Anorexia vocalis - the singers' disease

I am not too good at Latin, I'm just guessing that "vocalis" means vocal or something that can be connected to the human voice. I've made up this fancy Latin name from the eating disorder's latin name anorexia nervosa (if anyone can correct my Latin, I will be more than happy).

Because, yes... Music industry and digital recordings produce many vocal anorexic singers. When I am talking about anorexia vocalis, I am talking about the wish of every young singer: to sound like the big names on the recordings they hear when they are listening to CDs, tracks on Spotify, and so on... You wouldn't believe how damaging these digitally remastered and studio-steril recordings can be. But it's not the fault of studio workers, I wouldn't put the blame on them: they are just doing their job, though they assist in spreading the disease. No, no... The real suspect is the insane guy who came up with the idea of well temperament. I'm sure he just wanted to give a stable and easy system that would help musicians to find their way in the dark forest of tunings, and his intention was pure, I'm sure about that. Also, in the very beginning "well tempered" meant that the twelve notes per octave of the standard keyboard are tuned in such a way that it is possible to play music in most major or minor keys and it will not sound perceptibly out of tune.You see? People didn't play out of tune before the well temperation, it just sounded perceptibly out of tune.(Side note: I don't mean to rip on classical trained musicians, but meantone, pythagorian and other early music tunings don't equal with "playing out of tune"...). And on the other hand, this system suggests that there are no notes between E' and F': true, there is almost none for an instrumentalist (especially on a keyboard), but I assure you, there are plenty of notes between those two for a singer.

Intonation and how tuning works depends on several factor. It depends on the architecture of the building where you are singing. For example if you have ever sung in a Gothic church, or anything like that (like the Chapel at Fontys Conservatorium in Tilburg), I bet you've realized that the architecture pulls up the sound, and even if your intonation is flat, the architecture will pull it up (along with everything else) for you, while Roman churches are pushing down on your voice a little. Composers before the time of well-temperament were aware of this element, so they took it in account when they were composing a new piece (for example organum will never sound as marvelous in a Roman church as it does in Gothic cathedrals).
Another factor is the breathing: if the singer doesn't have a natural and healthy airflow, the lack of it will lead to intonational problems. If you are pushing the air instead of letting it flow, your intonation will be flat, and you cannot get into your resonance or at least you'll have some difficulties with it.

I know great singers, whom are considered having bad intonation, though they have excellent ears. They are constantly fighting with the negative feedback of exam committees and senseless concert venue directors (who - for some really weird reason - think that they know everything about singing... ridiculous...): they are told that they should develop a better intonation, but these "clever" people have no freakin' idea, that their feedback doesn't help the singer.

I suffered from anorexia vocalis as well until I figured out, that studio recordings are studio recordings, and "clever" people are not as clever as they think they are. Cleaning up the sound on a studio recording is like photoshopping a pizza into a woman. If you think it's not possible, just check the video below

I'm not saying that everyone sings like a pizza and then they are going to make a studio recording and they become a hot chic. Nope... I'm just saying that even the most excellent singers have bad days and they also sing out of tune every once in a while. I agree with Andrea von Ramm, that a concert where every single not is well in tune is a boring concert. Please, dear performer, make a mistake for me! Prove me that you are a human being like I am and you don't thing that perfect intonation rules above all. I'm interested in your talent not your perfect intonation.

Everything is possible (part 2)

I don't know why's that, but I am fond of paradoxons, just like this motto of mine: Everything is possible.
And now let me explain to you, what this sentence means to me: I believe that everything is possible, that I am able to sing literally anything regardless genre, style, range (obviously within the ambitus of my voice), because from an anatomic point of view, it is possible. Every fear, and limit we draw is actually between our ears, and by that I mean, that if you are open minded enough, there is no such thing as "too low" or "too high", or even "too middle" (some singers are afraid of their middle register - someone has to explain this to me what is the reason behind that).

If you think about it, singing is just muscle work and like every muscle, you can train these muscles, and if it is muscle work, you can think about singing also as a vocal work-out. The more muscle mass you have, the stronger your voice get. On the other hand, by remaining open-minded in every situation results a better access to the resonance, and also the "hidden reserves" of your instrument.

This kind of mindset also requires daring to take risks. Take the risk of failure, because if everything is possible, it is possible that it is impossible.

It is a little bit like Schrödinger's cat, which is just as alive as it is dead in that box, but you will never find out the truth unless you open the box. After all, what can you possibly loose? Will you die or will it do any harm to you if you fail at something in singing? I have never seen a singer making a mistake while making music and got hit by lightning (yes, I am exaggerating it, and I am doing it on purpose).
Of course we would like to choose for the safest and easiest solutions (except for me: there's nothing exciting and challenging about safe and easy...), because we are aftraid of getting hurt in any way, and we were taught to be careful in any circumstances (when we cross the road, ride the bike, etc.). But don't tell me, you have never enjoyed the divine mix of excitement and fear, which causes an adrenalin-rush in your body... It is just fun... So why not taking the risk and saying: everything is possible?

Interestingly enough, all those phrases that leaves a singer's lips regarding range, style and genre, those phrases are rather reflecting on their own fears. When they say - for example - "I'm a soprano, and singing below C' is too low for me", that is not showing something that this particular singer capable of, but her decision that she doesn't want to sing below C' (sad, but true, and truth can be pretty ugly sometimes). Therefore I am not really fond of putting a stamp on my forehead which shouts which voicetype I am. It is true, that I don't like to peep too high, but if I have to, I can do it, because I know my organs and muscles are able to get those high notes. Also it depends on my mood sometimes: sometimes I enjoy going all the way to my chest voice and enjoy the vibration behind my collarbone and eyes, but there are days when I am in the mood of discovering the upper limits of my voice.
This doesn't mean I don't use certain registers from time to time when I practise. I always explore my whole range, it is just how I feel about it at that very moment, and that can change from morning to afternoon.

So just like Mark Twain said: Explore. Dream. Discover. You never know what is waiting for you beyond the limits you drew for yourself. If you keep your mind open and flexible, this mindset will keep your body open and flexible.

Never judge a book by its cover

When I was a kid I was convinced that the things on this world are either black or white, good or bad, and nothing in between. I think I might have thought that way, because my parents were raising me and my brother in consequent way, and I am really grateful to them for doing so. They drew a very clear and firm line between what I am allowed to do and what not, and if I asked them why I am not allowed to do a particular thing, they cared to explain me in a sober way.

Time passed and finally I had to leave home to bend into the society which said to be important, but I've enjoyed being alone more and more as I got to know this society. Nope, I'm not anti-social, I just cannot stand stupidity and pointless insults - that's all... That's why I may seem to isolate myself sometimes from people, but to tell the truth I enjoy to be in the company of people, but I prefer to listen to them and observe them. It is almost like reading a book, so that's how I learned that if you would like to get to know someone really good, you shouldn't just listen to them, but also observe them, and even if you listen to them do it in such way that you don't get lost in their words, but you try to understand their motivation. You would be suprised what simple things can serve as a motivation behind our deeds and how our bodylanguage can tell more about ourselves than the words that are leaving our lips.

For me getting to know people is really like reading a book, and I learned quite early not to judge any book by its cover. And as a matter of fact, when you give a singing lesson, you do the same thing: you are reading your pupil(s) body language, movements, breathing, etc. The more you read them and the more you know about them, the more you can help them solve their vocal problems - and the more they can help you solve your own vocal problems and help you deepen your knowledge and understanding about how your instrument works. They are singing books; some of them loud and proud, some of them shy and timid, but they all have one thing in common: all of them are valuable, precious and vulnerable work, something to appreciate and to take a good care of.

Everything is possible (part 1)

It really wouldn't be me, if a sentence as the title says "Everything is possible" wouldn't serve as a motto of my life as a professional musician. As much as a paradox it is, as much as it inspired me in past few years.

Back then when I began my studies at the conservatory I had pretty primitive ideas about singing and music in general. Based on the repertory building beforehand I was convinced, just like everyone else nowadays that there's no free passing between voice types, in other words your preferred register defines the repertory you are able to sing. But the years I spent as an early vocal ensemble music student and also Ildikó Hajnal, my singing teacher's methods and approach pushed me towards new boundaries, and that reminded me to the very essential idea why I've actually decided to be a singer. And that idea was actually that I wanted to see how far I could get with it, to figure out where my limits are as a musician and as a singer.

To be honest, and without being all the way stuck up, I am a multitalented, intelligent and smart woman (which is quite something if you take a look at my beuatiful blond hair...), and as being one I could be anything I wanted to be. I figured this out at some quite early age, so thanks to that I always knew what I wanted to be and that was always something else: architect, lawyer, captain of a ship (sometimes even a space ship), astronaut, teacher, pirate, physician, journalist, writer, historian, restaurator, painter, mob boss, detective, pathologist, secret agent or mad scientist - but hell, never a musician! In grammar school, I was such a bookworm that while my classmates were living their normal puberty lives, I spent my long afternoons and evenings in libraries (no misunderstanding: there was one at school, another one at the dormitory where I was living in those times and the of the central library of the region - this one was actually behind my school). In the year of graduation I had enough, and I was aso allowed to get some extra time for my singing lessons at the music school. This meant a 90 minutes long singing lesson every week, from which 60 minutes was the actual lesson and the remaining 30 minutes rehearsing with a pianist under the supervision of my singing teacher at that time, Erzsébet Feichter). I had to play the piano and though I should have attended music theory lessons, I chose to sing in the choir of the music school instead.
Before I realized I've got more involved in music and with singing than I made up my mind to become a singer. When I told the people around me (my family, my classmates, my friends and my teachers) that I am planning to give the auditions of the conservatory in Miskolc a go, many of them laughed at me or just looked at me as if I were out of my mind. My chosen faculties in grammar school were history, and Hungarian literature and grammar; in the end it turned out I haven't dawdled away my time with those countless hours spent with my faculty subjects, because if you are getting involved with early music, some extra knowledge in history, literature and grammar pays off pretty well.

Well, as you can see I did not become a lawyer, neither a pirate, but I've become a singer which is a way better than all the other professions I've ever imagined to myself. Why? Because music and singing requires a fresh and fit mind all the time, pushing you to learn something new everyday, and also pushing you to extend or even exceed your limits.

Everything is possible... Yes, believe it or not, everything is possible, even for a bookworm to become a singer. For many years I've listened to the discrimination of my kind ("my kind" here stands for people with intelligence, high intellect and strong thirst for knowledge) considering them as people who have barely the ability or they are just simply unable to sense the little nuances of their body, and that thinking and their intelligence is actually in the way of artistic expression. But you know what? That's not true. It is true, that if you keep telling someone, who's happen to be smarter and has a bigger theoretical knowledge than you, that these merits are bad and they are preventing him/her from musical development, he/she will believe you after a while and will curse himself/herself for the gift he/she was given. I wouldn't classify people like thinkers and emotionals. I believe that each of us has the equal ability to feel, sense and understand the world that surrounds us, it is just the matter of personal choice which approach we would like to choose and where do our priorities lie.

After I figured that my intelligence and intellect used in an effective and proper way will help me to develop as a singer and as a muscian, a whole new world opened up for me, and slowly the thought of "everything is possible" took over my mind and I've begun to experiment more and more...

Letting go

Maybe it's the rain we've been having recently
Something about the rain keeps reminding me
But these days I'm sure you would be surprised
I'm a different person you'd hardly recognise
And there's the reasons why I know
But nobody tells you but the letting go.

(Joe Cocker: The letting go)

It is raining now for a while here in the Netherlands. Well, if you live here, sometimes you have the very feeling it is raining all the time, but I'm not complaining, the weather was quite nice in the past year, it was warm spiced up with a lot of sunshine. But to tell the truth, I actually like rain very much. Not the part where I am getting all the way wet to my bones while riding my bike in the rain to the restaurant where I work, or on the way back, but the rain itself. I like to take an umbrella and some waterproof footware and just walk in the rain and enjoy the scent of it. I like the way how it washes away everything and when it stops raining, and the sky clears up you value the sunshine even more. 

No, there's no misunderstanding, I am writing about letting go. There are many things I would like to let go recently: old habits, fears, doubts, painful memories (because during the great and fun time I had in the past years, I had collected some painful ones as well), etc. In a way, I agree with Carrie Fisher saying in the beginning of her HBO stage show Wishful drinking (which I recommend everyone to watch, because it's hilarious): "I have to start by telling you that my entire lifecould be summed up in one phrase, and that is: if my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that is completely unacceptable. Now... what that means is (other than what it sounds like): let's say something happens and from a certain slant, maybe it's tragic and even a little bit shocking. And then time passes and you go to the funny slant and now that very same thing can no longer do you any harm. So, what we're really talking about then is location, location, location"

True. Sometimes I am indulging myself in the past, though I know very well that the past is a nice place to visit but never a pleasant place to stay. Recently I am finding myself wondering about things I could have done better in the past and what I could do in the future in a different way, but the only conclusion I get to is that I need change and I need to let go everything: the past, the fears, the doubts, the pain, and everything else that holds me back.

I remember the last time I had enough of being inable to move anywhere. I felt I was stuck and I had the feeling I cannot breath anymore, and these feelings were painfully familiar. At that time I had no idea how to move out from that hesitating state, being afraid of anything that came into my way. That was the time when I had my ever first portfolio shoot and there I could let go (well, I was half naked), and I could do it for three reasons:

1. I wanted to show my instrument in a way that nobody would expect me to do so. After all, you don't put clothes on a piano, or on a violin or on a cello - that would look sooo silly...
2. By the end of the training I've got during the 6 years of Conservatory I felt myself denuded from many of my old habits.
3. I had soooo much fun :)))

 I will never forget when I let go my yearning for freedom, because the moment I surrendered and made friends with the idea of captivity, freedom fell onto my lap and things suddenly began to move, and I didn't care anymore just went with the flow of events. I didn't even have time to realize what I was doing I was just doing it, because that was the easiest thing to do. As a matter of fact I don't like to think too much forward (though I have many longterm plans), I rather prefer to just do my thing. The less you think, the happier you are afterwards.

Letting go is the hardest thing I've ever encountered, because it holds the possibility of radical change and loosing something that we think it is useful for us. Letting go chases us out into the wilderness of the soul where God knows what awaits for us (for some reason the first that would pop one's mind is something dangerous, or even lethal - isn't it interesting?). I am still learning the art of letting go. So far the most succesfull "letting go"-events were when I could forget about the possible consequences in a way that not even the term would have popped up in my mind. Of course there were a whole series of events that put me into that state of mind.

I am looking for that state of mind now: in the rain, hoping it would wash away everything while waiting for the vital ray of sunshine on my skin and on the path I am following. So I let it rain, I let it go...

Teachers and mentors

I have 10 years of singing lessons behind my back. Or so to say: I have had my ever first singing teacher about 10 years ago. I had several singing teachers, and I would like to list them for you here and also what I have learned from them.

Erzsébet Feichter
My ever first singing teacher at the Béla Bartók music school in Békéscsaba (Hungary). I was her pupil for two joyful years filled with Italian arie antiche. This was also the time when I decided to become a singer instead of getting a well-paid job - well done there, dear me...

Zsolt Oláh
I had private singing lessons from him in Budapest (Hungary) and he taught me how important it is that your audience understand the lyrics you are singing on, and he was the first one who jokingly shouted at me: Open your mouth!! And nevertheless, his warm bariton voice is just as sweet as a cello can be...

Ildikó Hajnal
My main subject teacher (head of the Early Music department) and singing teacher during the 6 years I have spent in Fontys Conservatorium. Yes, she is Hungarian, living in The Netherlands for several years now, and she is an amazing singing teacher, singer and musician. She taught me many things, and I will be always grateful to what she's done for me during these years. She taught me the importancy of knowing your body (though I'm afraid I will never be such an anatomy expert as she is), to know what happens in your body while you are singing. Also she encouraged me to find my own path and played a huge role in me becoming the person I am now (whether she admits it or not, it's true). She was also the one who introduced me to Lajos Szamosi's approach to freedom in singing

Peggy Hegeman
I had singing lessons from her during my Master studies, and we were working on my classical repertory, and some twang and belting (for Gershwin and Cole Porter). She taught me to dare to make my own choices, and gave me these two amazing sentences:  

1. Singing is moving air, not bricks.
2. Don't take a breath for the whole week!

Whenever she said in the beginning of the lesson "Let's make some noise", I knew the fun is about to happen. She also taught me how important it is to stay in the flow and (as she said) not shaking hand with every single note I am singing. She encouraged me to keep myself open and willing to know more about different singing techniques and methods, approaches - and in the end make the selection from this bunch of information for myself.

Kinga Cserjési
I had my first lessons on Lajos Szamosi's approach from her and she was the first one to ask after a few rounds of excercises: how was it? And she kept asking questions like this, bring me to analyse and watch what I am doing (completing the Alexander Technique lessons and Ildikó's goal to make me more aware of what happens in my body), and slowly I became able to work on myself and using creativity and intelligence as a tool in my own development. Until then I thought my intellect and intelligence is rather a curse on me than an advantage, and now I know that using your intelligence on the wrong place can work against you, but allowing your intellect doing what it needs to do can bring you forward. Just keep calm and let the different parts of your body (muscles, organs, etc.) and your personality work efficiently and not like a workaholic, all the time.

Heent Prins
The loveliest and calmest old lady I've ever met, living in The Hague, and was the singing teacher of Kinga Cserjési. Heent still had lessons from Lajos Szamosi, and I continue my learning process on this approach by having singing lessons from her. She is teaching me how singing can be as simple as breathing, and that you just need to keep yourself open, listen very well, open your mouth and breathe. Not taking a breath, because that's some kind of preparation before producing a sound, but because breathing is a natural need to stay alive (this idea completes Peggy's sentence: Don't take a breath for the whole week). Letting go the control of your conscious and let your subconscious (a.k.a. your body) work is a great risk, but "Your body knows better" (Edvin Szamosi), so just let your body work for you and benefit from its natural wisdom. It is damn scary, but worths the effort to let go.

Breath yourself free - The Szamosi Approach to Freedom in Singing

In an earlier entry I mentioned Lajos Szamosi's name and I even quoted him about how important is the connection between a free mind and a free voice.
Freedom in singing (in my opinion and according to many) comes from the freedom in your breathing. If your breathing is not free, your voice just cannot be free, because singing is basically speaking in slow-motion on different heights in your vocal-range, with or without rhythm but certainly with some kind of pulse, it depends the style and genre of the piece/song in question. Also, without breathing out you cannot speak, you cannot even produce a sound. The fact that changing the "pitch" during this speaking in slow motion becomes a melody is mostly thanks to a composer's idea and/or the performer's musicality, but melodious phrases or not, singing is still breathing out and nothing more than that. Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Well, it's not, but as a matter of fact we are making it difficult for ourselves.

Before I would go on discussing this, here's this quite famous quote by F. M. Alexander:

"You translate everything - whether physical, mental, or spiritual into muscular tension."

But where does this muscular tension comes from? How does it appears in our body? In order to let the muscles in your body function well, they need oxygen, to which the most basic life support gives a helping hand, and this is breathing. You don't need to think about breathing, neither you need to think about let your heart beat, you just do it. Now... whenever something unexpected or even something expected happen to us - whether it's good or bad - our breathing naturally reacts to it, and mostly it stops for a split of a second. Do you remember when you were a kid and you played hide-and-seek? You might remember that you even held your breath a little while you were hiding in your hide-out. The same happens when you are afraid of something or fear starts to take control over your mind: your breathing changes and your body translates your fears into muscular tension.

On top of this, all of us have the urge and the wish to blend in the society, but this wish doesn't come from our nature, it is rather how our parents raised us. People behave in a certain way because they were told or taught (some even tamed) to behave that certain way. I bet everyone knows the mainstream psychology experiment with the monkeys and the ladder, for those who don't know see this link.

We would like to blend in the society because in the ancient times being alone and being seperated from the tribe meant that you're condemned to death. So the same survival instinct that keeps us breathing actually is also to be "blamed" for making us being afraid of standing alone and stick out from the crowd. I'm not saying that teamwork and society is bad, and I also would like to emphasize that nothing is black and white on this matter. Just as I mentioned in my previous entry: the "goodness" of a result (or in this case anything) depends on the current situation, therefore blending into the society in order to survive is a good attempt, but completely useless at obtaining personal freedom.
Also blending in the society demands you to say no to your yearning for freedom, and answer the expactations of the term "normal" and "usual". Why? Because you would like to belong to the tribe, you don't want to stand alone, you would like to survive. Of course as soon as you discover and taste a little bit of inner personal freedom you realize that these terms are just not applying on your life and those are just patterns you can push yourself to hold onto. The terms mentioned above bring a few other terms along like "beauty", "good", "bad", etc. Norms that shouldn't rule your daily life but give you a decent guideline instead.

The Szamosi Approach to Freedom in Singing aims for freeing yourself from these norms and from the urge to judge every single thing you do. According to Lajos Szamosi (see his biography here) there is no beautiful voice, neither an ugly sound: if the voice is free than it naturally delights the listener (I would say:  beauty in itself is boring, but beauty with content is more valuable than anything). Just like Friedrick Matthias Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique, Lajos Szamosi also strove to overcome his own vocal problems, and he actually also succeeded to correct these vocal problems (but in the end he got so passionate about teaching that his carreer didn't matter much anymore in the end). Fun fact: Alexander and Szamosi were each other's contemporaries, but they (as far as I know) never met, still they got to the exact same conclusion while working on their own very similar problems: you can solve your vocal problems by freeing your breath.

A free and smooth airflow brings the necessary amount of oxygen to the muscles, helps to keep your mind clear and as a result the muscles become relaxed, and remain in a relaxed and open state. There's a singing excercize I've learnt a while ago that makes you breath out more and more; as a result you feel dizzy at a certain point (because there's too much oxygen in your blood), and if you go on regardless the dizzyness, you will pass out a little. Recently I picked up this excercize at Heent Prins's lessons and at some point I got frustrated that I got dizzy after each round of this excercize, so I've asked her whether it is possible to get used to exhalate this much, to which her answer was accompanied by a huge nod (like it was so obvious, and it was obvious actually): "Can you get used to it? Yes!"
If you would like to get to know this approach, and you happen to live in The Netherlands, two licenenced teachers of the Szamosi Approach will come here and give a workshop on 6 December 2014 in The Hague. For more info, please click here.

Twists in the system

So just to make this clear: I'm not against public education and conservatories. Actually I had a great time during the 6 years of conservatory at Fontys Conservatorium in Tilburg: interesting and challenging projects, getting to know all sorts of people (crazy musicologists, autenticity-obsessed instrumentalists, nice people, amazing singers and inspiring teachers). Though I am still not entirely sure whether the Prussian result-oriented education system is the perfect education model for singers, and at the same time I'm sure that applying a few adjustments would lead to some very remarkable results.

Actually, in general I am absolutely sure and convinced that the Prussian result-oriented system is not the perfect education model for teaching performing arts. The funny thing about this whole thing that teachers know this very well, but as soon as you get to the board of the school and the students and their results become numbers in statistics, sh*t hits the fan and art education is being pushed into marketing terms and norms, and in the end the ones who damage the most are the students. Being considered as a single number in the statistics puts pressure on the student, which is not a bad thing, but the more sensitive ones just barely able or completely unable to deal with the stress this result-based system brings. That's why you can see many crying dancers, musicians (especially singers) on the corridors around the time of exams and personal evaluation.
But the core of the problem is what society demands us to do: be fast, produce good results and make a lot of money. If we are talking about arts these demands will only bring misfortune and make artists miserable. Why? I think it's obvious, but here's the thing:

1. You need to take the time for doing well something. Sometimes it happens in a split of a second, but many of us need time, and rushing us will only make us frustrated and anxious which leads to even slower process.
2. Producing good results is a contradiction in itself, since the term "good" is a relative; a result's goodness very much depends on the situation in question.
3. If you think you can make a lot of money with arts, you have definitly chosen for the wrong carreer. Nowadays you can make a lot of money by making people miserable or benefit from miserable people (for example a lawyer, an undertaker, a doctor or a financial expert will always have a good salary, because there will be always lawsuits for lawyers, dead to bury, sick people to cure and poor people). Every profession connected to arts will always cost more work than you actually get paid for, and also you make people happy and you entertain them (hopefully).

Pushing a singer (or any artist) into good results in short time is the worst and most inhuman deed ever, because these results cannot hold. I will never forget my ever first singing exam evaluation. Just a little background to the story: I am from Hungary, a country which is highly praised for the musicians and singers it produces, but the fact is that although organ, piano, violin and any other instrumental education is really amazing with amazing technique, you barely find any singing teacher who actually will teach proper and useful singing technique. There is no education for that at all; they help you build your repertory (which, in my opinion, you can do yourself as well, but whatever...) but they don't give you a good and firm basis to help this repertory and your future carreer. It is not because they are mean or evil, they are just absolutely clueless (there are exceptions of course, that's out of the question). So by the time I got accepted to Fontys Conservatorium in Tilburg, I had several years of repertory building, but no technique. I began my studies in September 2008 and had my ever first singing exam in December 2008, and the first evaluation I got back then was this: "We are not sure that we can give you a diploma in the end of the 4th year". You can imagine how mad I got after hearing this insane sentence: I still don't understand how can anyone say anything like this to someone with barely 4 months of vocal training behind the back? Fortunately I was always motivated by comments like this, and after cooling my head down and crying a lot under the shower, feeling completely humiliated, I got my act together and despite the continuous comments on how my level as a singer is not good enough comparing to my classmates I worked hard and not only finished my Bachelor degree with a good result but also accepted to the Masters. I had also people who encouraged me during these years. For instance We had a masterclass with Ian Honeyman in the second year and when he saw me completely depressed by not being able to sing If music be the food of love by Henry Purcell as perfect as I wanted it to be, he asked me how long do I have proper vocal training? I told him that was the second year I am having one, to which he told me that then I have a young voice so don't worry. And you know what? He was right. I've been told at that time very often that working on your technique, on your voice is a development for a lifetime, but somehow nobody care to mention this in the end of the evaluations. Now that I think back I was thinking and what were my expectation after brief 2 years of training I think I had way too high expectations towards myself - also willing to please my singing teacher, Ildikó Hajnal, though she has never asked for it, was a wrong idea.

Another twist in this system comes from this: not only singers, instrumentalists are working on their technique during their training, and then get an evaluation on their performing skills. I mean, how sick is that? Yes, work on that scale and that excercise, but actually we won't care about that on your exam! Ehh??? As soon as I managed to understand that the exam committee won't ever pay any attention to my technique but my performance skills and I began to work on rather enjoying making music than worry about the deficiencies of my technique, my grades and evaluation became (step by step) better and better. And here's another twist: your audience doesn't care about your technique, neither are they interested in a perfect technique.

Sooo... basically we are running in circles when it comes to music education. I wonder why is that... Why can't we try to find a proper solution for the situation in question instead of sticking to solution patterns? Because that's what marketing does: using patterns, which works everywhere perfectly fine except arts, and here I'm not talking about organizing an event, I'm talking about achieving results in the personal development of a performer and/or an artist.
Why are we so obsessed with pushing arts in marketing terms and try to evaluate its relsults based on numbers while we know it doesn't work that way? It's like being a complete retard: I know this rounded shaped object won't fit in this tiny square shaped hole but I will still do my best to fit it even if I know that the round shaped object would fit in a round shaped hole, and I have to find a tiny cube for this tiny square shaped hole. Simply madness... Arts don't work like this...