Keeping Music

Although I’ve gone back to pre-med instead of teaching music, I do hope music stays in my life. Other than listening to it, I plan on doing choir in college, and I want to do community theatre. The only problem with that is that I want a choir setting, and community theatre consists of musicals and plays. It will also be hard be involved in something as time demanding as local theatre because I plan to have a family some day.

            I do think it’s strange that people who have such a passion for something, and can find a job that pays you do your passion, still don’t go down that path. I love music more than most things in life, and I always have. It’ll be weird not to be involved with it everyday.

            The way I see it, music isn’t a job to me. It’s a pleasure. I would love to go to work at a hospital, and come home and relax while listening to music. I don’t want to do music all day, and then be sick of it by the end. I want music to remain a joy in my life, and I feel that choosing a career other than music will allow me to do that.

All My Activities

I’m not involved in any activities other than show choir right now, and I have to admit it’s boring. As much as I hate being stressed, I love being busy. And for me, with business comes stress. Oh well, that’s high school for you. Coming up in October, I have several things happening. I have All-State auditions, which are sung in a quartet, and in front of at least one professional judge. It’s very hard to make it in, and it’s a pretty big honor if you do. I’m in the process of learning seven different pieces of music for that. My quartet is made up of the “darkest singers”, meaning exactly what it’s named; a dark sound. I’m so glad I’m in that particular quartet; we can do so much with the dark sound that we have.

 In the middle of October, I have One-Act auditions. One-Act plays consist of three to ten characters, and a run time of twenty to thirty minutes. With that being said, by auditions, I don’t mean I’m auditioning for one. I’m directing one, along with my good friend Kendall. I’m in so many things that require me to be on the stage, I thought it’d be a fun experience to see it from a director’s point of view. Along with my co-director, I get to pick out a play, cast people in it, and be completely in charge of it. It’s a great learning opportunity.

            At the same time that people are auditioning for One-Acts, people are also auditioning for Play Time Poppy. I do plan to audition for it. Freshman year, I didn’t make Play Time Poppy at all. Sophomore year, I got a lead role; the Evil Step-Mother in the production of Cinderella. I was very proud of that improvement. I hope to get a part this year as well. I enjoy a lot because I love children, and the cast gets to perform and interact with the audience a lot, which consists of mainly children ten and under. As a thespian, it’s very rewarding for me to be able to bring the audience, especially children, the amount of joy that we bring them.

            After Play Time Poppy ends, Speech starts. There are auditions to get into speech, and many different categories you can audition for. Just a few of them are Improvisation, more commonly known as Improv, Musical Theatre, Reader’s Theatre, and many more. You’re allowed to be in two categories, but I choose just one: Musical Theatre. I chose not to do speech freshman year, but made it into Musical Theatre sophomore year. I absolutely loved it. It’s so much different from any other activities I do. It’s a smaller group, so there’s more focus on each person. There’s usually not spoken lines, but occasionally a spoken line will be critical to the story and must be done.

            I do like the free time I have now, and I’m trying not to take it for granted. Regardless, I can’t help but miss all the things I’m involved in, and can’t wait for them to come.

Being an Alto

In choir, I’m an alto. More specifically, alto two; also known as the lowest female voice part. I love being an alto, and I’ve almost always been one. In sixth grade, I was a soprano. I know it seems like one year wouldn’t make a difference, but most people don’t switch parts. They stay what they were told to be right at the beginning. Boys are different, of course, because their voices change. Interestingly enough, girls’ voices change as well. Some more than others, but everyone’s changes a little bit. My voice especially changed quite drastically. After getting a large part in my eighth musical, I came to the realization that I couldn’t belt the high notes that I used to be able to. I asked my teacher about it, and that’s the first time I found out that girl’s voices can change. I personally think it changed for the better, because although I lost some of my belting notes, my lower notes became stronger. I do sing by myself in my free time, so this is where my not being able to belt certain notes becomes a dilemma. I can’t sing certain songs as well I wish I could due to this problem. This doesn’t necessarily mean I have a minimal range, it just means I have to use my head voice for more notes than soprano does.

            My voice lesson teacher told me that he thinks I could easily be a metso, which is a voice part in between alto and soprano. I was quite shocked at this; for the past five years I’ve always been on the lowest voice part. I took it as a compliment, because I assume that meant the he thought my range was wide enough that I could move up a half voice part. I want to stick with being an alto, though. Some of the notes are so low and thick, it’s exhilarating to sing them. There have been some occasions where the notes are so low that they overlap with the tenor notes, which is the voice part below the alto, and the highest male voice part. If a female is capable of hitting those notes, that’s pretty cool. It’s such a unique sound to hear notes that are in a male range, sung by a female.

            It’s been said that the alto part is the easiest to sing. I beg to differ. They hardly ever get the melody, and some notes are too high for our range, but are still commonly seen in music because after all, we are still female singers. It’s such a fun part to sing; not too high, not to low. Although we don’t have the melody a lot of the time, we do have some pretty cool harmony in there. And when the melody is ours, we nail it.