Month: April 2012

The adjective that best describes tonight’s weekly singing: “meh.”

Every musical ensemble has its moments when not much seems to go right; moments when tempers may grow short, when small errors reinforce each other, when the best musical intentions can’t seem to effect improvement. Tonight wasn’t the worst musical experience I’ve ever had, not by a long shot. (It was nowhere near as bad, for example, as that Christmas Eve gig where the guitarist showed up late and out of tune after which none of the rest of us could ever get back in tune. Nor was it as bad as the time someone asked me, who sings bass for good reason, to sing high harmony over a tenor voice. Nor was it as bad as the choral concert where the basses were singing three different versions of the bass part, none of which was correct.) But tonight was no better than “meh.”

And tonight’s singing got me thinking about what it is I try to do when things don’t go well musically. Mostly I try to focus on the basics of my own performance. So tonight I focused on Sacred Harp basics — trying to sing every note accurately, trying to follow the leader — and on the basics of singing — breathing, intonation, enunciation, and relaxing the throat, face, and mouth. And I also try to stay patient, which is difficult as I am not a particularly patient person, and this is one of my great musical weaknesses.

I think one of the most challenging aspects of making music with other people is the way it can force one to confront one’s own personal weaknesses. While certainly the whole class was having its problems at tonight’s singing, I had to confront my own personal problems as well: that I was tensing up my throat and mouth and not always breathing from the diaphragm, which caused my intonation to waver and which made me mispronounce words; that I was not fully concentrating on singing the notes; that I am not a patient person.

Being a minister, of course I think there’s a theological aspect to this. Making music with others is an exercise in mindfulness and humility. It is an exercise in getting the self out of the way so that we can experience union with something greater than ourselves.

Tonight’s weekly practice singing was nearly perfect:

— We had had a very good all-day singing the day before, and an excellent singing school the day before that, and you could see and hear the quantum leap in leading skills.

— There were only 21 of us, a significantly smaller number of people than we’ve been having recently, but we sounded bigger and warmer and richer (maybe less strident?) than we have in the past several weeks.

— You could tell that the singers were listening to each other; the singing was tuneful and harmonious, and the different sections were communicating with one another.

— Everyone was very supportive of everyone else, and there was no sense of competitiveness; you never had that sense that someone was going to disapprove of you or scold you, and you never had the sense that anyone was trying to show off or sound better than everyone else.

It’s hard to describe this without sounding trite: I felt a sense of joy, a sense of warmth and connectedness with fellow human beings, a sense of being a part of something larger than myself. Perhaps one could use an old-fashioned way of speaking, and say that we were singing for God and not for ourselves; or (if that’s not your theology) one could say that we were singing for something larger and better than our individual selves.