Of course
you can sing! You breathe. That takes rhythm.
Your
heart, your respiratory system, your very existence has a regular beat.
A baby is
placed in your arms: you wiggle, jiggle and giggle, and sway and rock, and hum
and sing too!
Pay
attention and see babies move their bodies to music even before they can
walk.
Listen to
babbling. Before they can speak, babies start to sing little melodies. School
children sing together all the time. We love to hear our children sing.
You walk:
one-two, it becomes a march. The tempo might be irregular, poco accelerando and
then poco ritardando, when you see something interesting ahead. Put some music
on and you'll be walking in time to it. Jogging with music, running with music,
you're dancing. You dance, you musical being, you.
You’re
not a capital D Dancer, but you can dance. Don't even think about opera stars,
pop stars, and people in costumes with stage makeup competing for prizes or
earning a living performing! They are capital S singers, but you too can sing.
You sing.
You
speak. You speak and you don't stop speaking because you're not a Speaker who
puts on a suit and stage makeup and charges hundreds of dollars for people to
listen to them. You didn't stop arguing with people because your debate team
didn't win. You didn't even join the debate club, did you? You enjoy debating
about movies and music, what's the best, who's the best, right?
Don't
stop singing. If you stopped, then start up again. Sing to your babies; sing to
your parents; sing to your lovers. Do it in the kitchen, in the living room,
anywhere. Just do it. Just sing.
Put on
some music. Start in the car by yourself, then sing while you’re cooking. Start
by singing along with the la-la and na-na parts, or just sing the chorus. Hum (humming
is good for you too), then ba-ba-ba the melody, and then locate the lyrics.
Sing along with the stars, and maybe add some dance moves, even just some
expressive gestures (especially if you’re in the car). It feels so good!
Sing like
nobody's watching. Or, go out and sing along with the band. Maybe your friends
will sing along too! Facilitate the singing of others. Let everyone sing. Sing
and dance on the dance floor. Let them all watch; maybe they'll be braver
because you were brave.
Singing
is good for your body and good for your soul and good for relationships,
families, and communities; the whole world should sing.
Don't let
people tell people they can't sing, please.
As a choir conductor, I facilitate others' singing. It feels good.
Of course you can dance! You breathe. That takes rhythm.
Your heart, your respiratory system, your very existence has a regular beat.
A baby is placed in your arms: you wiggle and giggle and sway and rock, and hum and sing too!
Pay attention and see babies move their bodies to music even before they can walk.
You walk: one-two, it becomes a march. The tempo might be irregular, poco accelerando and then poco ritardando, when you see something interesting ahead. Put some music on and you'll be walking in time to it. Jogging with music, running with music, you're dancing. You dance.
Don't even think about ballerinas and people in costumes with stage makeup competing for prizes or earning a living performing! They are capital D Dancers, but you too can dance. You dance.
You speak. You speak and you don't stop speaking because you're not a Speaker who puts on a suit and stage makeup and charges hundreds of dollars for people to listen to them. You didn't stop arguing with people because your debate team didn't win. You didn't even join the debate club, did you? You enjoy debating about movies and music, what's the best, who's the best, right?
Don't stop dancing. If you stopped, then start up again. Do it in the kitchen, in the living room, anywhere. Just do it. Just dance.
Put on some music. Turn off the lights so you feel less shy. (Would it help if you put on some makeup, some dance clothes?) Start by marching, skip around a little. Move your head, shoulders, arms, rock the baby, jiggle and wiggle. You can dance. Move what you have; move what you can. It feels so good!
Dance like nobody's watching. Or, go out and dance in front of the band. Let them all watch; maybe they'll be braver because you were brave. Facilitate the dancing of others. Let everyone dance.
Dancing is good for your body and good for your soul and good for relationships, families, and communities; the whole world should dance.
Don't let people tell people they can't dance, please.
The song that first comes to mind when I need to think "This too shall pass" is Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry with its awesome vamp "Everything's gonna be alright. Everything's gonna be alright..." It's a little sad though, starting with "Said I remember when" there's mention of "people we lost along the way", and crying of course. So, I just have to hold onto the vamp, stay there.
Don't Worry Be Happy, that Bobby McFerrin classic is a little more positive, quirky-fun, with that whistling and doop-doop and especially the woo-ooh-hoo melody. I love nonsense. There's quite a bit of gloom in it though when you're in the mood for gloom. Still, it does say, "It will soon pass, whatever it is." Right?
The song that is making me really feel better these days is from the 2016 movie Sing. Singing is my thing, so that's a good start. In the movie, the song is performed by an elephant, which was my mother's favourite animal. It's a bouncy, fun version of Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing. It has a good ba-ba-ba section, which I always like. The best thing about Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing is that it makes me feel like dancing. That's the key for me. Singing and dancing make me feel good.
I just watched a video, a Ted Talk from seven years ago about choral singing. It was so moving!
I know first hand how incredible it is to meet weekly with a diverse group of people to sing together. I am the musical director of the York Region Community Choir. For nearly two years now, during the COVID pandemic, we've been silenced. Singing is the worst thing, the best way for this virus to be transmitted.
We have found a way to meet, on Zoom. It's not anywhere near the experience that we have singing in a room together, but at least we have the opportunity to chat, to connect with each other, and we have found a way to sing our songs together so that we remember some of our repertoire and have an opportunity to read music every week. Only a small number of us take part. I feel so sad for the rest of the choir, sad for the loss of our weekly joy.
Watching this video reminded me of how much we've been missing and how very important it is for us to get back together again.
Audio Latency: the reason we can't synch on video calls- so annoying. We solved the problem by muting everyone during YRCC Zoom Choir. It worked!
Balconies: During the first lockdown, there were so many nice videos of people making music together on their balconies. Here's a compilation of people in Italy making music during in March 2020. I loved seeing the snippets during the news, or shared randomly. The balcony thing started in Italy, but spread everywhere. It's been so frustrating to have no live music!!!
Concert Recordings: Videos and sound recordings of our YRCC concerts saved us. We sang along with our best selves. It was perfect. Here's a link to one of our YouTube videos. Finding videos of songs performed live was sometimes an emotional thing. Feelings of longing for the live music experience and also shock and horror to see all those people close together, breathing right beside thousands of other people!
Droplets: YUCK Here's a video of droplets released when singing. We had Carol buy face shields for the choir in hope of rehearsing together in the fall of 2020. We still haven't had the chance to use them. But, we will soon. I'm determined to get the choir rehearsing in person again as soon as possible.
Exercise: Aside from walking the dog, the best exercise during COVID has been evening “dance parties”. My eldest and I would crank up volume on the speaker, turn off the lights and dance around to the Apple Music Dance Workout Playlist. This was key to keeping sane.
Facebook Live: Livestreaming on Facebook from their bedrooms, a number of big names gave us precious concerts and musicians of all kinds found ways to perform and share their music.
Guitar: I picked up the guitar again and started learning chords so that I can sing and accompany myself. I really wish I had learned to play guitar. It’s so hard! My fingers hurt and don’t want to behave.
Headphones: Noise cancelling headphones were life savers. Blocking out the world and providing the right music for the moment, energizing or moody, sad or romantic, whatever I needed to be submerged in and alone in. While I was working, they were essential. Music made them bearable.
Instagram Live: Livestreams from bedrooms, and random locations that allowed social distancing were sometimes wonderful, and sometimes sad.
Just Dance: This is the fun musical exercise of choice for my eldest. Sometimes, I would join her. When I could, I would convince her to have a dance party instead (see Exercise).
K: short for Okay, sometimes kk, in a chat of a Zoom call, or in a text. Like LOL (laughing out loud) and TY (thank you), IRL (in real life), we learned these short forms. I hardly use my phone to talk anymore. Video calls and messages seem to be best. Messages are good because you can share songs by sending a link to a YouTube video or a song on Apple Music or Spotify.
Live Music: There was no live music. Without the internet, it would have been awful, unbearable. See Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Online Concerts. The first time I saw live music, on Canada Day, 2021 on a bar patio off Main Street, I cried. It was so good to see and hear and feel it! Going to be sure to go to see more live performances. I might have to start bar-hopping post COVID.
Masks: So much controversy at the beginning, and now it seems strange to think we might be taking them off soon. It’s not easy to sing with a mask, but we can’t sing together anyway! Sigh. The YRCC, my choir, bought face shields. We’ll see how that works when we get together again.
Needles: Vaccination was key to the reopening plan in Ontario. I got the first shot I could, so I had Astra Zeneca and also got the AZ for my second shot. In England, they got jabs and here we got shots.
Online Concerts: There were a few big ones. Elton John’s Living Room Concert Fundraiser in March 2020 was memorable.
PPE: Personal Protective Equipment was in short supply at the beginning. Masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer were in huge demand early on when the toilet paper thing happened. I have a good collection of masks now, so I’m not in a big hurry to stop wearing them. The choir will try face shields.
Questionnaires: Those COVID questionnaires, also called assessments, everywhere! We’ll probably need them for when we get back to choir. No fever, no travel, no contact, no, no, no, …
Reading music: One reason I insisted on keeping up the Zoom Choir meetings was that I thought it was important for us to keep up our music reading skills. For the majority of the choir, they haven’t had to look at sheet music for over a year.
Singing: We couldn't sing together. Singing was deadly! The videos of people singing and germs spreading were horrifying. News of outbreaks in choirs who rehearsed after the lockdown was shocking. I decided to try the Zoom platform so that we could sing together from our own homes. It worked, but it wasn't perfect. I sang while exercising, which was one reason for blasting the volume.
Tik-Tok: I didn't even download the App until Spring 2021, but it was influential.
Ukulele: The small size and relative simplicity of the ukulele make it a good choice for accompanying myself while singing.
Video Calls: vital when you can't meet in person
We Rise Again: this will be a new anthem for us, I think. Getting the choir back together after COVID will be wonderful, but a challenge. We will need to be reborn.
X: see Questionnaires. All the X’s we had to enter beside the NO’s!
YRCC: York Region Community Choir, my music family
Zoom: our saviour, the platform for video calls with large groups, which we used to keep the YRCC going, to keep me sane.
What a stressful week this has been! With all the news of cancellations and closures, you must be wondering what will happen to choir.
We will join in solidarity with other groups and the YRCC will stop meeting until COVID-19 is under control. Already researchers have made headway, and with people withdrawing themselves from the potential pool of victims, and from the potential need for medical care, etc., together we will stop this thing.
Keep your eyes on the website. There's an announcement on the home page. We'll continue to watch Facebook for news and will post there too.
While you're on the website, head over to the recordings and sing along with your part and then sing along with the accompaniment when you're strong on your part. For songs that don't have recordings, take a look here at my blog. I've posted links to YouTube videos of performances of the songs we're doing, and often they are the same arrangement so you can sing along with those too.
Keep singing.
Sing while you wash your hands, sing in the kitchen, sing in the bedroom, sing in the bathroom in the shower as usual, sing in the car and sing while you walk in the park. Sing to the dog and sing to the kids and grandkids (maybe you're babysitting during the extended March Break).
Singing will help you to take deep breaths and maintain your composure. You will feel less stressed and in better control. Try it.
People hearing your singing will benefit too, and maybe they'll join in to benefit even more.
The YRCC Spring Concert in 2014 was called "Take Me Home". The York Region Community Choir prepared songs about Canada, by Canadians and other songs that take us home, so, Canada and Home were our themes. It was one of our very best themes. The concert on May 3rd was powerful, with excellent music playing with our emotions, ours and the audience's, and inspiring passionate performances.
After the concert, we had tons of positive feedback from members of the audience, mostly friends and family, saying it was our very best concert ever! It was, truly. I wrote about it here.
Now, in the months after the concert, the YRCC goes on tour. Every Monday, our rehearsal night, we visit a seniors' home or nursing home in the area. We perform for them and lead some sing-alongs. It's the most rewarding part of our season, the best thing about the choir. It's always a special experience to sing with seniors, and this time, we're getting even more satisfaction with this powerful theme.
Whenever we sing with seniors, there are powerful moments when people who are listless, in pain, sad, or just bored, come to life singing. Bodies sit taller and sway and wiggle with the music and faces light up with joy and laughter. Sometimes there are tears, but it's always good.
This season, we took people home, and they stopped us after to thank us. At one performance, a woman over 90 years old, told us that the music brought her back to when she was 15 and first came to Canada. She was beaming with happiness. Yesterday, another older woman was smiling from ear-to-ear as she told us that our songs about Nova Scotia reminded her of her time growing up there and the work she did in Nova Scotia during WWII as a code breaker. She talked for a while about Nova Scotia and Cape Breton and code breaking. She couldn't stand straight and her eyes were blind, but she was feeling great. I wrote about yesterday's performance here.
What a wonderful thing we do! We have fun, doing what we love to do, and we bring fun and happiness to people who need it and deserve it. Music is powerful; music is love.
The relationship between feelings and music is obvious to even the smallest child. Children respond to music with their whole bodies. They'll express their feelings with much more than just their faces. They can naturally make their whole body look sad or happy or excited. It's wonderful to see.
If you have children in your life, expose them to as much music as possible. Don't just have the radio playing on your favourite station and don't just play them children's music either. Give them a taste of everything from country to classical and don't forget to include the folk music of your ancestors. Give them musical roots and musical wings.
Play sad music and happy music, dancing music and thinking music, and share the memories that music triggers.
Sesame Street is the coolest show and has the coolest music. Here's a clipof a violinist showing Big Bird how music shows feelings.
Here's another cool clip of hunky Mark Ruffalo on Sesame Street explaining to a Muppet what empathy is.
A study done to test if listening to music helps cardiac patients came to two conclusions that I think are quite obvious. (It's nice to have one's ideas backed up by science, right?)
First of all, the study found that music helps us to feel better, and it's not just an emotional response, it's also physical.
In addition, it was shown that the kind of music that works will be different for different people.
Here's a link to an article (September 1st, 2013 in the Telegraph) about the study, and here's the conclusion:
"Listening to favourite music alone and in addition to regular exercise training improves endothelial function and therefore may be an adjunct method in the rehabilitation of patients with coronary artery disease. There is no 'ideal' music for everybody and patients should choose music which increases positive emotions and makes them happy or relaxed."
What kind of music increases positive emotions for you?
What kind of music makes you happy?
What kind of music relaxes you?
The answers to those questions can help you to keep your heart healthy and strong.
The sun has been shining for a few days now, and the temperature is supposed to go above zero today. The official first day of spring is the day after tomorrow, but the reality is that our winter continues well beyond the first day of spring. The ground is still frozen solid and our first frost-free date is in mid-May. We will also have summery days from time to time well before the first day of summer, so I guess it balances out somewhat.
The coming of spring, even if it's just a word on the calendar, is exciting anyway and I was wondering what kind of music makes me think of spring.
I'm happy to hear the real thing in the trees in front of my house. Their chirping makes me happy.
Vivaldi's Spring from his Four Seasons is pretty, but it makes me think of furniture or eyeglasses.
Here's a song that has a happy, hopeful, spring feeling: Simon and Garfunkel's The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy). I'm looking forward to walking down the sidewalk without slipping and falling. When the ice and snow go away, I'll be singing this song. But, I can't walk outdoors and feel groovy yet.
I think the best one has to be the Beatles', Here Comes the Sun. It starts with "It's been a long cold lonely winter". Yup, it's got to have winter in it if it's a spring song. "I feel that ice is slowly melting" is really what I'm feeling.
I've been suffering from the February Blahs lately.
Sometimes, I use music to stoke the sadness, to let it all hang out. I guess it helps me to have a reason to cry and grieve when I'm really just feeling sad for no reason.
Sometimes, I use music to lift myself out of the sadness, to make myself forget about the gloom and rise into happiness.
This is common. We use music to enhance our mood or to change our mood.
I work out much better when the music is good. And, I use music to help me clean and wash the dishes. It helps! I use music to calm myself down in traffic.
How do you use music?
I found this article on Mental Floss about some really interesting studies done on uses for music. It's called 11 Problems Music Can Solve.
Here are the problems that music has solved according to the article:
Low birth weight
Droopy plants
Effects of brain damage
Teen loitering
Hearing loss
A broken heart
Poor performance in sports
Grumpy teens
Illiteracy
Sluggish alcohol sales
Wine snobbery
You'll want to read it yourself to find out the details.
This is just perfect, isn't it? Happiness is the Truth!
It says clap along, but don't you want to dance a full-blown Happy Dance?! Yeah!
Just try not to wiggle! Ha!
And, the version with the minions from Dispicable is also cute.
This is one excellent, happy tune!
Did you ring in the new year singing? Keep it up throughout the year! Singing is good for you. What would New Year's Eve be without Auld Lang Syne? Songs carry you through the important milestones of life, marking important moments and helping you to recall past events, and mostly helping you to recall the feelings associated with those moments.
I haven't posted Christmas songs and Christmas carols, but those are some of the most emotion-laden melodies of our lives. And, it's all very personal. Maybe next year. I seem to always be super-busy during the holiday season, and busy singing and conducting Christmas music, so that I don't have time to sit back and reflect on it all. What is your favourite Christmas music, and why? What kinds of feelings and memories do you like your holiday music to inspire?
I've been enjoying a number of free (or almost free) concerts this summer. Our town, Newmarket, Ontario, and the neighbouring towns all have musical evenings in parks, and Jazz Festivals, and even musical entertainment at weekly farmers markets.
I'm recommending to musicians and to music-lovers to take advantage of these concerts. Musicians will get fans this way. I've bought a CD, and "friended" and "liked" and "retweeted" about a number of the acts that I enjoyed. Listeners will expand their musical taste to include genres they might not have considered.
These performances have given me and my children excellent experiences of seeing and hearing all kinds of live music with very little effort and no stress- short travel time, no dress-up time, no worries about being late or whether we can sit still or hold in our coughs or comments...
We've got lawn chairs and blankets ready to go in the family minivan at all times, just like the summers of soccer when my girls were little.
We love music and listen to the radio and our playlists on iTunes, watch YouTube videos and posts on other social networking sites, and we make music at home on our keyboard, guitar, ukulele and recorders. We sing and dance at home and when shopping. Music is a big part of our lives, and watching other musicians perform is special. The live experience leaves a greater impression than just hearing a song on the radio.
Live music, not a recording of a live concert, is special. When you're singing along, clapping and waving your hands, and applauding for a particularly good guitar solo, you make real lasting connections to the music and the artists. Often, the artists stick around to shake hands and share hugs with fans. And, they sell CD's and merchandise to provide physical souvenirs of these wonderful experiences.
I've said it before about classical music, in this post, that performers need to go out into the public, in flash mobs or free concerts, so that people can be introduced in a very positive way to music that they feel cautious about, or have preconceived negative feelings about. And, I'd like to extend that to jazz, funk, metal, any kind of music. Every kind of music takes some getting used to. Musicians have to be willing to go out there to summer music festivals and farmers markets to get their sound out there into the public ear.
In this article by Graeme McMillan on the Time website, See, Hear: Rediscovering the Pleasures of Live Music, the author argues that the communal experience of live music might be the best way to experience music. He says:
I feel like I’ve slowly come to understand how important the live music experience can be to bring us out of ourselves in terms of taste and expectation, and introduce us to something new, wrapped up in the more familiar guise of just going to a show.
If you haven't seen these guys perform, do it now! They're awesome!
Here's a link to one of their YouTube videos, Little Lion Man . (Excuse the 4-letter word. I'm no fan of expletives but, you'll see.) Here's another with no colourful language, I Will Wait, live with the massive audience appreciating their efforts.
We have both of their albums in our house, on our electronic devices and on several playlists. The CD's sit ready to play in the kitchen where morning wake-up music is often Mumford and Sons.
Wake up. Wiggle, dance, and play air banjo! Stomp your feet, sing along and feel uplifted.
Once you've seen a video, you can always imagine them playing for you and you'll feel even better.
But perhaps even more fascinating than the subject of how music works is the question of why it makes us feel the way it does. Today, we try to answer it with seven essential books that bridge music, emotion and cognition, peeling away at that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins. Here's the list:
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition by Oliver Sacks
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin
Music, Language, and the Brain by Aniruddh D. Patel
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination by Robert Jourdain
The Tao of Music: Sound Psychology - Using Music to Change Your Life by John M. Ortiz
Music and the Mind by Anthony Storr
I love that: "that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins." That's where music works its magic.
The original song, Rock Lobster, by the B52's was fun and silly enough, but it gets even sillier when it's the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything performing their version of it.
In case you've never heard of Veggie Tales and the PWDDA, look them up. They're awesome. Really. The vegetables who are pirates are adorable.
Groove with Rock Monster. Dance with the monster! You'll feel great. Really!
