The Finite

*sigh* work just has a way of pulling the rug out from under you, doesn’t it? I was a couple weeks into voice lessons when my work schedule was flipped upside down. Pharmacy Manager left so I was handed all his shifts which were like 44 hrs a week minimum. At one point in August, I worked 51 hours in 7 days or something crazy. Short on techs (as per usual), but let me tell you, that team is GOOD. Those guys have always had my back and I busted my ass to have theirs.

I say past tense because I no longer work for the original company that hired me. Drew* spurred me to fire off an application into the blue and I was apparently highly recommended by a tech from Company one that had moved onto company two because that’s probably what any self-respecting person does.

So a fresh start, right? I go from badass verifier who can play the computer keyboard like a piano (I actually have to pause to wait for the GUI to catch up with me.) to dumb puppy who doesn’t know how to do basic stuff much less do it fast. It doesn’t help that the new system is written in Java. *shudder*

Slow slow slowly. I’ll get back up to that point again. Eventually.

*I forgot to mention Drew til now, didn’t I?

Okay, so I learned I’m a baritone. And that I’m not tone deaf. Am I an preternaturally talented, just undiscovered?

NOPE.

I tell people I’m “karaoke-trained” because I am. As opposed to classically trained. So I’m more Monkey hear, monkey sing. All those long car rides and a 50-song long Spotify playlist of songs I sorta know the words to. Lots of practice.

So when a music teacher friend started playing “Let It Go” on the piano in the normal key, I was able to hit the right notes. But when he dropped it an octave to compensate for my singing it an octave below where Idina Menzel sings it, I got lost because the chords became unfamiliar. Thus are the consequences of karaoke training. Being guided by the already recorded vocals, being subject to the inbuilt cues of the original song as opposed to knowing beats and timing, and not being able to hear when one is off-key, because you may end up harmonizing/being drowned out by the actual vocal track.

Where do I go from here? Well, I’m not gonna give it up. I’m told the best way to get better is to record myself singing and listen to it over and over. Which I’ve done a little bit. And my pitch accuracy improves once I sing acapella without any backing music. But then I run into problems with timing and tempo. That’s where I need that refresher on the fundamentals of music. All those years of piano and what stuck? Not enough. I’m not tone deaf but I can’t do that thing where you identify a note just from hearing it. Whatever that’s called. I dunno. I really would like to take a music theory class. Just to pick up all these terms.

Apparently there’s a term for that point where I have to “jump” from my normal speaking range into a falsetto to hit high notes: the break. It’s annoying because I have to drop an octave to sing pop songs done by tenors. I recorded myself singing “Shut up and Dance”, listened to it, and immediately deleted it because I thought it sounded absolutely terrible sung an octave below the original.

Not everybody can sing every song. I know that. I for sure can’t sing a vast array of pop songs out there, because… I don’t know how to “cover” a song. Make it my own. Put my own spin on it. Maybe fundamentals of music will let me get there. My first voice lesson is Tuesday. My teacher’s name is Ryan.