...visit this show if at all possible. It was a little hard to tell with the Nemo show, as the music was geared toward young children, so the singers sang with very bright, no vibrato tones that kids tend to favor. However, the acting and puppetry were wonderful. At Hollywood Studios, results were mixed. The Little Mermaid show's Ariel sounded a bit tired and perhaps bored, but certainly she knew what she was doing. Unfortunately, Beauty and the Beast was disappointing. The girl singing Belle was not a strong singer: very nasal, and often wandered off-pitch. It is possible she was sick, but colds tend to reduce the vocal range and stamina. Intonation (matching pitch) and nasality can be worked through even when you are sick, unless the cold is REALLY rough. Gaston was a little better, but it was obvious he was hired because he looked the part...his singing and acting were average. DWS |
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