Great post, and I instantly recognised the lyric; love Enya <3
I'd not heard the Enya rendition of that hymn before I followed the link from TFA and I honestly don't care for that rendition at all.
How can I keep from singing?
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about that with music. Outside of absolute prodigies, my experience with instruments is that the more you practice the better you get. It's not like sports where practice can only take you so far before genetics absolutely rules the field. So it strikes me that most people can be really really good, but only if they put the hours in. You really can work your way into being a musical genius with an instru…
It really depends on the person. I've been involved with music in some capacity basically my entire life. I can do pitch but I have never been able to maintain a tempo to save my life (to an almost morbid degree). I could practice technical skill on an instrument to literally no end but ultimately anything I did outside of a several second stretch by myself was completely disoriented due to a total and complete inabi…
Until my late 20s, I was bad with both pitch and rhythm despite playing guitar for over a dozen years. Then I took singing lessons with a professional opera singer for 9 months, one hour a week.
She stressed how important it was to record myself and listen back, in fact she encouraged me to do it for hours at a time. The immediate reaction the first few days of trying this was "holy crap, not only am I pitchy and can't hear it naturally, I'm constantly slowing down and speeding up like +/- 10bpm."
The experience was so distressing that I tried to quit my next lesson, but she pushed back with "Hey if you can hear it, you can fix it. It won't be tomorrow, or next week, or even next month. It could take a year. Improvement happens little by little. And I guarantee you'll see progress as it happens. But you have to put in the work."
After a few weeks of working up to it, I settled into a pattern of spending ~3-5 hours most weeknights in the darkness of my closet, recording myself playing Beatles songs along with an acoustic guitar into a 4-track. Usually just going back and forth over 4-8 bars of a song for 30 minutes, then 30 minutes another section, really just focusing on a couple songs like that. Toward the end of the session I'd attempt several full run throughs, get super frustrated (over increasingly minor issues), and end the session.
And she was right, by about the third month I was comfortable enough to perform in front of the person I was seeing, and by month five, I could get through a song with barely any mistakes, maybe one out of three chances. By the ninth month, after a 15 minute warmup, I could get through a 3 song stretch with just minor errors, enough not to totally embarrass myself at an open mic night.
At that point I felt I hit my goal and took a break from lessons. Never did an open mic night. Continued practicing a bit in my closest, but after a month or two I stopped as well.
And here 20 years later, my rhythm actually is pretty solid... I've been a consistent bedroom guitarist, and routinely record myself, and sometimes I don't bother with a metronome because it sounds that consistent. That said, I stopped singing and that ability is completely gone. But I am starting a similar process learning classical guitar.
So I go back to that original bit of advice with just about anything I try to tackle now... if you're self-aware of your issues, and can actually critically hear them in a recording, then there is a path forward.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#23> who could “do music”... were born, I felt, gifted in a way that I was not Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't. The secret to being able to play an instrument is studying or practicing a little every day for 20 years. Some people get there faster but unless you have mobility issues, most people can learn enough of an instrument to have fun.
People are born with different levels of aptitude, motor skill, and learning rate. Some people also work very hard at their studies. For the people who reach the top levels in instrumental performance, you find invariably that they were both born with a high aptitude and spent a great amount of time and energy to get there.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#24I have been annoyed for some time that there doesn't seem to be any mechanism in society by which people who cannot sing are taught en masse how to sing. We spend so much time in school music classes "singing" with no actual instructions as to how to do it correctly.
I genuinely wonder how some people are able to sing properly while others cannot. Those who can sing, where did they learn it at?
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#25I have been annoyed for some time that there doesn't seem to be any mechanism in society by which people who cannot sing are taught en masse how to sing. We spend so much time in school music classes "singing" with no actual instructions as to how to do it correctly. I genuinely wonder how some people are able to sing properly while others cannot. Those who can sing, where did they learn it at?
Church is how most people learn to sing in a group setting
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my high school piano friends went on to become a concert pianist. The difference between him and the rest of us was that music was everything for him - its what he did to relax, his social life, his hobby, his work, and his passion. There were, like, some months where music felt almost like that for me but for him it always did. I think there's no mysterious talent you have to have, just a psychological proble…
Of course. I agree with you. You will only make it in that field if there’s literally nothing else you can imagine doing. But there’s still a starting point and ceiling in intrinsic ability. I’m curious why you think there’s no difference in inherent abilities? Some people are more “naturally” skilled at some things than others, at a baseline. You can look to see examples of this everywhere. That doesn’t negate the d…
I guess it's too extreme to say there's no difference, I just don't love the explanation of there being some hard ceiling because it seems like the real process is incredibly uncertain and unpredictable. There's a million little skills you have to learn as a pianist and also many brief moments where you suddenly grow a lot because you finally grasped something important. In other words I feel like the "ceiling" gets broken every once and a while, and the thing that separates the great musicians is they get satisfaction doing it even during the extremely frustrating times where you're stuck at some ceiling. Which also helps them maintain hope and curiosity and see the next step forward when it does finally come. It feels like the ceiling is often a psychological one, not a natural one!
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#27> who could “do music”... were born, I felt, gifted in a way that I was not Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't. The secret to being able to play an instrument is studying or practicing a little every day for 20 years. Some people get there faster but unless you have mobility issues, most people can learn enough of an instrument to have fun.
> Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't.
To me, it's about passion. I am passionate about computing so I make it a point to set aside time to learn about it. Someone who is very passionate may be obsessed and their life revolves around it. Those people usually do well as I consider that "Finding your true calling." or they may burn out and spiral.
In high school I knew a guy who was a musician, not because he carried around a guitar but because he could not put it down. He loved playing. One groggy high school morning, sitting at the cafeteria table, waiting for classes to start, he rolls in, hops on the table sitting cross legged on top, states "I just wrote this song this morning" then started playing and singing. That right there is a passionate person - in front of a high school cafeteria packed he busked with no fucks given. Years later I looked him up and he is a professional musician. True passion and found his calling early.
And then there are people who play for the joy of playing and might never play professionally or live. Its just a fun hobby for them that fills them with joy.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting how many people I know who jump instantly from hobby to thinking about hustling, Etsy, Patreon, fame, etc. and the thought that they'll never be good enough to go pro is a real barrier. You don't need to monetize your joy.
err ok but i wasnt saying to monetize (not that you were saying it)
I was agreeing with you! Though I can see how I came on a little strong there.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#29> who could “do music”... were born, I felt, gifted in a way that I was not Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't. The secret to being able to play an instrument is studying or practicing a little every day for 20 years. Some people get there faster but unless you have mobility issues, most people can learn enough of an instrument to have fun.
> Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't. To me, it's about passion. I am passionate about computing so I make it a point to set aside time to learn about it. Someone who is very passionate may be obsessed and their life revolves around it. Those people usually do well as I consider that "Finding your true calling." or they may burn out and spiral. In high school I knew a guy who was a musicia…
You can cultivate passion, in my experience. It's easy-ish to think back to childhood and say: "oh, my love of drawing started when I was a child." But that was 20 years ago. The love of drawing has had 20 years to develop. Now, if I play the parent role to myself and start a new music hobby, imagine what I'll say in 20 years. I'll probably say: "I'm pretty passionate about music, my love for it has been growing over the last 20 years."
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about that with music. Outside of absolute prodigies, my experience with instruments is that the more you practice the better you get. It's not like sports where practice can only take you so far before genetics absolutely rules the field. So it strikes me that most people can be really really good, but only if they put the hours in. You really can work your way into being a musical genius with an instru…
As someone with a BM in piano performance - I’m of the strong opinion that there’s a natural baseline and ceiling. Practice can only get you so far.
Why not a Bbm?