i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Still taking prompts if anyone feels like suggesting topics

Day 3: Music, & feelings about singing?

This is the not-chorus part of my answer. Because that's for another day. (Also because this is Rehearsal Hell Week and so my answer would be "fuck chorus", which is not actually how I feel most of the time.)

1) Music. Music is vital. Music is -- or at least can be -- transcendent. Music is life.

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
-- Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act V

Ahem. I should really do music babble on a day when I am NOT braindead from Rehearsal Hell Week.

I have never known a time in my life without music -- from "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and other children's songs, to my parents playing [blanking on term here, sort of folk fiddle dance tune things? hornpipes and such?], one on flute and one on guitar with us kids joining in on violin as we got good enough, to participating in choirs and orchestras and ensembles and such, to my parents taking us to classical music concerts. (In fact they would, apparently, go to such concerts when I was a baby, and I would just fall asleep to the music.)

I can't create -- at least not in the sense of composing -- but that is one of the things about music, in that you can create music without taking it out of thin air. And there are moments in certain pieces that just give me *chills* all over, because the music is just so fucking *right*, and because it resonates with something in my soul.

I am also lucky that I have had music lessons: violin and piano, mostly, and so I can read music (but treble clef better than any other; bass clef, or variants like alto clef, I still have to "translate), and I also have a decent ear for how things are supposed to sound.

2) Singing. Is something I have always done, but I have grown increasingly self-conscious of my own voice as a solo instrument. I mean, I got a bit self conscious about it even in junior high, mainly because of the quaver it got when I was nervous, but.

There are two things. One is that I have no vibrato. Absolutely none at all. And while this is good in some contexts (imitating a boy soprano, and some group choral situations), and certainly better than having a wild vibrato that one cannot control, it makes my voice sound ... raw and unpolished, and kind of sharp. Vibrato, good vibrato at least, smooths the corners and edges to make a more pleasing sound.

I was always told, at least through junior high and some of high school, that vibrato was just something that came as you got older. (Like a sex drive, though they didn't generally mention that.) And so I waited and waited for it to happen, and it never did. (Though I doubt it has anything to do with asexuality.)

Some of it might be that I don't have great lung capacity -- for people with FOP, the rib cage tends to get locked up, which is part of what makes pneumonia so deadly. I probably have better than average-for-FOP *because* of my singing, because it was something I was doing even before the disease kicked majorly into action, and because singing tends to provide good breath control and good practice using the diaphragm muscles and such. But I can't hold notes very long, and sometimes I wonder if vibrato just needs more airflow to kickstart. Or maybe my posture isn't great because I am sort of slouchy. Or maybe I'm just broken and don't have vibrato.

The other thing that bugs me about my own voice is that I don't have good control over beginnings and endings. Especially endings (often I just run out of air and the sound goes splat).

Or consonants. Because consonants take up more air (seriously, a good beginning K will use up most of my reserve of air) and because I haven't figured out how to do loud consonants but quieter vowels.

Or ... well, let's just say that I don't make a good soloist. And that singing alone in front of anybody, especially authority figures and/or someone I respect, is kind of awkward. And I also think I sound better than I actually do.

On the bright side, I have damn good pitch. Not perfect pitch, and if the whole ensemble is flat I can't always tell, but I have good relative pitch, and am really quite good at "we play two notes, you match them" type entrance "tests" for choral ensembles.

But singing is also one of the things keeping me halfway sane right now. Because it is the only sort of "instrument" I can "play"; the only sort of music I can produce. Violin is gone, piano is gone (I can plunk out individual notes for e.g. figuring out a part in chorus piece, but actual playing takes mobility), the harp I taught mysefl is gone, even iPad apps either require more mobility than I have (e.g. a virtual harp where you need to use one hand to select or change the chord while the other "strums") or are too limited to be of much use (e.g. the piano app I have, and use for chorus, which only effectively shows an octave at a time, and you can side-swipe for other octaves but that's still rather awkward).

Those are all gone, but my voice is not. And I can't make pretty music on my own, but I can in an ensemble. And I am damn well singing to my niecelet if I can get over the self-consciousness to do so, because I want her to grow up with music too. (Not that she won't, because my sister is as musical as I am -- her current instrument is the ukelele, but she's also done lute and guitar and violin -- but I can add to that.)