Igenlode Wordsmith

Right, I think I've fixed the weather (simply by substituting all reference to it with other material, as it had no function in the story other than to act as mood-setting and dialogue spacer ;-)

---

My new voice teacher: Right, I think we can get you up to four octaves!
Me: I'd be quite happy to have some practical use out of three (more like two and a half for all intents and purposes)...

Looking up my Russian pie recipes, I note that my cookery book (written and published by an Englishwoman in 1989) takes it absolutely for granted that the Ukraine is at the heart of Russia, e.g. "The Russian tradition in bread is said to be at its strongest in the Ukraine, the country's proverbial breadbasket"...

I have been singing 19th-century русские романсы from an old book I picked up somewhere, and had a lot of trouble deducing from the Internet that the 'A Tolstoi' who was credited with the lyrics was in fact neither the famous Tolstoy of "War and Peace", nor the Alexei Nikolaievich Tolstoy who wrote "Aelita", nor even Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, who wrote ballads and historical drama in the mid-nineteenth century (and all of whom were distantly related; here's an interesting vampire story that the latter wrote -- in French -- in 1839, long before "Dracula": The Family of the Vourdalak). Due to the fact that Russian song credits are given in the genitive, with the words or music being 'of the author', I eventually realised that the lyricist is actually implied to have been a woman, "A. Tolstaya".
( there were clearly far too many assorted Tolstoys running around Russia )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCzPx32ufDo


Whoever did write it, this is a simple and beautiful lyric:
( lyrics )

Not their latest, but I actually like it better than Geoff's backlit black leather "God Rest Ye Merry" (it's a trifle distracting hearing an ancient carol being sung with American whoa-ohs, as well).

But I have very definitely fallen down the Geoff Castellucci/Voiceplay rabbit hole in the last few months.
(As have several hundred thousand other people, looking at the shift in their subscriber numbers... :-)

[Edit: tens of thousands. Apparently I can't keep track of significant figures!]

Voiceplay meets Pirates of the Caribbean (and 'breaks the reactors', apparently -- I didn't even know 'reactors' were a thing until I saw the comments, but I suppose it makes as much sense as YouTube channels consisting of people watching other people play computer games :-p And some of those reactions are definitely entertaining...)

I came across an unexpected novelty songsheet from 1949; someone had put words to the "Country Gardens" morris (of Percy Grainger fame), and unlike most attempts at making a popular song out of a well-known tune by fitting a few trite rhymes to it (themes from famous sonatas being prime candidates for this treatment), it's actually quite an effective little lyric for the music.
I like the phrase about 'give a coin and lose a frown', which is both an unexpected rhyme and a neat poetic turn. And writing "dance till the sun is going down" instead of the more predictable "dance until the sun goes down" shows sensitivity to the stress and mood of the melody at that point.

( lyrics )

It was the choir competition tonight.

We came joint second... out of three entries ;-p

The concert went off quite well, the main issues being that (a) I forgot part of my costume and (b) didn't leave enough time to warm up my voice before I left home -- I was assured we would be able to warm up after the safety talk at the hall, but in fact we weren't!
Both of these were largely a result of the fact that I spent the final hour before the concert working feverishly to get This Mask of Death successfully uploaded for the fanfiction.net challenge, which I'm afraid probably says something about my priorities; ultimately, I'm a writer, not a performer.

In the event I managed to sing adequately 'cold', probably due to having been doing a lot of practice in the days beforehand; this time, however, the wobble did convey itself from my knees up into my voice, and I'll never know if that was the result of inadequate preparation or the stress of being billed as a solo performer with weeks of rehearsal rather than simply stepping in to take an emergency solo after a couple of days' intensive study, as in my previous experiences.

Some surprise was caused when I turned out to be the only performer to want to sing without a microphone (I've never been expected to sing with one), with some surprise being caused to me when I was asked nonetheless to step up and perform just six inches away from the object, despite having been informed that it wasn't switched on! I honestly wasn't sure if the result was due to the hall's being extremely resonant, or to my voice getting amplified, but I was assured that the mikes weren't in fact on. In which case I dread to think what it would have sounded like with them on...
(And it's not, so far as I'm aware, that I have a particularly loud voice, so the other students clearly weren't projecting at all; a totally different technique.)

Unfortunately I turn out to look like Eddie Izzard in stage make-up ;-p
Still, I managed to get back into my old concert clothes one more time, with rather less difficulty than last time in fact. Internet tensions have an unfortunate effect on my digestion, which does have a significant effect on my waistline :-(

Apparently the professional musicians who were present for the Requiem a few weeks ago were asking who the unknown soloist was, and saying what a good voice I had.
Which is nice.

I 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..!