The joys of learning new music is being able to surprise yourself. Sometimes these surprises are good... and sometimes they are bad.
There is one song in particular that is a bit of a heart-wrench. Once my piano was a bit better, I wanted to learn The Piano Man. It is SO iconic, especially with the piano, and an amazing party song. Unfortunately, the range is too turbulent for me. The lows are too lows and I do not sound good, and the highs are a little too high to belt, but falsetto in this song is just a no-no. I am going against my better judgement here and sharing the only video I have of Piano Man. Click here to watch and listen and you can hear how tough that song is for me. After that performance I practiced and practiced and even performed that song again half a dozen times more, and I was never able to really get the hang of it. It is the ONLY song that I learned, performed, and then completely REMOVED from my repertoire. That song is my biggest failed song.
Now on the flipside of the coin, is when you believe you are absolutely incapable of singing a particular song and genre, and then BAM, it turns out really well.
I was able to sing in a rock band for a short time. Hard rock. Classic rock with high belts and harsh growling and powerful singing. I never thought I would be able to do that. I wanted to give it a try, and had the opportunity to audition for the part of a lead singer. I got sent the set list less than a week before the 'audition', and tried to learn 60 songs within a few days. What I SHOULD have done is learned 10 really well, and listened to the rest. But no. I wanted to try and learn ALL of them. When I got to the jam session to try singing, I bombed it. There were only a couple of songs I managed to sing okay... but a couple of those guys believed in me and had me come back. So I learned a few songs really well. I went through the entire list and put checkmarks beside the songs I was confident about, a squiggly line for those I was unsure about, and a full on sad face and "X" for those songs I was POSITIVE I could never manage to sing.
Those "X" songs included:
Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be
Fire Woman
Shoot to Thrill
Lit Up
Still Got This Thing For You
High Road Easy
And you know what happened?? After singing that first song ONCE, it became my signature song in the band. It became my FAVOURITE song, and the song I performed the absolute best every single time.
Lit Up took me a lot longer to get, and I had to work on my growl for months before I finally got a decent rendition of it, but that one also ended up as one of my favourites.
I completely stepped out of my comfort zone, out of my usual genres, out of my training, and dove into the world of rock. I loved it. I mean, I LOVED it.
The only issue became my health and my voice. My health prevented me from being able to perform on a regular basis. Those performances killed me. Then my voice started to adopt a harsher quality. That harshness is great for rock, but not-so-great for every other genre, and the last thing I wanted to do was ruin my voice.
*I currently don't have any of those rock videos posted on Youtube anymore, but I will put them back up at some point.
Even if you think there is a song or a genre that is completely out of reach, try it anyways. Try and fail and practice and try again. If you fail, at least you gave it your best shot. If you succeed - that is a feeling that every single person should experience.
Fail or succeed, I love My Musical Life!
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