An interesting thing happened six years ago on a chilly winter afternoon. I was visiting an acquaintance named Martin in his room in transitional housing near Lake Merritt and he offered to sell me his four track tape recorder for $150. He showed me how I could use headphones and a cassette tape and record two tracks onto the same tape, doubling my voice, singing harmony with myself, or rounds, or whatever. Forever fascinated with the sound-on-sound technique Quincy Jones used with Lesley Gore, I bit, and began recording my accapella duo versions of many of my favorite songs - just for fun.
It's one of those oddball incidents that have happened in my life and, in retrospect, created a hard left turn into a whole new pathway if I open myself to them. Almost in spite of myself, I kept taking those left turns as they presented themselves to me. First, I noticed my voice wasn't what it used to be back in the 60s and 70s when I used to sing along with my records and the radio and friends would tell me I had a good voice.
Next, I was looking at a catelogue for the next semester at Laney College, where I'd decided to return to school and continue my long dormant formal education. There I found a class called Voice, which promised to teach vocal and breathing techniques. The days and times for the class fit in with my work and volunteer schedules, so I decided to give it a try, along with a World History course.
The professor turned out to be a lovely and passionate woman named Lucy Kinchen, who I learned as time went along was a champion of Negro spirituals and led her own multicultural chorale focusing on that influential and neglected area of classic American music. She is a fabulous teacher. As promised, she taught us vocal technique, had us do many breathing exercises, allowed us the time and space to discover our own voices, employing some of her specialties: lightening the sound, lifting the palate and bringing the voice forward to the front of the mouth.
Of course, easier read than done. However, not impossible, and the gradual and increasing development of all these skills has become for me very spiritual and meditative in practice.
Another thing Ms. Kinchen does is introduce us to four songs each semster, typically a spiritual, a pop song, a jazz number or show tune, and an Italian art song we learn to sing in Italian. Class members are grouped according to vocal register, except for the men who sing together, and each group does one song as a group for the midterm - not that Kinchen calls it a midterm. Her name for the performances is a "festival."
It took me awhile that first semester, but gradually I realized that she was preparing us to sing solo in front of the class if we chose to. I watched others do it and I made the decision to do it myself. I figured, hey, I'm taking voice and I want the full benefit of the class. I was a nervous wreck before my first performance and many that followed, but I did "Moon River" and "If I Loved You" that first spring, to enthusiastic response, and I was off and running.
I've continued to take the class over the past four years, and I only miss it if I'm ill or out of town. Kinchen has become one of my musical mentors, along with the aforementioned Lesley Gore. In addition to Kinchen selected repertoire like "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life," "Yesterday" and "Hello Young Lovers," I've done my own selections for different classes, songs like "Jet Plane," "Cry Me A River" and "Out Here On My Own."
A couple of people asked me to sing duets and as part of trios with them and I said yes. One guy asked me to sing backup on his dancemetal record and contribute lyrics and I said yes. My good friend, SkarLo Paine, did his own CD and after hearing me riff on his tracks, he had me write lyrics for and sing the hook and featured vocal on his song "Help Me" from his "Distorted Melodies" CD.
Paine was the one who suggested I think about doing my own record, and I said yes. As I wrote and recorded the songs, I ended up doing several at open mikes in Oakland. The record is now finished and the tracks being tweaked and polished for early 2007 release. But that's a story to be told on another day, but still on a day like today...
