witches, bitches and britches!
so it turns out that i am not, in fact, tone-deaf and unable to sing properly in a chorus, it's just that i'm apparently the only contralto in the whole freshman class and i can't figure out what i'm supposed to sound like, because of that, and the sopranos were pushing me too high. it's easier for me to just stand over with the dudes and try to be a tenor, although our chorus tutor would prefer that i try and push myself up into another octave. boo on the sopranos, i say.
posted by anne @ 8:24 PM
22 Comments:
Baritone here. It is so much easier to drop down. Lucky for me the Annapolis chorus was one big crowd. After falsetto-ing with the tenors for a few weeks, I slipped into the bass section, never to return.
see, here in Fe they have this new-fangled two-year-long choral/tutorial hybrid thingie. we are their test class. it's a very good way of learning music, though we only get to sing together twice, and even then only half the class at a time. that's rather a shame.
(I also remember a few ladies singing tenor in a cluster close to the guys. Pity that, IIRC, you're stuck with a smaller group for chorus.)
::crossposted::
Huh. I remember sectionals being the primary singing venue in Santa Fe, but this hybrid thing sounds weird and sketchy. SJC tends to suck at innovation. But my time in Santa Fe was fleeting, just a year, so probably I'm remembering Annapolis tendencies.
they're dividing the freshman class in half, and further dividing each half into fourths. there are only fifteen or so in my tutorial, and even when we combine with the other tutorial, which meets at the same time, there aren't really enough of us to sound good, and we never do get to sing as a class. the half of us taking music this semester will get to sing together once.
it sucks for actually singing, but instead of doing that, we're spending lots of time discussing and analysing music, which is pretty cool. all the kids with previous singing experience are kind of bitter, though.
So it sounds like they're doing basically what we did in Sophomore Music in Annapolis, where long music every week was half devoted to singing with the class next door.
Are you really the only alto? In Annapolis every year in both Freshman and Sophomore music we always had 40 altos and 10 sopranos.
Singing with the tenors is definitely the easiest way out. Little risk, little reward.
I always complained about being a first tenor... the second tenors' parts were always a little bit lower and definitely easier. Finally it was pointed out to me that this was because they are lame. An essential part of becoming better at singing is extending your range.
Anyway, the hybrid sounds good to me, actually. As someone who had singing experience coming into St. John's, the big-ass Freshman Chorus wasn't all that exciting.
Yeah, see my experience corroborates Liz's. I remember being lumped with the sopranos because I was able to go higher, even though I had done alto (and sometimes tenor) all throughout high school. There were very few sopranos. I think people didn't want to sing and felt that they could be less noticeable in the alto section, and put less effort in by sort of droning and slipping by unnoticed. I'm really sorry to hear that you don't get to sing as a huge group. That was my favorite thing about St. John's that year. I just loved being in McDowell and being surrounded by voices.
I loved Freshman Chorus. I love singing with big groups, and only partly because I rely on big groups to keep me in tune. I think there's something really magical about the feeling of a lot of voices joining together, almost spiritual in fact.
The analyzing music during sophomore year was fun, too, but in a different way. I hope their experiment works, but really, I think you lose something by not singing as a huge group.
dude, EVERYONE IS A SOPRANO. it sucks. our class has an extremely skewed male:female ratio, something on the order of 8:5. when we combine classes to sing, there are maybe ten women in all, and there are only two of us who aren't sopranos. i think they just want to try and lighten the overall sound, since all the deeper voices drown them out.
the sopranos all really aggressively identify as sopranos, too, as they all seem to have done chorus in highschool. (seriously, about half of them have sweatshirts with "SOPRANO!" emblazoned down the sleeves.)
i'd like to work on extending my range, but i just don't like the way i feel or sound when i try to move up. my voice feels richer and smoother when i try to extend it downward, and shrill and jagged when i try to go up. it is possible that my allergies have something to do with this; it's hard to hit the higher notes when you're full of phlegm.
we don't even move past gregorian chant this year, so i am hoping that in sophomore year we will have big-group-singing time, once we get to larger choral pieces. that seems to be the eventual goal: work on understanding the music in tutorials first, and then actually sing it.
So I don't completely understand the new music concept in Santa Fe. You said "people who have music this semester". Does that mean that Freshmen have just 1 semester of music? Is that paired up with something else second semester? Do Sophomores have a full year of music?
When I was at SJC, they were lacking in altos in both the music tutorial classes (as a student and an assistant) and in chorus. The only reason I did tenor in chorus (well, one of the main reasons, at least) was because there were only like 5 of them.
it's a half-year tutorial for freshmen, and a full year for sophomores. half of us have an extra class, music, for fall. the other half of us will have an extra class in spring. nothing fills the gap, though.
those who are sophomores this year will just have one year of sophomore music. after our sophomore year, our class will have had 1.5 years. i'm not sure how much the content of sophomore music will alter, but it will still be a full year, i believe. unless they decide to change it again, of course.
My freshman chorus seemed to be crawling with altos and basses. There were (I swear) somewhere around 10 sopranos, and that included girls who probably weren't actually sopranos but wished they were.
I don't really like it when girls sing tenor in a group and mixed setting, or when boys sing with the altos. The timber of the voice is just so different it distracts me
I had the same experience as Tori. There were maybe 15-20 sopranos, and the rest of the women were altos. Same proportions on the base side. There was a women who sang tenor, but I can't remember her name now. Mirabai, does this match your rememberance?
Your memory matches my memory of your freshman chorus perfectly, Neil. I ran the soprano sectional for your class and tutored your classmates in passing their quizzes. Wasn't Penelope Wade singing tenor?
Penelope was in my class.
And yeah, she sang tenor. With me. The baritone. Oh God The Solo I Sang With Jason Was So Awful.
I think the trick to being a woman and singing tenor is to sing loud enough to help the part, but not loud enough for your voice to be distinguishable from the men.
Really, anyone singing in a group setting should follow that trick.
I have my years all screwed up. You're all younger than me, that's all I can remember. I do remember a woman singing tenor in your class, and I just can't grab who it was.
I can see her face, but I can't remember her name. Its going to drive me crazy.
Could her name have been Kate, maybe? She had long dark hair, I think. It wasn't the Kate that was in my core group, but perhaps another Kate? Anyway, I know who you mean.
Yes! Kate something! She had such a deep, sulty voice, too. Very sexy. For a woman, anyway.
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