Singing With Your Headphones On

Despite having heard some advice to the contrary, I enjoy singing with headphones on.  More accurately, I tend to sing with one earbud in, one earbud out.  I think it's pretty effective as an accompaniment, especially for songs I have no hope of ever being able to play on the piano.

During Hollywood Week on this season of American Idol I caught a glimpse of Mary Powers doing the same thing in rehearsal -- complete with holding the iPod like a microphone -- and I thought, hey, it's catching on!  So naturally I was pretty impressed when I watched a video about the audition process for Disney's American Idol Experience (I'll be in Disney World next week and have half a mind to check it out) and saw they'd done us one better.  They rigged iPods to display the lyrics while the song is playing, kind of like your own personal karaoke.  This is what they give you for rehearsal if you make it through to the performance rounds.

Maybe it follows naturally, maybe it doesn't, but my next question was, I wonder what this looks like when I do it?  Also knowing recording yourself is an effective practice tool, I whipped out my video camera, pressed the YouTube button, and ran through an entire song.

It was...awful.  I watched the entire thing to see if it got better toward the middle (or end), but it just stayed dreadful.  I felt like I was watching one of the American Idol auditions where the judges ask, "has anyone actually ever heard you sing before today?"

Ouch.  So that left me wondering, is it the headphones thing?  I feel like I can hear myself sing.  Or is it that at a certain age, you just can't just decide you want to start singing?  Well, really?  20 is too old?  What if I should have listened to my fellow instrumental musicians when they said "there's a reason we play instruments and don't sing?"  What about the people who have complimented me in the past, the juries who have given me passing grades?  Does this really need to be an existential crisis, or can I just note the flaws and work them out?

The thing is, this is something find really, really fun.  So fun that if I had my druthers I'd put on my carefree and fun-loving face and audition for the Idol Experience while we're in Disney.  And who knows, that might end up being the moral of the story: just because you have a discouraging experience doesn't mean you need to give up entirely.  And I probably will keep on going like I've been forever, though not without a lot of harumphing along the way.  After all, I eventually got over what was arguably my most frustrating performance moment ever: blowing an audition by messing up a scale.  I missed the cut by one slot, but still scored at the top of every other category (sightreading and a prepared piece, as I remember).  Ugh.

The thing is, no matter what the circumstances I expect all this to come naturally.  If it doesn't, I'm just "bad at it."  But of course, I'm sure my manuscript has shaky passages I'll need to rework.  I play bad notes on the piano all the time.  I sat through some brutal critiques on the path to my BFA in Studio Art.  It all requires work, even when that work involves watching a torturous video that's nothing like what I saw from my own point of view.

Maybe I just need to spend more time walking around the house with one earbud in my ear.