Changes.

Today was a very red letter day with regards to my voice lessons. In the middle of a thirds exercise my teacher stopped and said "You know, I just realized how dead serious you are about singing." We then had a heart to heart where she told me that the time's coming where I'm going to have to switch to a male teacher. We have about three months before I should be making the switch. She talked about the progress that I've made in the past few months and how she was impressed, and suggested I find a choir and come up with a list of songs that for my repertoire.

I want to be a singer, and if nothing else I want everyone to understand how big of a deal it is for me to be one. At the very least I want this deep need that I have to be respected by the people around me. It's difficult though. My parents are still adamant in pushing me in the direction they see fit, namely business. My mom specifically wants me to become an accountant.

I like to think that when the time comes to tell them what I want out of my life, they will come to terms with it. An older couple stopped by my work today and they gave the advice to just do what you love to do. I'm hoping that this is a common piece of wisdom that isn't tossed around in vain.

Just to be clear. I have no interest in becoming some famous Hollywood pop singer. I want to sing classical music. I want a voice that tells stories and speaks to peoples' consciences . It's a strange thing to want when everyone else is content to want physical and financial things. For all our talk about having a meaningful life, we rarely seek one out for ourselves.

I'm going to have to tell my parents what I want with my life at some point, and at that point. I really hope they will understand that there's two types of people who go into music, those who have a choice and those who don't. The more I go through life, the more I'm realizing that I am the latter.

Stunning Baritone Arias

Yesterday I finally got around to finishing the second season of BBC's Sherlock. The season finale is quite possibly the greatest episode of television I have ever seen, and I'm not typically one to exaggerate. I think the British have completely nailed down the secret to great television and I regret not having BBC.

I'm prepping a list of songs and arias that I want to learn to sing. The top of that list of course is the famous opening Aria from Il Barbiere di Siviglia: Largo al Factotum a.k.a the "Figaro" song.

Here's Peter Mattei's performance, this is the level I'd like to reach someday:

I know it's kind of a cliche piece, but it's simply got everything a baritone could want to do with his voice, intricate melodies, fast passages, tongue twisting phrases and power. Someday I will be able to pull it off like Mr. Mattei. That's the dream really. I can't think of many more things I would want more than to be able to do justice to this piece of music. I would actually be willing to never kiss a girl in my life if it meant to be able to sing this song properly. Unfortunately I don't know of any devils who would be willing to make that kind of a trade with me. Good old fashioned practice will have to do.

And speaking of pacts with the Devil:

In general, Faust is a treasure trove of Baritone repertoire, but it would require me to speak French. I've attempted to sing french before and it was kind of like dancing on soap I guess. I don't know, it's late and I can't think of good metaphors when I am tired. Basically, French is difficult for me. It might be because of my tongue tension problems, which seems to be my biggest issue with my voice. I don't know nearly enough about the French language to know. Technically I don't know enough about the Italian language either, but I'm learning. And finally:

Rivolgelte a lui lo Sguardo from Mozart's opera Cosi fan Tutte or The Jeweled Box.

This is a much more realistic piece. And by realistic I mean that I can see myself singing this in two years as opposed to the five it'll probably take me to learn the Barber of Seville piece.

Then of course, there's all of those other songs I'd like to learn. Including the Popera stuff, the Gilbert and Sullivan librettos and all of those smaller Italian Arias from those yellow books.

I think we all want something beautiful in our lives. Some of us strive to do something beautiful and some of us strive to be beautiful, plenty of people want to do both. I guess for me, the thing that I strive for now is a beautiful voice, mostly because neither the beautiful looks nor the beautiful mind thing really worked out for me, not that I didn't try.

There's something unique about the voice though. When you see someone with an attractive face and body, you have a certain positive reaction to it, but it's rarely the type of reaction that one would call "inspiring". I mean, perhaps it could be inspiring in the sense that it inspires you to work out more or it inspires you to go and chat up the said person or in my case sit in the corner and avoid eye contact. Or put differently, The Victoria's Secret fashion catalogue is a beautiful think to look at, but it doesn't move anyone I know to tears. Well, to positive tears. A beautiful voice is capable of changing lives and inspiring ideas. That's the kind of voice I'm after, Solo Dio aiutami.

YYYY and other things.

Following up from my other post. Before I got hit by writer's block out of the blue I was about to say that in a strange way, my situation is what I wanted for myself. There's something about pursuing an art that doesn't feel quite right if I'm not in a service job. Besides, working in an office consumes all the time and energy needed for practicing.

I also don't know if I'm quite ready for a "real" job. I can't see myself going to work, coming back home, watching T.V and then going back to bed, only to do the same thing the next day and to keep cycling through that until I retire and die. Yeah, cynical I know. But it seems like office jobs completely consume their workers, especially in Finance, where people in the field are known to develop severe anger problems and substance addictions. Is that really what life should be? To have so much yet in a sense so little? Is that the end?

Okay, I'm going to stop this train of thought because if I continue I'm going to break my rule of staying positive.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that there's a certain standard that people have for others. There's a certain way that people are supposed to behave and a pattern that their life is supposed to follow. Most people think it's quite a bit odd that I want to be a singer.

Non me frega niente. At least that's what I'd like to say about all of that. It's so easy to assume that the rest of the world knows you better than you know yourself. And I've spent too much of my time conforming my life to other peoples' standards for the promises of a standard happy life. It's funny when I think about it, because one of those promises was that I would have had my first kiss by now.

So yes, I enjoy singing. But at the same time I can't seem to bring myself to sing out loud around people. I'm a little self conscious about my voice. It also doesn't help that I'm a baritone and most songs at karaoke bars are sung by tenors. It's really embarrassing when you talk about voice lessons and then someone picks "Hey Soul Sister" for you to sing. Most people don't understand that there are different types of voices in the world. It's almost as if singing is this magical thing that the singing fairy puts inside of you when she visits you at night. I think that the reality of the matter is that a singer needs to practice for a long time to perfect their voice for certain types of music.

I don't know though, I don't want to run my mouth off too much until I feel more comfortable with my voice. I think that the time's coming soon though when I'll be able to put up some soundcloud files on this blog. Soon...

Until then, tanti saluti

Y Y Y

When I was a kid I was just a tad jealous of the people who were born in prior generations because they had cool nicknames like "The Great Generation" or "The Baby Boomers" or "Generation X". I was curious about what the future would hold for my own generation and what kind of nickname we would earn.

We are defined by the recession that has enveloped us. We're seen as entitled and spoiled and have no idea what to do with ourselves. We have more information at our fingertips that all of the previous generations and we're working minimum wage jobs out of college. We're also attention deficit and selfish, I could go on and on about the cultural zeitgeist but since this blog is about me I'll just forget about all of that.

I think I'm one of the more fortunate members of this generation in that I chose to go to community college before graduating to a university, I am also fortunate because my penny pinching parents invested a good amount of money in my education when I was born. Because of this, my student debt is pretty much non-existent.

Essentially, I'm starting at zero where others are starting with a negative. Which grants me quite a bit of freedom  in deciding my future. This is a lot more than I could have asked for, e sono molto grato.

I realize that in a strange way, I am living a dream, it may not be The Dream, but it's a dream. I have something that I'm passionate about, I have a degree in a decent field and I have a roof over my head. It might not be perfect, but it should be enough. Even if it means that I'll have to mix lattes or sling burritos for awhile.

Breakthrough!

I think I'm starting to figure out my singing voice! And well it's hard to describe here in writing, but it's basically all a matter of placement. I think I've figured out how to turn the resonance on in my head so to speak. I listened to a recording and it's a really big improvement over what it sounded like before.

All that my teacher had to do was to tell me to remove a couple years from my voice, so that's what I did, and the result was fantastic. It was bright and big and it made my head vibrate. I was finally able to completely nail that high A that I've been aiming for for the past six months.

That being said there's still some work that needs to be done. I still need to work on evening out my tone. There's a lot of "hiccups" in my voice where it shakes a bit or starts to fry. I think I just need to keep practicing more.

What makes singing so satisfying for me is that it's the first thing that I've done in awhile that I feel like I'm actually good at. It's not like taking a test or talking to girls. When I sing it's like things just naturally fall into place. I haven't felt that in a long time. It felt really good.

Sleep and unproductivity

So it appears that I still haven't adjusted to my jet lag. I fell asleep at 1:00 today and didn't wake up until 4:00, after which I started applying for jobs, or attempting to, some of those application websites are confusing. So suffice to say I didn't get any practice in today and neither did I get to work out.

Ah well, so I'm sitting here with my guitar which I have not played in a surprisingly long time, decided to pick it up after listening to a couple of tracks from the New Van Halen album which is actually pretty damn good. I think Eddie's guitar always speaks for itself but listening to David Lee Roth's voice in particular is a good reminder that sometimes you don't need to have the prettiest voice to create a pretty cool piece of music especially when it comes to Rock and Roll. A baritone in training can only listen to so much Rhydian before he feels a little insecure.

That being said, I notice that there aren't many baritones in pop music, or in popular classical music for that matter. I can only think of two from the top of my head. That's Josh Groban and Rhydian. Rhydian isn't well known in America and Josh Groban's range is apparently up for debate, oh well, I classify him as a baritone mostly because one: I need to feel like I can compare my voice to at least one really awesome singer, and two: he clearly has a falsetto that's set where the baritone falsetto usually is.  Ah well, what do I know? His voice is awesome and I wish mine sounded like that.

Alright, that's it for now. I think I'll do some lip trills before I go to bed.

number 1

Just a word of warning, I'm going to be very very honest in this blog. Perhaps it's a little strange to be putting myself out there so candidly like this, but then again that's why this blog is anonymous. But yes, to protect my own identity I made this as anonymous as I could, going so far as to deny blogger in tracking my location. Oh well, here it goes.

I've always been a little slower than everybody else. This has been true for everything in my life, thus the title of the blog. I'm a late bloomer! In particular, at 24 years old I still haven't had my first kiss. Also, I've just started taking singing lessons despite secretly wanting to be a singer for most of my life.

And thus that's what the two main topics of my ramblings are going to be, but primarily music. They say that the best time to start studying voice is when you're a teenager, but then again, that's when people are typically "supposed" to have their first kiss so I'm allowing myself to have some flexibility when it comes to the specifics of when I'm allowed to start learning skills and when I'm allowed to be good at said skills.

I guess that the reason why I'm such a late bloomer in both aspects of my life is because I'm a really shy person. I remember singing to myself all the time as a kid, however, when all the other kids started to make fun of me for it (boys don't sing, they play sports!) it promptly ended my singing career.

At around the same time I was developing an interest in girls, being that I was chubby, had braces and had now just denied myself a singing voice, I didn't have much of a chance in that area and as such, on top of the shyness that was already there, I developed an even more chronic shyness around girls.

Eventually I learned to play a few instruments pretty well, and I even won a music scholarship in college but I never really got the chance to go back to that one thing I always wanted to do as a kid, until about six months ago when I signed up for my first voice lesson. Since then I've been practicing all that I can and making some pretty decent improvements, though I'm still too nervous to share that voice in public at the moment.

I'll tell you what, at some point when I'm more comfortable with my voice I'll be posting it up here on this blog for the world to listen to.

As for girls, well, that's a more complicated story. One would think that high school and college would have given me ample time to "explore" so to speak, and while I did put in the effort, well, sometimes things don't really happen the way you expect them to. So here I am, still cootie free after all these years.

Yeah, my brain's shutting off. That's about it for now, catch you later.