A compelling story related to why IFR sings the numbers

Are you still a musician if someone takes your instrument away?

Read the first half of this article for a story and another voice telling us what IFR already tells us

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That’s excellent! Thanks for posting. There are many tips here that I can incorporate into my playing to develop musicality.

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Great article, thanks for posting. I think I’m finally starting to understand how important this skill is. I’m now determined to improve my ability to learn by ear. I usually just grab some sheet music and labouriously work my through it, trying to play from the music. Now, my method is to get a recording, play it, slow it down, break it down, and play what I hear. And as I play it, I sing it. And when I’m away from my instrument, I also try to sing it. I think, if I can’t sing it, I won’t be able to play it. I’ve also tried learning to sing it first, before even trying to play it. Just listening to a song or a phrase, many times and singing from memory before picking up my instrument. It really makes playing a different experience.

Also, I’m really enjoying the recent videos being posted on Sing the Numbers. Singing along with Mireia is really helping with my hearing chord progressions and playing melodies over them. Thank you for making these generally available.

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I wonder why singing is such an “issue” in western culture. “I can’t carry a tune.” “I have a tin ear.” When I hear this I always think that if Tom Waits can sing… so can you. Same thing with drawing.

Anyway, it’s great to “get over” this stuff and move forward. To be a little bit pithy, there’s world of sounds out there, and can appreciate and use all of it.

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That’s a thing that always seemed odd to me. In my case the ‘why’ is quite simple. My teachers way back in early school told me I couldn’t sing (& that in some situations shouldn’t even try). They seemed to be right about plenty of other stuff so I believed them…

Looking back, a really odd thing is that back then right through school from age 5 to 18, aside from a few unusual situations, we started every school day with an ‘assembly’ in which everyone (including me) sung a hymn. However the assumption was that you either “could sing” or you “couldn’t” & those of us who hadn’t cottoned on to the idea that pitch matching was a thing you could learn to do just remained in the “couldn’t” classification. I can only assume that it hadn’t occurred to any of the teachers that it was a learnable skill either!? Given what I’ve learnt about this in the last few years, even just an hour or so of simple tuition could have made a huge difference to my perception of the possible. As it was I didn’t make that leap till I was nearly 60.

The only people who got any help (i.e. tuition) with singing were those who could already do it well enough to be in the choir.

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Yes, I agree. And you could say the same about music study in general. If you weren’t considered “musical”, then you were not encouraged to do music.

Singing is such an exposing thing to do, you have to make the sound yourself, rather than using an instrument. I think this adds to revealing nature of singing. But only when you do it in public. Singing on your own as part of your music practice, who cares what it sounds like.

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It’s weird right. I spent my life thinking I couldn’t sing. And of course I’m not Ella Fitzgerald. But I can reproduce a melody just fine. I had the same thing in school. Either you where considered ‘musical’ and got extra lessons, or you were not and that meant no extra instruction. Weird stuff. Now when I hear people say about a musician ‘he/she is so talented’, I’m like: Yeah, sure, but they are a craftsman too!

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Great comment - except i personally think tom waits is an amazing singer! maybe i have a tin ear…:slightly_smiling_face:

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Nice to hear stories similar to my own. Definitely a case of " please shut up" which lead me away from singing and subsequently really limited my guitar playing, thinking I could not accompany myself. My friend had no inhibitions and performed whilst I gave up. For me it wasn’t Tom Watts but Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen that made me think its not always the sound but the content. Now at the age of 61 I am struggling with cancer and have a lesion in my pharynx which means I can’t go higher than G before croaking out but am adapting to a lower range and enjoying exploring it with singing the numbers. Think Lee Marvin’s " I was born under a Wondering Star". I am understanding that you don’t need a huge range just the imagination to do something interesting with 7 notes (plus the 5 outriders). Thinking what better rehab could there be for my vocal cords.
Happy Christmas all and may many carols be sung, hummed or numbered.

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Welcome to the forum. Fair comment. He’s certainly amazing. :slight_smile: I think that at least of the point that @niborsilliw was making, was that there’s scope for a whole range (no pun inteded!) of voices & you don’t need to have an opera star voice to be ‘A Singer’? @AdrianY 's Lee Marvin is another case in point. :slight_smile:

Anyone else here old enough to remember ‘Tiny Tim’ singing ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’?

In Tiny Tim’s case he was ‘putting on’ that voice for effect, and could have sung it in a variety of other registers, but his big success what with a song sung outside many people’s idea of a fine voice.

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Wishing you tons of luck in 2021, Adrian!

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I lurve Tom Waits. But his voice is his own and one could argue that without a little encouragement he could have just not sang. From what I understand the Tom Waits “voice” comes from him channeling his nonfiltered Camel smoking uncle Ray. May he rest in peace. ;O)

Welcome to the Forum!

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In the pocket David!

I know this is a really old discussion but I just wanted to say I am back playing and polishing some standards to do my first open mic after a rough 18 months of cancer treatment. I’m rediscovering the IFR and it’s such fun. Relating to the cartoon post and “painting by numbers” IFR feels the same as playing with paints, experimenting with what colours compliment and which don’t. Sometimes you just want things to clash. Looking forward to picking it up again.

That’s great to hear, @AdrianY! I’m so happy you’re feeling well and strong enough to perform in public! This whole thread is exactly why we created IFR. One of the dumbest things about western countries in the last half century is how so many people have lost the concept of music as human expression, instead viewing it as a “talent show”. This is especially visible in our public education (as many in this thread have commented) but it has also ruined entire sectors of our culture, with the most notable being jazz music. But there is light, and there is hope. There are still people who go to concerts with open hearts, ready to listen deeply and connect emotionally with the stories being told by the musicians. The best examples are in pop music. Nobody goes to an Elton John concert to rave about how talented he is. They go to an Elton John concert to FEEL something, something that gives them a richer and deeper experience of their own lives. And this is something that you, @AdrianY, are probably even MORE capable of giving your audience because of all of the life experiences that you’ve been through.

I don’t know if you have seen the wonderful talk by Ethan Hawke on this very subject. He captures it so beautifully, especially when he talks about WHY we express ourselves to each other, and why listening to one another is healing. If you want to kill once and for all any demons you have about this “talent show” judgmental voice in your head, I invite you to take a few minutes and listen to how Ethan explains it. Here’s the link:

I hope that hearing these words from such an accomplished actor can give you all strength and courage to share your own story with your audience, and accept your own flaws and limitations as an inseparable part of your beautiful human story.

@ImproviseForReal @AdrianY Another aspect of that is the advent of Auto-Tune / Melodyne. Here’s Adam Neely looking at what happens if you use Melodyne to ‘pitch-correct’ some famous recordings.

@DavidW, auto-tune is another great example of something that we do to make the music “better” according to very limited ideals. It would be easy to blame modern commercial culture for this but the striving for perfection is something that characterizes the entire history of western classical music. It’s a deep subject that I don’t want to be disrespectful or flippant about. Every society has its own relationship with this idea of perfection. Western religions take this goal literally, obsessing about sin and judgment and right behavior and such. Eastern religions tend to focus more on the quest for perfection itself, rather than on its actual attainment. As a spiritual practice, the concept of perfecting one’s consciousness can be used as a blissful place to focus the mind’s attention. I believe that all of these ideas find their expression somewhere in our contemporary, chaotic mix of art and music. So I can’t broadly dismiss the use of autotune any more than I could dismiss the idea of practicing one’s instrument, since both activities are about the pursuit of a particular sound, which is clearly within the rightful domain of the artist.

But what I like about Adam Neely’s thought exercise is that it helps us remember that superficial definitions of “perfection” (such as perfect metronomic rhythm or computer perfected pitch) are totally misguided if the artistic expression itself is enhanced by the additional complexity of these technical “imperfections”. Much of the richness of music is in the broken notes, the intermediate pitches, and the physical textures that come out of natural, organic instruments in human hands. Autotune is an easy target because we all instinctively feel it as a kind of fraud. But it’s no different from the over-engineering of many contemporary jazz recordings. Yes, the overall sound is more balanced, with perfect compression, equalization and reverb on every instrument. But the result is the plastic, sterile sound of television commercials, lacking the fascinating richness of analogue recordings from decades ago. So there’s this interesting dilemma with our search for perfection. Just like any other organic phenomenon (imagine a flower garden in your backyard), by the time you’ve removed all the impurities, you’ve removed the entire garden!

I think it’s fine (and even good) that we have this kind of bubble-gum auto-tuned pop music, because that’s also art and it allows to contemplate those sensations, for whatever they are worth. But as musicians, we should never feel that this is an interesting standard to strive for. Just put on a record of Billie Holiday or Howlin’ Wolf and you’ll get an incredible education in the power of imperfection in art. Thanks for sharing this! - David

Absolutely. @ImproviseForReal :slight_smile:

That too. As a form of expression it’s perfectly fine & valid. If it’s what the performer wants for their music, then great. If it’s what someone else wants them to use in order to get the gig, that can be rather different.

In some ways I’m happier with the use of the tool in its extreme form, i.e. where it’s being used as a distinct ‘effect’ such as by T-Pain. I don’t happen to particularly enjoy the music produced when it’s used that way[1] but that’s an irrelevant matter of personal taste, my point is that used that way it’s clearly not an attempt to portray a false image of perfection. LOL!

[1] A year or two ago I did an Active Listening exercise at Musical-U that involved a study of a T-Pain song. Doing the study required multiple detailed listens to the song. Wow was I pleased to finish that module! :slight_smile:

PS. I meant to comment on that bit too to say that I’ve pretty much always had a strong preference for ‘live’ albums, across a range of genre. :slight_smile:

One of the first albums I bought (1972 I think & me not quite a teenager?) was Slade Alive! (it has a great version of ‘Born To Be Wild’). Later that year (or maybe early '73), as a ‘joint venture’ with my elder brother (it was a double album, so a lot of pocket money!), there was Deep Purple’s Made in Japan. There have been a lot more since (Steve Hillage Live Herald is a particular favourite).

@DavidW, that’s a great point about the use of autotune as an effect in itself. And thanks for sharing those lovely memories of important live albums. All of this demonstrates Ethan Hawke’s point that the intimacy of our creative expression is what’s valuable, separate from any judgments about skill or quality. I doubt that Slade would appear in any lists of the most technically proficient musicians of our time, and yet their music touched you so deeply that you can still feel it today. If there were one thing about the world of musicians that I wish I could change with a magic wand, it would be to free them from this curse of judgment that’s preventing so many of us from just getting on with it and expressing ourselves! Maybe that’s the lesson we should all go back and learn from Slade and so many other passionate rock bands.