I have been singing for almost as long as I have been playing the piano. In 7th grade, I joined my first choir, a standard group, and soon thereafter the school's show choir. I was also involved in musicals, though I never had a major (singing) role. My singing voice didn't develop the same way my friends' voices did, and though I got solos, they were rarely the leading ones. This began changing during high school, though even then, I was relied on more as a section leader (partly because of my piano skills, which allowed me to help people learn parts). What those who got the bigger/better parts had that I didn't was voice lessons. My parents simply could not afford to pay for both piano AND voice lessons, I didn't have a job, so I just didn't bother. Nevertheless, I had a very good choir teacher who helped me learn the basics of good vocal technique.
When I arrived in college, I could sing quite decently. Up to then I had been singing baritone, which was a compromise for the fact that I just didn't know which way my voice would go, tenor or true baritone/bass. By my fourth semester, I had changed to the tenor section, for the low notes were starting to hurt.
As mentioned above, I had been in musicals all throughout public school; then I had two years during college when I was involved in no shows. The only opportunity at Webster for a non-theatre major to be in a musical production was to join the Opera Studio. I love opera, and, as I will discuss in the next part, want to write them, so this was a perfect thing for me. I avoided the Studio for two years because I wasn't taking voice lessons and lacked confidence in myself; enough people convinced me that I had a good enough voice for it, so I auditioned at the beginning of my junior year. We had to have two pieces, and wanting to show my versatility (and thinking I might still be a baritone), I learned "It is enough" from Mendelssohn's Elijah and "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" from Cole Porter's Anything Goes. Since I gave my earlier spot to someone who needed it, I was last to go, and the judges were tired, enough so that I only got to sing the first one. It was enough, apparently, because the judges were blown away, it seems. I was asked if I took lessons, I replied in the negative, and Professor Gaspar, the head of the voice department at Webster, worked on changing that. However, the problem then was the same as it was before: I just couldn't afford to take two lessons. Thankfully, higher ups worked their magic and I received a scholarship that allowed me to pursue voice.
My teacher, who was one of the judges, was pretty much certain from the start that I should be a tenor. He told me that, though I sang the Mendelssohn wonderfully, it was both too advanced for me (which I was afraid of) and didn't fit my voice quite well. I had to retrain myself to accept that what I heard was not what others heard, and that what I thought was a rich sound was actually dying before leaving the mouth. There was also some nasality. To fix both problems, I learned to focus my sound in a very forward place; though this has led to some negative comments on my juries, my teacher tells me that it is but a step in a process. The way forward is up, literally.
Since the field of vocal music is so far-flung, I'll spare myself the effort of compiling a list of favorites (yes, lazy talk), and just give you what is for me, at the moment, the perfect song, Franz Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade" ("Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel"). What will forever abide in my mind is the move, towards the end, to iv7 (subdominant) after a steady buildup.
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