Tag: tenor

Thump-thump, to the beat

Once again, my heart is ablaze at the sound of the same man’s voice…

I first heard him sing just over a year ago, amidst a chorus-filled song, when his crystalline voice suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, pierced through the rest, and took my heart with it as its reverberations dissipated through the room…

To me, it was the voice of a man delighted and in love, sharing his delight with the world.

Today, and this week, hearing it again, I cannot but feel my entire stomach convulse and my heart pause in awe, before thumping with intensity and fervor, longing to follow and to stay with such a voice, such an expression.

His voice has my heart forever, I declared… and I told it to him, too, even before hearing him sing again today… that’s how lovely it is, and how strongly it sticks in my memory.

It’s funny what I thought of while considering it all afterward… when I lived in Japan, there was a brief time, shortly after moving there, that I had two phone buddies who also had just moved there.

One of them and I had both procured guitars, and so, one night, while talking, instead of hanging up and having to call back after her shower, the friend just left the phone on speaker, and I practiced some guitar and singing.

We joked that I was serenading her during her shower (which led to the telling of another silly story from college of my doing something similar).

When I told later my other phone buddy, he jokingly yet in earnest asked where his serenading was.

And so, one night before bed, I sang him some music… naturally, with its being just before bed and his being who he is, he fell asleep while I sang to him.

Basically, as we say now, I sang him to sleep.

And so, today, after hearing this tantalizingly beautiful voice sing, I recalled my phone buddy’s demanding question, and I found myself saying (silently to myself, that is) that I want to have his voice sing me to sleep at night… oh, couldn’t I, please?

You can just call me every night before you go to bed, if I haven’t called you yet (because I tend to go to bed at all different hours, depending on the week), and you can just sing me a lovely little song, and then we’ll hang up and I’ll go directly to sleep.

Done.

Easy peasy.

Let’s do it.

Let me have your number – here’s mine.

Date whomever you want; just call me every night to sing to me.

😂

So, yeah… those were my thoughts all afternoon…

Post-a-day 2020

Singing, high and low

At the opera tonight, I found myself thinking once again about the the sound of the origination of different vocal ranges within people’s bodies in opera.

This is not at all from where the sounds actually come, but merely a feeling I always get when I hear certain ranges – like when you hear something that clearly came from around the corner to your right… that’s the kind of feeling I mean…

Divide the body two ways: front-center-back and left-middle-right.

When the first prominent bassist was singing in his deep, deep range, it felt like the sound was coming from deep within him…. center of the body’s depth, middle of the left-middle-right spectrum, and at the level just below the groin…

It made me laugh a little, actually, because it occurred to me that this tied in somewhat to the concept of boys having their organs drop, and thereby having their voices deepen… so, perhaps the bassist really do have further-dropped organs than other men… 😛

And, whenever they sing higher in their range, bassists seem to be originating their sound from middle center stomach, the lower belly level…

Moving on…

Sopranos always show up to me, when at the very top of their range, to be originating in the back middle of their throats and mouths, and even down just a bit in their throats, about where am Adam’s apple would be.

(In the middle of their range, they seem to be in the front of the throat, and even more toward the lips, the lower they go, to the point at which they seem to be singing from their front teeth in their lower range of soprano.)

For tenors, they seem to be coming from middle front and middle center at the level of the very bottom of their rib cages, and just above and behind the navel.

Baritones, I haven’t figured out yet, as I didn’t listen for it consciously tonight during the short time that we had a baritone singing solo in the show… – yes, he came back from his early death, but his ghost didn’t stick around for very long whenever it finally made its inevitable appearance… they might be at the back middle, far behind the navel, at the back of the bottom of the rib cage…., but I’m not sure.

And altos…., well, they are chorus…, so not much solo sounds there either tonight…

And countertenors, I’m pretty sure, show up as a floating bubble of air just in front of their mouths… (If you don’t know what a countertenor is, definitely look that one up – it is with knowing.)

Anyway, those are my thoughts that arose tonight again… kind of odd, huh?

It sort of makes sense, but also sort of totally doesn’t, right?

Meh… 😛

Post-a-day 2019