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Fourth In-Depth Blog Post

Good day everyone! Welcome to my fourth In-Depth Check-in blog post. Today we’ll be doing the usual, discussing my progress and applying concepts from How to Have a Beautiful Mind.

Between this post and the last, my mentor and I focused on consonants, which, in singing, are more important than you think. Proper technique on your consonants allows you to avoid having your words sound like mush when you sing and allows you to put deserved emphasis on your lyrics. There are two kinds of consonants, voiced and unvoiced, and when you sing you have to treat them differently. Voiced consonants come from your diaphragm, and you feel a vibration of sorts when you say them (try saying the H sound or V sound out loud). Unvoiced consonants happen behind your teeth (try saying the S or T sound. Where do those sounds come from?). In the context of singing my mentor explains it fairly well, saying quote: “Your audience will naturally fill in unvoiced [consonants]; s, t etc. You have to put air into voiced [consanants] in order for your audience to hear them k, p, h, v”.  She further explains that it’s okay to not fully pronounce T because your audience will subconsciously fill that in somewhat, but you have to put extra air behind saying H and let the sound fully come from your diaphragm (side note; I already mostly understand the concept of a diaphragm and how to properly use mine from past Choir lessons). 

We got to this subject after I showed my mentor an original song I wrote. Her two criticisms were that I wasn’t singing in the same key I was playing in (the song was written on guitar) and that my consonants weren’t emphasized nearly enough. I was pretty bothered by the fact I didn’t notice that I wasn’t singing in key, but when she pointed it out I figured it out pretty quickly and I’ll make sure to start writing my guitar parts and vocal parts in the same key from now on. I feel like we made a lot of progress, despite the fact that even more scheduling issues came up this week, as I made progress getting better at the thing that I care about so much, songwriting. My mentor helped me work on my consonants this week, and hopefully, my lyrics will be better heard in the future!

 

This post’s chapters were chapters 6 and 7, although it wasn’t shown on the document. I eventually figured it out based on the chapters quoted in the summary. The subjects covered in these chapters were “how to listen” and “how to ask questions”. 

For the “how to listen” chapter, I will first explain a moment where I applied #4 (“What new information are you getting and what questions did you ask to probe further into the topic?”). I’ll talk about what I learned about singing in key while playing an instrument. When I wrote the song I showed my mentor, I was in a bit of a rush and had never composed something on an instrument for a song I’ve written before, so it turns out my singing and playing weren’t in the same key. It sounded fine and nobody noticed, but I was singing far above the chords I was playing, and my mentor helped me identify and fix that issue. I asked a lot of questions and we spent quite a bit of the meeting discussing this topic. Some of the questions I asked included “How can I make sure I sing in the same key next time I write?” and “Should I put my lyrics to a melody after I’ve chosen a chord progression?” My mentor told me I shouldn’t overthink it too much and that once she pointed out the issue and showed me how the chord sounded versus my singing a capella, I didn’t make that mistake anymore and that I shouldn’t worry about it. Yay! I also want to touch on the idea of differing perspectives. Prompt #9 (“How do your mentor values differ from yours?”) reminded me of a discussion we had on the importance of lyrics. I’m a songwriter at heart, but I don’t personally find lyrics to be the most striking and emotionally affecting aspect of most songs. My mentor was trying to explain to me the importance of good pronunciation and proper consonants technique, and she asked “What’s that thing that makes you say ‘Wow, this song is so good and it affects me emotionally’?” and I explained that sometimes it’s just a feeling when you can hear the passion in the singer’s voice but something more, and that sometimes I just like a song for some intangible and very subjective reasons. She was a tiny bit frustrated about the answer because she was trying to prove that lyrics are really important when it comes to getting a song’s message across if it has them. We eventually decided that it’s a case-by-case basis, depending on the song and which qualities it wants to bring out, so even though we had slightly differing opinions on the matter, my mentor could continue with the example and stress how important lyrics can be. 

Moving onto chapter 7, “how to ask questions” (something I am incredibly good at apparently), I will explain my simultaneous application of prompts #8 (“Ask for an explanation for a certain skill you are learning. Discuss what happened.”) from this chapter and #12 (“What questions did you ask to check on facts and details? Elaborate.) from the last chapter. A moment where I asked a question to check in with facts and details happened when my mentor first explained voiced and unvoiced consonants. I was unable to identify which was which at first, but I asked about it, and she explained that you could identify the difference based on where you felt like the consonant was coming from (diaphragm vs the front of your mouth). She also sent me a follow-up email with the quote from above, which is why I was able to talk about it so much. My mentor is really great at answering clarification questions! I also noticed that if I tally up all the “shooting” and “fishing” questions I ask during my meetings, I overwhelmingly ask shooting questions. I like clarifying, and there is rarely time to wonder about something because my mentor is really good at what she does! She always knows exactly what she means and wants to talk about.

Thank you for reading my blog post! Despite the challenges, I feel like I’ve improved a lot since the last check-in, both in my singing and in my blog-writing. I have linked some additional resources, an article on consonants in singing and an article explaining keys, in case you want to follow along or require some additional explanation since I threw around a lot of music words today. I also linked the same google drive where I put my earlier recordings, and it should hopefully contain my latest singing clip (called “Practicing my consonants with a verse from an original song”). I hope you enjoyed reading my blog post!

 

– Bana

Consonants article

Explanation of keys

Google drive link

 

• February 26, 2021


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