A good lament - singer's blue

I decided to sign up for the Pro Musica International Master Classes (camp) thinking, and hoping that it would help me advance in my singing. Well, I came home a week later realising how much work I need to put in before I could be elevate my singing to another level.

Ok, there are two outcome at the end of the camp for me. The bad news is that I learned that my vocal technique needs some major `spring-cleaning' and the good news is, ..is that I know I need to work hard and I'm not giving it up.

Getting coaching from vocal coach Loh Siew Tuan during the camp master class, Hein Boterberg (at piano) was the music coach

There were a few rather encouraging moments for me during the classes, I feel that I have the temperaments (for performing) during the interpretation classes. During the music coaching classes, I think I could execute most of the corrections from music coach Hein.

It's the vocal classes that I find most challenging. Without giving the other classes any less importance, vocal technique is the one element in classical singing that easily take years and decades to master, and without it, an opera singer is nothing. Now years down the road after I have started training, I'm getting just a little anxious about how far (or how little) I have advanced in the technique department.

One can pick up the craft of acting and dramatic performance skills with good guidance; one can develop a fine musicality by studying hard, but to get, to grasp the key to making a consistently good, a clean and healthy sound seems like....like, needing a miracle there.

Singing classical music is a complicated art, this fact has gotten increasingly more clear to me recently, with my experience at my last concert and from singing at the camp. It's really easy to sing badly, to do it well you need to master the singing technique, learn how to use it while performing with absolute respect to the music/composition, and at the same time communicating the song and music to your audience.

Since my arrival back in KL from the camp I have been thinking almost non-stop about how badly I want to improve my singing in the next...near future. It's a mixture feeling of frustration, fear, determination, sense of purpose, tinge of positivity, weariness...

In a way I hope this tangled mix of feelings stay with me for as long as I need to focus on being disciplined. I will have to make sure I train everyday, singing everyday for at least fourty minutes on classical repertoire.

Everyday.