All I want for Christmas is motivation!

It’s been a while hasn’t it? As we approach the New Year it, as always, I am thinking about making New Years resolutions. I don’t often keep them and by the end of January I am beating myself up for not having more willpower. So perhaps this time I should just not make any and resolve to work on my battle with procrastination instead.

If you are an avid reader of this diary you will know that it has been suggested to me that I may be suffering from ADHD and this is why I have no motivation, can not concentrate on one task at a time and avoid doing the important things. However, I refuse to jump on the bandwagon. The world and his wife has some sort of attention deficit disorder (with or without the hyperactivity) but I think that’s life right now. I am in no way trying to say that if you have ADHD you should not seek help for it, you absolutely should, I just know I need to deal with whatever is going on myself.

To be perfectly honest, I think most of my problems stem from perimenopause rather than ADHD but I’m not going to discuss that right now. I will save that for another post. So what do I do about my lack of motivation? There are some aspects of my life that do not suffer because of a lack of motivation. I am always motivated when it comes to one part of my work life and that is my choir, Songsations. I say MY choir, yes I set it up and I run it as a one-man-band but I feel it belongs as much to the ladies who join it now as it does to me. We have just broken up for Christmas and did a number of really successful concerts over the past few weeks. I take a small amount of credit for how good they are but the majority of the credit has to go to the members and their commitment (although I must say it’s been a tough term with illness and the crazy cold spell we just went through).

I think the reason I am motivated to do the work for the choir is that they are also motivated and we keep each other going. Other aspects of my work life are not quite as straightforward. My private teaching relies heavily on the motivation of the student I’m teaching. Of course, I recognise that my job is to help people improve their singing, grow their confidence and enjoy the time they are paying for and I think I’m pretty good at delivering this but it can be very hard when people come for a lesson with no idea what they want to sing or work on in a lesson. I do find teaching quite draining these days and am thinking that I perhaps need to cut down on the amount I’m doing but we’ll see how 2023 pans out first.

The other aspect of my working life that needs looking at is my own singing. I haven’t really done much with my own singing recently, apart from the 16 Bar Challenge I did with The Sing Space a couple of months ago. I had to record 12 videos over 12 weeks and upload them to a private Facebook group, each week having a different genre to explore. I really enjoyed this until I realised there was going to be a “winner” picked for each category and I did not “win” any of them. This threw me into a proper downward spiral and started I started doubting my ability and decided I would never sing in public or on a video ever again. I am over this now and am about to embark upon another 16 Bar Challenge in the new year so, unfortunately for you, there will be more of my singing coming your way in the new year and, to be honest, I don’t really care what anyone thinks. At nearly 50 I am determined to only do things that make me happy and it won’t matter to me what anybody thinks of me or if I “win” any competitions.

I have come to realise that I do not have a fear of failure but, rather, a fear of success. I feel like I hold myself back because I like routine and I don’t like doing anything that takes me out of my comfort zone. I think this is why I never really lose weight. I put on about 3 stone over the last couple of years but have got back down to the weight I was before lockdown was a regularly used word in our vocabularies but I know I won’t lose any more unless I change my mindset. I tend to keep myself at a particular weight and never really deviate from that. I think this is because, if I lose weight, more opportunities will open up to me because I will feel happier in my own skin and not so fat and unattractive. I don’t really like travelling far from my flat and avoid doing anything out of the ordinary that I have no control over. I think this is why I feel I am stagnating, because I have visions and ideas to do new things but that annoying little voice in my head tells me to get over myself and stop thinking I deserve anything more than I have. THIS is the thing that needs work in 2023!

So that’s where I am, going into 2023. I hope you have all had a good 2022 or if you haven’t you are looking forward to the implied clean slate we all get going into the new year. I am determined to bother you with more posts in 2023 than I produced in 2022 but I promise to write some lighter, happier drivel in the coming weeks as I think we all need cheering up, especially me!

Feel free to comment or start a discussion below or on my Incompetent Soprano Facebook page. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and have this:

In the immortal words of Lady Gaga, "Baby I was born this way!"

This is a sneak preview of a post I wrote for The Enlightened Singer. Further down this post you will find details of how to join the private Facebook group. Come and join us!

Although I still do try to do my own singing I spend most of my life these days helping others find their voice. This is through private singing lessons, group lessons and through my work with my 4 choirs (yes, somehow I now run 4 choirs). One thing I find, from the people I teach is, almost everyone wants something they don't have.

I include myself in this. Some people want to be able to sing higher, some lower, some more sweetly, some more belty etc... However, over my many, many years of singing I have learnt to love the voice I have and work with what I've got. Of course I always strive for more but I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. The sooner you accept the voice you have the easier it is to start improving it as you won't then be chasing a voice you can NEVER have.

Of course this doesn't mean we give up on our "dreams" it just means with acceptance comes clarity (sorry, didn't mean to make up an inspirational quote there). Once we are clear as to the kind of voice we have, and what it is capable of, we can work on making the changes that are possible for our individual sound, if we actually need to make changes.

This doesn't mean we don't need singing teachers and coaches, we do. Another pair of ears listening to us is very important as the sound we hear in our own ears/head is not the sound everyone else hears. A singing teacher or vocal coach can help you realise that the way we feel when we sing is as, if not more, important as how it sounds to us.

A big thing I find when listening to the singers I teach is many do not realise that we sing with more than just our larynx. In order to make the best sound we can our whole body needs to get involved. With this in mind many things can be "fixed" with our voices by working on our breathing. We will cover this in a bit more detail in a later blog post. 

For now I have a little task for you. I want you to pick a song. It can be anything but needs to be something you know really well, Happy Birthday would suffice. I want you to close your eyes and hum it but I want you to take your time over every phrase, no rushing! How does the sound feel in  your body? Try not to think about the sound just enjoy the sensations. That is all you have to do to start with. There will be an accompanying video to go with this so don't worry if this sounds like gobbledegook right now.

In order to see the aforementioned video go to The Enlightened Singer on Facebook and join the group so you can join me live on Wednesday 31st August (I'll let you know the time a couple of days before). I hope you don't mind me digressing from the usual type of post I put on here but they do say, variety is the spice of life! 

You can't teach an old dog new tricks....or can you?

So, a LOT has happened since I last wrote. Pretty much all of it beyond my control. It may surprise you to know I am unable to cure Covid-19, I wish I could, but was never my bag at school so curing a global pandemic would not be listed as one of my skills on my CV. I am, however, considering myself to be a professional tea drinker now. Has anyone else found themselves drowning in tea?

I must say the Lockdown that was imposed upon us in the UK has not been all bad for me. It began with me being ill for the first 2 weeks so that wasn't great. I quite possibly had Covid-19 but I didn't get a test so I don't know for sure. However, I didn't leave my flat for 14 days just in case. That was the worst bit I'd say. 

Once I had recovered, I then had to set about fathoming the online meeting platform that is Zoom in order to run singing lessons and my choir online as well as doing a few bits and pieces for myself. In an effort to keep the kids I teach interested in singing whilst on Zoom, I taught myself how to produce virtual choir videos. I am in no way a master of this but it is a new skill and one I would not have acquired were it not for Lockdown. My video editing skills have gone from very basic to just above basic. I feel like I actually have a hobby now! I don't have a garden, I don't have a great kitchen and though I had intended to read every book on singing going, I didn't. I have attended countless webinars and talks on singing but I am finding concentrating on actual reading to be very difficult right now so the video editing thing became a bit of an obsession. Other ways I have kept busy is by watching old Eurovision Song Contests with friends over Zoom and many, many online quizzes. I thoroughly recommend Steve M's Sunday Lockdown Quiz on Facebook (it will be online for a while yet so have a go).

My choir, Songsations, also moved online and I produced 4 virtual choir videos for them too. I have loved working with the choir online and many members of the choir have also enjoyed it. I think it was a bit of a lifeline for some of them. It definitely was for me. The online thing is something I'm going to continue in some capacity for both the choirs and one to one singing lessons. Online meeting platforms are essentially now the norm and will remain part of our lives long after we emerge from this, of that I am sure.

Although I saw my income drop by almost exactly 50% I am definitely one of the lucky ones. I have managed to keep my business going and been able to pay my rent. I know many people who have struggled. We have all been forced to think outside the box and find new ways to make a living. 

So, at the time of writing, August 2020, we are starting to return to our places of work and this adds a new level of pressure. Guidelines for singing, and whether it is safe to do so in the presence of other people, have been released and the consensus seems to be that one to one singing lessons can start again if you can deliver these lessons in a large well ventilated space. My second floor flat no longer cuts it, I fear, and I need to find somewhere else to teach. My downstairs neighbour will be thrilled about that. The hall where I run my choir is, fingers crossed, going to be the place for this from now on. We have to wear face coverings in this hall at the moment but I feel it's worth a go if it means I can be in the same room as my students.

That said, I am anxious about starting up again. Not because I'm scared but because nobody really knows what is going to happen once everything does open up again. Will we have a second wave, will I have to self-isolate because I was in a Caffé Nero for more than 15 minutes when another punter with Covid was there? Who knows! And that is the worry. This anxiousness is what is stopping me from starting my choir meeting in person right now. Although the "rules" seem to suggest we can start rehearsing together again it just doesn't feel right yet. The research carried out in the Perform study (ParticulatE Respiratory Matter to InForm Guidance for the Safe Distancing of PerfOrmeRs in a COVID-19 PandeMic - catchy) has concluded that singing is no more dangerous than speaking, however, it all comes down to volume. The louder we sing/speak the more aerosols and droplets are emitted. With that in mind I have taken the decision to keep the choir online for the foreseeable. The problem with this is about half of the members of my 2 choirs haven't tried a Zoom session and don't really want to start now, which is a shame, but an understandable one. It's not the same and, to be fair, some people just aren't able to join us online so this is in no way a criticism, just an observation. I may write another post about this, although, as I intimated at the beginning of this post, I am not a scientist.

So that's a quick overview of my choir and teaching shenanigans but what of my own singing? Well I was inspired for the first 3 months of Lockdown and then something happened that left me unable to sing at the flat anymore so I've taken a few steps backwards recently. I did manage to book a room in which to do some singing and record some new songs for the choir a couple of weeks ago. I had the whole place to myself and those 3 hours spent singing properly and fully were the best 3 hours I'd had since March. I even managed to record a video, to be included in my choirs "End Of Term" online concert, of me singing an actual song. I have the room booked to do more next week and I can not wait. 

So there we have it, in a nutshell. There is so much more to discuss but as I haven't posted since February you may well have collapsed due to the shock of me producing something for you to read. I'm quite disappointed in myself that I have had since March 23rd to write something for you and it has taken me until August 30th to actually post something. So as a little extra gift, from me to you, I thought I would share my little video with you here. Excuse my unbrushed hair and the fact I couldn't remember the words so had them up on my phone. To be fair it's a miracle I'm sharing anything right now!

PS The title of this post may seem a little familiar. It did to me. So I trawled my previous posts and found I had used a similar title before. I'm not going to change this posts title as I can't think of another but if you fancy reading the other post you'll find it here. Enjoy.

If you’re having trouble opening the video click here

Diversify! Diversify!.....imagine that said with the voice of a Dalek.

The title of this post makes it sound far more sinister than it actually is. I just thought it would sound funny. Plus, I can legitimately write "Doctor Who" in the tags thus attracting a whole new audience, albeit an audience with little or no interest in the inner workings of a soprano's brain. Although you never know. It's always good to broaden ones horizons which is, kind of, what this diary entry is all about.

So, apart from my foray back into the world of musical theatre during the summer, I have not been performing much over the past couple of years. Not through choice, you understand, I absolutely loved my time in the big tent on the seafront in Frinton. Just imagine a Great British Bake Off sized tent, though not worth £25 million (or is it £75 million), 200 seats but no gingham or Mary Berry. Anyway, this small blip, or temporary stagnation, in my singing career has got me thinking of different ways in which I can pay the rent. Of course, I can think of many ways I could easily pay my bills, unfortunately most of them aren't legal or moral so I am not prepared to embark upon them. However, there are a few things I am capable of doing without throwing my good name in to disrepute.

As regular readers of my diary know, I teach singing to the unsuspecting of Croydon (and Chatham). I teach privately but I also teach at a couple of kid's theatre schools. I have come to realise recently that I have become a little complacent over the past year. I would love to not have to teach at the schools anymore and be my own boss (not because I don't enjoy it, I do! In case anyone I work for reads this, I am not leaving imminently!). I want to be totally in charge of my own destiny but this takes legwork.

I have a friend who also teaches singing privately and she has more than enough students to pay her bills and keep her food cupboards fully stocked. SO, what am I doing, or not doing, that is holding me back?

Part of the problem is she is far more the go-getter than I will ever be. I tend to live in a dream world, hoping that fabulous things will land in my lap. I am a little bit of the mindset, if I think it, it will happen even though I am intelligent enough to know that this is codswallop. Nobody ever got anywhere by day-dreaming in bed. Well, except Angela Lansbury et al in "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (if you don't understand the reference, look up the film, it is amazing). Anyway, all that is set to change. I have already updated my teaching website, and then re-updated when another friend pointed out everything wrong with it, I have put up flyers in my local area and am now waiting for the phone to ring. It hasn't yet but I am hopeful it will.

In the meantime I am also putting into action plans to start an adult choir (that makes it sound a little kinky, it's not, unless you want it to be). This isn't going to make my fortune, and it isn't meant to, it is more a way to become a bigger part of my local community. Being an actor/singer waiting for the next job to come along can be a lonely business. You cant go out meeting friends as much as you would like because this normally costs money. Money you haven't got when you aren't working and with such an uncertain future you have to save every penny possible. Which is why so many actor friends come to realise that you have to have something else on the go in order to get by between jobs. So if I can add to my teaching portfolio with a choir and meet like minded people in my local area it has to be a good thing. At the moment my best friend is Netflix and nobody should have to say that.

I have never been a hugely proactive person but as time rolls on I think this has to change. I therefore apologise in advance to my Facebook friends and Twitter followers as I intend to inundate my Facebook timeline and Twitter feed with posts about my business. Please understand, as a person who tends to apologise for her very existence, this is the final time I am going to apologise for this!

For more information about singing lessons in South Croydon click on The Singing Stars.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should....or at least not all the time.

So, I was just catching up with The Voice battle rounds from yesterday. Now I realise the clue is in the name, this is not likely to be a friendly sing song. In this ruthless knockout competition singers try to out sing each other by showing off their ranges and vocal acrobatic ability. I wish, however, it was more like Gladiators, the 90s televisual thrill fest, and that they would have to try and knock each other off a plinth with giant cotton buds while trying to riff their way through Bridge Over Troubled Water, or the like, in order to find a winner. Now that is a show I want to see.

For some of the pairs "battling", the whole experience wreaked of desperation, so much so that any enjoyment of the songs, and the singing of the songs, became impossible. I was worried someone might throw up their larynx, or a lung. The thing about The Voice, this year, is that every one of the singers that got through to the battle round was good and worthy of a place but the obvious frantic eagerness for some competitors, not all, to get through to the next round meant they tried too hard and over cooked the song. They tried too ambitious, or inappropriate, licks and riffs to the point that there was nowhere left to go and no way they were going to win (although, in one case, one girl made an almighty mess of her part in the song she sang and yet was still put through to the next round over the less desperate sounding and far more superior singer).

There is an epidemic of singers who over egg the pudding these days. Why use one note when you can fit 15 in? Don't get me wrong I am an admirer of riffing just not all the time. I want to hear the tune before the singer starts messing about with it.

This practice is not confined to the pop world, there are some classical singers who are too clever for their own good and ornament arias to within an inch of their lives, often unnecessarily. I once heard a singer ornament the A section of a Handel aria (technical word for a song in an opera for those not in the know)  the first time round so that when it came to the repeat he had to ornament his ornaments. He may not have meant to ormament the first time, it could have been a mistake, but having done that he may have thought "oh well, in for a penny....". Again, I for one loves a bit of ornamentation but not to the detriment of what the composer wrote. This also goes for pop songs.

There is a constant expectation to show everyting you can do as a singer at all times, and some singers are capable of the most exciting riffs and runs, but sometimes I just want to tell them to calm down. Let the song have a chance before you change it up so much that you don't remember what the tune should be. I find some of my students can be guilty of this when they bring a pop song to a lesson. They tend to learn songs by listening to someone else sing them and don't know what the actual tune should be. This is a bug bear of mine. Learn the song properly first and then add your own touches to it is my advice.

Unfortunately the urge to always try and out do the next person will remain strong for a lot of singers.  Competition in the music world is fierce and the need to do something different is high. However, I do feel the old adage is normally correct: less is, most definitely, more.

The Singing Stars you say?....go on then, let's have a look.

How do! I have created a new blog. "Great Claire" I hear very few of you proclaim. To be fair it is a blog to do with singing teaching so it will only interest a few of you but it may interest some of your friends so tell people about it if you get a chance (please).

As the title of this post suggests, the new blog is called "The Singing Stars". I wanted to call it, more simply, "Singing Stars" but some other blogger has had that name since 2005 but has never posted anything. That person is called Elaine. I wonder if it is THE Elaine (as in Paige for those who didn't get it). I doubt it, I imagine Elaine Paige would make wonderful use of a blog page. However, I doubt Elaine would have as much time on her hands as I do so probably wouldn't have a blog in the first place.

Anyway, if you want to have a little look at something different to what you get in this diary, go to www.thesingingstars.blogspot.co.uk and check it out.

Normal service will be resumed here in a few days when I get around to the next Diary entry.

If you actually turn up I might be able to help you.

So, as has been established in past Diary Entries, when I am not performing I teach singing as means of acquiring enough money in order to pay my rent and eat. I really do enjoy this part of my life and it probably will be what I spend the majority of my working hours doing from now on (especially as I can't even get auditions for Fringe projects where I might as well be paying them to do it). The bit I hate about teaching, though, is the inevitable cancellations.

I have a few regulars and they are generally excellent at letting me know in plenty of time if they are not going to attend a lesson but the newbies are a whole other kettle of fish. I can now count on both hands and one foot the amount of people who have made appointments to come for a consultation and just don't turn up or send me a text message a couple of hours before they are due to say they are not coming for all sorts of reasons. Today one person texted me 2 hours before her first lesson to say something had come up (to add insult to injury I had even purchased sheet music and a backing track in preparation for this one). The ones who let me know I don't mind about so much but the ones who don't even bother letting me know are the villains of this piece. I don't bother texting or calling them to chase them up anymore as I am not going to waste my time on rude, inconsiderate people.

Why do people do this? I reckon there are a few reasons:

1) some people get a kick out of messing people around.

2) things come up e.g. children get ill.

3) people are scared.

Number 1 doesn't even need thinking about. These people are sad excuses for human beings. Number 2 happens. Number 3 is the one I want people to overcome.

In all of the advertising I do I make a point of saying "beginners and scaredy cats particularly welcome". Of course these are just words and, even though the picture that accompanies most of my internet advertising is quite mumsie and friendly, I know how difficult it can be to sing in front of stranger no matter how nice they are. Particularly if you rarely, if ever, sing in front of strangers. However, I also know how good it feels once you have bitten the bullet and gone to that very first singing lesson. It gives you a kind of high (I imagine, I have only ever tried smoking summat vaguely illegal at university and that gave me a headache and made me cry uncontrollably for a while, I do not mean that feeling). So although I am annoyed by the fact I won't get paid for those consultation lessons people don't turn up for I am actually more disappointed for each one that cancelled out of fear as they do not know what they are missing.

"But I sing in the shower/in the kitchen/in the car Incompetent Soprano, I know what it feels like to sing!" This is true but you may not know what it is like to feel that rush of adrenalin when you face your fear (well, you probably know that feeling from doing summat else scary but you might not have had that feeling when singing and that is the feeling I want you scaredy cats to experience). 

So all you Diary readers who have never had a singing lesson but have always wanted to try it. Do it. Book a lesson now (not necessarily with me, although all are welcome). Find someone in your area and book it. Face your fear and have a go. Just once. Nobody is asking you to commit but if you don't give it a go you may kick yourself further down the line. Just promise me you won't book it and then cancel it. I don't want to be responsible for a large number of lovely, unsuspecting singing teachers ending up in the same boat as me right now.