Unexpected Exposure
16 November 2010 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI have tonight been asked, as an emergency measure, to perform the verses to various music-hall songs this Thursday as a solo while the group that was originally supposed to be singing them joins in on the choruses — on the grounds that none of them know the tunes to the verses properly (or at all), and can't learn them in the time available.
Which is a great compliment, of course, but I don't know the tunes to the verses of half of them myself — it's like national anthems; nobody ever does — and while I've sung most of them from the sheet music at one time or another, doing so unaccompanied and with nothing more than a lyrics sheet to guide me is another matter. Fortunately in my own case I am an extremely quick study, and can probably just about learn them all before Thursday: I had an hour or so's bash at it tonight, but found on subsequent experiment in the bath that I still had distinct lacunæ in most of them.
It does, however, dawn on me that I have never in my entire career sung solo in public: to the piano for my own entertainment in private, yes, innumerable times, and as a chorus performance in concert occasionally. But my one and only experience of playing in public in recent years was that my hands shook so much my vibrato went completely out of control: if I get nerves like that it's going to sabotage my voice completely..!
Which is a great compliment, of course, but I don't know the tunes to the verses of half of them myself — it's like national anthems; nobody ever does — and while I've sung most of them from the sheet music at one time or another, doing so unaccompanied and with nothing more than a lyrics sheet to guide me is another matter. Fortunately in my own case I am an extremely quick study, and can probably just about learn them all before Thursday: I had an hour or so's bash at it tonight, but found on subsequent experiment in the bath that I still had distinct lacunæ in most of them.
It does, however, dawn on me that I have never in my entire career sung solo in public: to the piano for my own entertainment in private, yes, innumerable times, and as a chorus performance in concert occasionally. But my one and only experience of playing in public in recent years was that my hands shook so much my vibrato went completely out of control: if I get nerves like that it's going to sabotage my voice completely..!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 02:15 am (UTC)I'd offer suggestions on managing the performance anxiety, but I'm one of those people who is fortunate not to suffer from it much. (Which is probably not what you needed to hear right now, sorry.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 09:22 am (UTC)In the event it went off pretty well. Fortunately stage fright turns out to affect my extremities and not my breath control: my knees wobbled, but my voice didn't! And the little electronic keyboard thing gave more support than I thought it would; you can't hear it under a chorus, but you can still hear it through under a soloist. I must say my own voice sounded pretty weedy to me, probably because it was a bigger room than I'm used to (and because I'm used to a teacher doing the full operatic stuff), but the others seemed satisfied with it.
I did strain my voice a bit trying to push the final choruses through, as they'd really been transposed down too far to get any volume behind it, but it didn't matter at that point.
It has been suggested that I should go again on my own and amuse the elderly by just singing through a few songbooks with accompanist -- not distributing word-sheets and expecting people to join in the chorus, but just doing a little Palm Court entertainment, as it were. So evidently a success :-)