Defining Success—Play Ball!

In 2003, my wife, Erika, and I took a road trip from our home in Indiana two and a half hours north to Lansing, Michigan for a baseball game. Although we had spent a lot of summer days together in ballparks, this trip was a little different. 

The Chicago Cubs, the team that has brought me joy and heartache (mostly heartache) for my entire life, had just drafted a hot prospect whom many felt would become the next superstar that would light up Major League Baseball. His name was Félix Pie (pronounced like the Spanish word for "foot" and not like the delicious dessert). He was an eighteen-year-old outfielder born to Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic. As one of the first stops on his professional baseball journey, he had been assigned to play for one of the Cubs minor league teams, the Lansing Lugnuts. This trip was our first chance to see Pie in action. 

We got to the stadium early so we could watch the team take batting practice. This pre-game time in the stadium offers a great chance to catch foul balls (which I did!), since it's less crowded and there are fewer small children to run over when chasing down these souvenirs (which, for some reason, is frowned upon). 

After batting practice, I noticed a crowd of fans gathering over by the Lugnuts' dugout, most of whom were wearing Cubs gear. Clearly, we were not the only ones who had driven some miles to see this kid play. Before long, Pie walked up to the crowd and started signing autographs. I looked at Erika and she rolled her eyes a bit and gave me a "shoo" gesture with her hand, as if to say, "Go ahead." 

I used to collect autographs from ballplayers as a kid when my family would go to minor league games, but it wasn't a hobby I had kept up with. This time, however, I was presented with a golden opportunity to have an interaction with the next Cubs superhero. So, why not? Plus, there were other adults in the autograph line so I didn't feel too awkward. 

Pie was quiet but polite as he signed his name for fans on scorecards, caps, and on my foul ball. When I got back to our seats, Erika smiled and said, "Well, when's the last time you waited in line to get an autograph from a teenager?" 

Long story short—and this is an unsurprising twist if you know anything about the Cubs—Pie did not live up to the hype. He gradually worked his way through the minors and made it to the big league club in 2007, but after struggling through an injury and lackluster performance on the field, he never become a mainstay in the starting lineup. A year and a half after his Cubs debut, he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles. 

The Cubs have a long history of making a big splash with highly-ranked draft picks destined to be the savior that would lead us to World Series titles, most of whom have ended up with short, unremarkable careers in the majors. Ask any Cub fan who is around my age or older about Ty Griffin, Cory Patterson, and Earl Cunningham and they'll recognize the pattern: The fan base gets excited, the player underproduces, the fans get let down, some other player gets drafted, and the fans (with short memories) get excited all over again, expecting this new phenom to be the one who will lead us to glory. It's one of the most endearing and infuriating things about Cubs fans. 

I hadn't thought about Félix Pie all that much since then until a few years ago when I decided to do a Google search and see what became of him. After a couple of seasons in Baltimore, he spent the next few years bouncing between the major and minor leagues on teams with the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, and Pittsburgh Pirates. He then went on to play several seasons internationally with the Korean Baseball Organization, the Chinese Professional Baseball League, and the Mexican Baseball League. He's currently back in the United States playing on a team in Kentucky as part of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. 

According to the Princeton Review, the average career length for a major league baseball player is 2.7 years. At present, Félix Pie is 38 years old and has spent the last 20 years playing professional baseball, which has taken him across the country and across the world. For every kid who grew up playing Little League and dreaming of major league stardom, we'd have been ecstatic if someone with a crystal ball had told us, "You'll never be a major league superstar, but you'll end up with a 20-year career getting paid to play the game you love." By nearly every measure, Pie has had a successful life in baseball. The only reason anyone would consider him a failure is because a handful of scouts saw him as a teenager and thought they could determine how his life would play out. It seems someone failed in this scenario, but I don't think it was Pie. 

I still have that autographed baseball. In fact, it lives in my studio, so most of you have probably seen it. Instead of keeping it as a memento of someone who took the sports world by storm, I keep it as a reminder of how someone can find success in their field even when that success doesn’t look like they thought it would when they were starting out. 

Seniors, most of you came to the U when you were the same age as that young outfielder I drove two and a half hours to see play. Some of you may have come in thinking you would set the musical theatre world on fire, while others may have just been glad to be accepted and given a chance. You probably also had a specific idea of what success after graduation would look like. Maybe that idea has changed over the last four years, or maybe you still have the same goals. Regardless, I hope you have learned that there is no one way to measure success. Sometimes not ending up where you thought (or hoped) you would be turns out to be the best thing that can happen. 

At this time of year, I feel a bit like I imagine Pie's minor league coaches felt as he progressed through the ranks. I've watched you build your abilities, develop your character, and learn tenacity, all of which are valuable attributes. Even so, there's no way I can predict what success will mean for each of you. 

Cubs fans are known for being "die-hard." We display ridiculous amounts of loyalty and are eternally optimistic about our team (another endearing and infuriating aspect of this fan base). As my role in your lives shifts from coach to fan, know that I will be enthusiastically cheering you on, remaining faithful through the slumps, and celebrating all of your victories along the way. 

Sko Utes. Batter up. 

Much love.

-brian

Begging, borrowing, and stealing

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." 

Most of us have probably heard some version of this quote, often attributed to Pablo Picasso. But what does it really mean? Is it an endorsement of plagiarism? What's the difference between copying and stealing? And shouldn't we be coming up with our own ideas instead of poaching them from other artists? 

In the last blog, I shared Megan Hilty's thoughts about the importance of embracing our uniqueness. She believes this is the key to success as well as longevity in the musical theatre industry. Yet earlier in that same book (So You Want to Sing Musical Theatre), author Amanda Flynn also recognizes the usefulness of copying. She writes, "It is important to listen to professional singers to learn style, and mimicking can be a helpful way to explore sound." But she also warns that singers have to set realistic goals about their sound and not get lost in trying to copy someone else.  

From a technical standpoint, mimicking can be an effective tool. By exploring the sounds you hear in other singers and trying them out yourself, you can sometimes stumble upon different ways to negotiate your own voice or discover new sounds you didn't know you could make. So this kind of copying and stealing has real advantages. 

I saw a video this week featuring some of the best celebrity impressions performed on Saturday Night Live. In the video, they make a distinction between impersonation and parody. Jimmy Fallon's imitation of Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Pohler's imitation of Christopher Walken are both incredibly skillful impersonations. Will Ferrell's performances of Alex Trebek and Janet Reno, however, are better described as parody. Ferrell doesn't really try to sound exactly like the celebrities he portrays. Instead, he picks out certain mannerisms or characteristics that he then highlights or exaggerates in his performances. We can see hints of the celebrities coming through, but you wouldn't mistake him for the actual person he's parodying. 

I think there is a significant tendency for singers to do both impersonations and parodies of their favorite singers without even realizing it. More than once, I have complimented students on their near-exact replicas of performances by Jeremy Jordan or Sherie Rene Scott. Sometimes I hear them taking on certain vocal qualities of these singers and other times I recognize stylistic characteristics that have been swiped. Once again, if great artists steal, then all of these choices are available to us. But I think we need to be incredibly mindful of when and why we are imitating, impersonating, mimicking, copying, and/or stealing. 

Back to author Amanda Flynn, who expands on this idea. She says, "Singers often give themselves silent obligations. They may think that they must sound a certain way, or that they have to copy the riffs and style choices of the original artist. Sometimes they think this subconsciously without realizing it. Singers compare themselves to others and come up with ideas about what they are 'supposed' to sound like." (So You Want to Sing Musical Theatre, p. 217)

Singing with subconscious obligation of how we believe we are supposed to sound would seem to be the exact opposite of embracing our uniqueness. If these personalized expectations are what lead us to copy other singers, we are essentially trying to force someone else's characteristics and choices onto our own voices and performances. While it may be useful in select moments, wholesale imitation is really just a form of parody. 

By bringing these tendencies into the forefront, we can start to recognize when we are intentionally borrowing and when we are just defaulting to an impersonation of someone else. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but performing as anyone other than yourself is likely to fall flat. 

Now go practice. 

Teacher advice

I recently finished reading a new book called So You Want to Sing Musical Theatre: A Guide for Performers, which is the latest volume in the So You Want to Sing series sponsored by the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). It's written by Amanda Flynn, who is an NYC-based voice teacher, trained at the U's Summer Vocology Institute, and just happens to be married to Rob Rokicki (who wrote the music and lyrics for The Lightning Thief). 

Among the many wonderful features in the book, Flynn includes four interviews with current Broadway professionals. I was intrigued to see that one of the questions she asked was, "What advice would you give a musical theatre voice teacher?" Each person had something different but valuable to say. 

Telly Leung (Aladdin, Allegiance, Godspell) says, "My advice to both [musical theatre performers and voice teachers]...is to understand the science behind singing. Go get scoped. Find a great laryngologist that's going to scope you and explain exactly what's happening when you make sound. ... I learned so much when I would visit the doctor. ... That's when I really started to get it. I finally understood what I was doing." (p. 371) 

Justin Guarini (American Idol, American Idiot, In Transit) said, "One of the greatest gifts you can give your students (besides vocal technique) is the ability to understand what the black dots on the page mean. Music theory is vital as a musical theatre performer because when you are asked to learn a song in one day, two days, or three (if you're really lucky), it's much different learning that music when you're solely reliant on someone else to put in the work to play it for you and teach it to you. ... Music theory, in a way, allows you to have that little bit of an advantage over 99.9 percent of people who don't know anything about it. Incorporating music theory into your training is valuable. You will do your students a world of good and, ultimately, you will raise the musical intelligence of our entire community over time." (p. 354)

Megan Hilty (NBC's Smash, Wicked, 9 to 5: The Musical) says, "I would encourage any voice teacher to celebrate the uniqueness of your students and not try to make them into something that they're not. ... The most successful people that I have witnessed or worked with are people that are very solid in their own skin and their uniqueness. They find the things that really make them different. There are so many programs that turn out a lot of people who work, but the people who have longevity are the ones that are unique and are very solid in that uniqueness. For any teacher, I would really encourage them to seek out that uniqueness and foster it. Help your students shine through because that will only make them more confident." (p. 348)

Shakina Nayfack (NBC's Connecting, Amazon's Transparent Musicale Finale, Hulu's Difficult People) says, "[T]here's probably nothing more valuable than taking the time to get to know your students. You should see them as full human beings before the training begins. The voice is such a psychologically and spiritually intimate thing. To help someone unleash the full capacity of their voice, you really must see and understand the full capacity of their being. Even in a lesson, if you can make those first few minutes about grounding person to person and taking in the whole of that person, then when you get down to work, you're just coming at it from a place of wholeness rather than a narrow cross-section of who they are." (p. 361)

There's a lot in there for me to reflect on. In fact (note to self, and warning to all of you), each of those paragraphs probably deserves a blog of its own to explore the ideas more thoroughly. 

In the meantime, what are your thoughts on their advice? What advice would you offer to musical theatre voice teachers (either your own teacher or voice teachers in general)? 

Now go practice. 

Continued questioning

Continuing the "questioning" theme from the last blog, it's noteworthy how many musical theatre songs involve characters asking questions: "Do You Love Me?" (Fiddler on the Roof), "Shall We Dance?" (The King and I), "Whatever Happened To My Part?" (Spamalot), and "Who Am I?" (Les Mis). I guess the opposite of an "I am" song is a "Who am I?" song. Perhaps the most ridiculous—and unanswerable—musical theatre question of all time is "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful [or are you beautiful because I love you]?" (Cinderella). 

For a different take on the topic of questions, I'm reminded of one of the international students I met in our Summer Vocology Institute last summer. This student would frequently raise her hand in class, but instead of saying, "I have a question," she would always say, "I have a doubt." 

At first, it could seem like she was challenging the professor, essentially saying, "I'm doubting what you're telling me. Prove that what you're saying is true." But, by definition, her phrasing was probably correct. According to Oxford Languages, a question is "a sentence worded or expressed so as to elicit information." A doubt is "a feeling of uncertainty or a lack of conviction."  

This student is incredibly bright and was always prepared in class. She didn't really need to "elicit information" from the professors—she had already gotten that from the assigned readings and from the lectures. When she raised her hand, it was because she was uncertain or unconvinced. Something that was presented in class didn't jibe with her previous knowledge or experience. As discussed in the last blog, teachers can respond to such "doubts" in unhelpful ways ("I don't understand what you're not understanding." [*an actual quote from one of my former professors*]) or they can attempt to reframe the material ("Let me see if I can explain things in a different way.").  

One of my previous voice teachers once told me, "I want you to doubt everything that I'm telling you. My goal is to tell the truth, so I want you to question and verify that what I'm telling you is the truth. Don't be afraid to.” At the time, I wasn't quite sure what to make of that statement. I was used to a different process in voice lessons. Step one, I would be told what to do. Step two, I would do as I was told. Step three, repeat. And somewhere in that process, I was supposed to learn how to be an independent artist. 

My teacher wasn't asking me to be defiant in our lessons, and he certainly wasn't expressing a lack of confidence in his teaching (trust me, he did not, in any way, suffer from a lack of confidence). He just wanted me to maintain a curious mind and to know that, if my knowledge and experience clashed with his, it was OK to bring it up so we could work things out together. Not only did that give me the chance to learn more from him, it also allowed for the possibility that he might even learn something from me. That really turned the master-apprentice model on its head, in my mind. 

You may have noticed that a lot of my teaching involves asking a lot of questions of all of you. "How did that feel?" "What did you notice?" "Can you explain how this time was different from last time?" "What are your actionable verbs?" "What does this song say about YOU?" 

I ask some of these questions because I'm truly curious to know the answer. I'll admit, though, that sometimes I ask questions knowing that it won't matter at all to me what your answers are. I can say, "What did you notice about that sound?" And you can respond, "When I sing like that, my sound feels purple." OK. That response means nothing to me. But if it means something to you as you are building your self-perception, then it's a valuable observation. 

My questions, then, are intended to serve as prompts to encourage you to self-analyze. Your answers don't need to make sense to me—they only need to make sense to you. Only by building your own self-awareness can you start to get a feel for what makes your singing click and what doesn't. Then you start to learn which choices are most likely to get you where you're intending to go and which may lead you elsewhere. 

Question. Doubt. Verify. Don't be afraid to. 

Now go practice. 

All I ask of you

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." 

I think I was in junior high when I first heard the quote above—often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but actually of unknown origin. I remember thinking it was amusing, and in the same genre of insults as, "Never engage in a battle of wits with someone who is unarmed." 

Whenever I'm in a class, lecture, workshop, or webinar, I tend to be the kind of student who sits quietly and tries to take it all in, as opposed to the students who are quick to raise their hands with questions. I often prefer to listen, observe, and thoughtfully consider what is being presented before I feel ready to verbally engage. By taking this approach, I often find that my questions get answered as I continue paying attention to what is being presented. When I do ask a question, however, I am usually at least a little bit self-conscious about not wanting to be "thought a fool." 

A lot of people think this is a generational characteristic ("These kids today are so afraid to ask questions in class!"), but I disagree. I remember my high school geometry teacher (in the early 1990s) complaining that we students were always so scared to raise our hands in class. She would say, "What's the worst that can happen? I'm not going to bite your heads off!" But then, when someone was courageous enough to answer one of her questions, she would often bluntly shout, "Wrong!" "Sorry!" or "Nope!" She grew up in New York, so I don't think she ever really understood how her brash, East Coast delivery pierced our thin, Midwestern, adolescent skins. 

As protection, I suppose, my classmates and I would preface our questions with qualifiers: "This may be a dumb question, but..." "This question may not make any sense, but..." "I'm sorry if I missed something obvious, but..." "This is probably wrong, but..." Sound familiar? 

Acknowledging the epidemic of not wanting to ask questions so as not to be thought a fool (which has infected many of us), I heard in a teacher workshop recently that we should consider replacing the ubiquitous, "Do you have any questions?" with, "What questions do you have?" By asking, "Do you have any questions?" we seem to be assuming that most people understood the material, and those who didn't should out themselves by raising their hands. But by asking, "What questions do you have?" the default expectation is that most students will need to ask some questions in order to truly comprehend things. This approach also flips the class power dynamic on its head. Instead of a perception of, "I am the master teacher. Which one of you lowly students did not understand my brilliant lecture?" it admits, "I'm presenting this material in the best way that I can, but that doesn't mean it's going to click for everyone. Which parts can I try explaining in a different way?"

I know of at least one teacher who has started saying, "Before we go on, ask me two questions about what we just covered." Sometimes he is stubborn about it, saying, "Seriously, I need two questions, no matter how basic you think they are, before I can go any further." This gives freedom and permission to ask whatever questions students may have—and, odds are, if you have a question, someone else in the class probably has that same question. I prefer this approach to a teacher announcing, "There are no dumb questions!" which always makes me second-guess whether my question will be the one that will finally make the teacher say, "OK, that was a dumb question." 

No one wants to be thought a fool. But, to quote Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi, “Who’s the more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?” In other words, as explained on the website The Dork Side of the Force, it’s easy to fall to peer pressure. There is always the risk that asking a question will cause you to look foolish, at least to someone. It may be even more foolish, however, to sit in confused silence when clarification is potentially one question away. 

Just ask. 

Now go practice. 

How and how often to watch your videos

Last semester, we talked about how important self-evaluation can be, especially by watching yourself on video. Here, we'll talk more specifically about how to do that effectively. 

When watching your videos (whether clips of your practicing, self-tapes for auditions, or Dem Lab performances), you should ask the same questions you would consider whenever evaluating anyone else's singing performance. What works about this performance? What do I like? What is making this effective? What is not working? What is getting in the way of more authentic communication? What could be done differently to make it more successful? Any amateur observer can say "I like this," or "I don't like this." But, as theatre artists, we should be curious as to the why. 

When evaluating your practice clips, I'd recommend watching the videos soon (if not immediately) after you record them. That way you can see and hear what you are doing while you still have a tactile memory of how you created the sounds. If you liked what you saw on the video, try the same thing a few more times to solidify what you did. You can even use this tactic to record yourself singing a phrase of music two or three times in a row but in different ways. Then you can watch to see which version you prefer and, once again, recreate that sound while it's still fresh in your mental and physical memory. If you watch these videos for the first time even a day later, you won't have the same visceral memory and it will be more difficult to recreate those sounds in the same way. 

For performances, like Dem Lab videos, I'd recommend the opposite and instead allow more time to elapse before watching the videos (days, if not weeks). That way, you won't have such strong memory of the feelings and sensations you were experiencing in the moment. This will allow you to evaluate the video more as an outside observer. When you aren't watching with the same physical memory from having just sung, you're better able to give yourself an overview of your performance instead of being more focused on a single element of your singing, like with the practice videos. 

Notice that I'm using the words "evaluate" or"criticize" when it comes to watching yourself. And I absolutely didn't use the words "tear down" or "obsess over" either. You can observe and evaluate by asking the questions above with a true sense of curiosity in order to identify what you are doing well and to strategize about how to improve upon the less effective elements. As I've said previously, feel free to tell your inner critic to shut the hell up!

Remember, the flip side of being your own worst critic is that you can also be our own best evaluator. No one will be able to watch your own performances with as much insight as you. You know what you were thinking at the time. You know what it feels like inside to make those sounds. You have the best idea of how you might recreate or tweak those sounds. The rest of us can guess or make assumptions, but you're the only one who knows. Use that information to your advantage. 

Now go practice. 

Nothing but time

Time stops when suddenly you see her

Time stops and what you thought you knew changes

And life beyond this moment is better, bigger... 

    -"Time Stops" from Tuck Everlasting 

I've always found it fascinating how differently we can perceive time. When I was a kid, sitting through an hour of church seemed to take forever, but one hour of watching cartoons was over in no time. As an adult, I've noticed that Saturday and Sunday seem to move faster than any other days of the week, for some reason. 

One of the most common phrases I hear from seniors in their first voice lesson of the school year is, "I can't believe I'm a senior already!" Despite taking classes for three years, it always comes as a bit of a surprise looking back and realizing how quickly that time has passed. But many of those same students have also expressed that time feels like it's crawling by when they're in the thick of a semester with long days of classes and rehearsals. 

I sometimes hear ads on the radio for a company called 3 Day Kitchen & Bath. Their pledge to customers is that they can do an entire renovation of a kitchen or bathroom in three days or less—a job that can typically take weeks. I'm no contractor, but that seems really fast. I wonder if those workers feel like time is moving more quickly as their deadlines approach than it does when they're at the start of a project. 

The beginning of the semester presents a good opportunity to reflect on how we use our time. In a previous blog, we talked about how time can be viewed as a commodity, evidenced by the phrase "spending time." Regardless of whether we invest our time or waste our time, we all experience the same number of hours in the day. 

I decided to do a bit of math when it comes to our time together. Each of you receive 12 voice lessons per semester at 45 minutes each, adding up to 540 minutes of lesson time per semester. This means there are 1,080 minutes of lessons in each two-semester school year and 4,320 minutes over the eight semesters of a four-year degree. Divide that by 60 minutes per hour and it adds up to exactly 72 hours, or the equivalent of three days. All of our weekly lessons in all the semesters of an entire degree, when all is said and done, only amount to three days of time. 

How are we spending that time? Three days is apparently enough time to completely demolish, renovate, and rebuild an entire kitchen. Is it enough time to build the vocal skills and artistry you want for yourself? Are we both doing all we can to maximize our time together? 

As we get going in the new semester, let's consider how we're using our lesson time. If we make the most of our time together, you will be better able to make the most of your practice time when we're apart. Review this blog from 2019 about establishing effective goals. Then let's decide how we can best prioritize our three days of time to get you where you want to be. 

Now go practice.