“[S]ome kind of help is the kind of help
That helping’s all about”
– Shel Silverstein

…

In November 1997, my house burned down.

Well, to be accurate, my sister’s and my apartment burned up. (We were living in a four-plex at the time and the other units only suffered smoke and water damage.)

It happened in the middle of the night and it was unexpected and traumatizing.

It happened the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and certainly destroyed all of our plans. Not just our plans for hosting our friends for an apartment-cooked meal, but our plans for feeding ourselves and our pets, our plans for going to work, our plans for … well, having plans.

In the middle of the chaos of a personal disaster event, the first thing to go out the window is planning.

My glasses were gone, my clothes were gone. My sense of safety and stability were gone.

…

But, fortunately, I was there. My sister and our pets were there.

And, my family, friends and a number of charitable organizations and businesses were there.

Those people and companies helped us put the pieces back together.

…

I learned a lot about what I value and what I don’t from that experience.

Most important, I learned that people will help.

Even people who don’t know you or have never met you. These people will still make sure you have food and clothes (and glasses!) and a place to eat and sleep.

(When I quit my job and went back to school, this life lesson helped me find the courage.)

I learned I want to be someone who helps, too. Even people I don’t know.

…

Please consider donating to an organization assisting the survivors of Hurricane Sandy.

(I did it here because they made it easy.)

My mentor Rhiannon on the ability to scat sing …

“It’s just a muscle that needs to be exercised and some layers of fear that need to be exorcised.”

From a Mercedes Benz ad campaign, Illustrators: Gil Aviyam, Lena Guberman

When I first started studying spontaneous singing, it was a pretty right-brained affair. I was practicing with other singers and we were being … spontaenous.

It was great! There was all this fun — and freedom! — exploring melodies and language while playing with time and groove.

Sure, we sang exercises where I had to count measures or had a very specific singing job to accomplish, but — hey, it was improv — I broke the rules if I wanted.

After a couple of years, I felt like I was getting pretty good at this “improv” stuff. Except …

…

I could not find a way to bring my spontaneous singing into my other singing. And it felt like a right-brain, left-brain issue to me. (In hindsight, believing that there were two kinds of singing was likely a big part of my problem.)

Ask me to make up a melody or groove and I obliged happily. Any time I tried to scat or improvise in a song, however, I just … couldn’t.

I’d feel silly. Or I’d be singing somewhere where “messing up” would be inappropriate (and unappreciated) so I’d get scared.

My mind would go completely blank. I had no ideas. Worse yet (because of the panic), I couldn’t hear anything.

…

Something happened to me when I tried to improvise in a song with players that was TOTALLY different from when I improvised only with singers.

It felt like there was this giant wall in the middle of my brain. If I was singing an actual song, I couldn’t invent and if I was inventing, I couldn’t find the form or structure of a song.

It was like my spontaneous singing self lived on the wrong side of the tracks and was, if not actually unwelcome in songs with a form, made to feel she had arrived at the wrong time wearing the wrong outfit.

It didn’t help that the kind of improvising I was learning to do seemed completely separated from how my instrumentalist friends talked about and approached improvising.

I was looking for a magic doorway or secret passage that would let me reach the right side of my brain from the left and vice versa, and I couldn’t find it. For a time, I was well and truly stuck.

…

Flash forward a few years. I had finished music school and was participating in a year-long vocal improv course.

Things changed.

If I’m honest I can’t say exactly how or when, but they did.

Eventually I noticed that I could think while I was improvising. And I could hear.

I had ideas.

Improvising now felt like exploring a magical, new (or ancient) land, rather than stumbling around in the creepy basement of a haunted house.

In other words, it stopped feeling scary and started to feel exciting.

…

So what happened?

Well, I think I learned to trust myself enough to stop panicking and start listening. I stopped thinking about my spontaneous singing and my “other” singing as  two different things. When I sang, I sang. Sometimes I improvised, sometimes I didn’t.

In songs, I started using the structure of a song to help me create rather than feeling like it boxed me in.

I also gave myself permission and created a space (my monthly Songtaneous sessions) where I could practice improvising.

And I practiced. And practiced (and practiced).

…

In short, I built a bridge.

See, I had been looking for a magical doorway or opening so I could move from one side of my brain to the other. What I found (through a lot of practice) was a bridge that connected the two. (This makes complete sense; music is one of the only activities that engages the whole brain.)

Now when I improvise, I feel like I am standing in the middle of a bridge and ideas come to me from both sides of my brain.

I never had to travel between my right and left brain or cross some great (and imaginary) divide. I had to learn to build a bridge with the music and trust it to hold me and the song.

…

Speaking of practice …

I will teach a scatting workshop — Scat Singing Basics Improvising in Songs — on October 29th. My good friend Jennifer Parker has agreed to join us so we can work on singing spontaneously in songs and with an instrumentalist. Jen is a great piano player and an amazing jazz singer & improviser.

To learn more or register, click here.