Second Time is Not the Charm

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                                                       Life Never Stops, I Guess?

    Last week was the first full week of the Fall 2024 semester. This was a great way to start the school year! Although, the world keeps spinning and life outside of school never stops. I have been struggling with allergies since this past weekend into this full second week of school. So, this weeks blog will take notice of different professors policies within being sick and healthily taking care of yourself. I will also be able to comment for the first time on what practicing for these specific instruments has been like!

    This second week has been rough, but not because of school. Personally, I have always struggled with sinus issues and getting sick quiet easily. So over the past weekend, I took time to recover and rest as much as I could hoping to come back on Tuesday and be health enough to sing. I was unsure how healthy I would need to be. and I also was not sure when I would be completely health again. 

    On Monday, I was feeling better but continued to have a runny nose, sore throat, and hoarse voice. So, I showed up to my lesson on Tuesday and would let my voice professor know that I had been struggling with sinus issues. She would walk over to the piano to try and play it, just to find out that it was still out of tune, so even if I wanted to sing then we would not have a piano available. Instead, she would tell me to reschedule so I did not push my voice and allow it to rest instead of working that muscle. She shared that she had Covid-19 over the summer and sang with it and still has not felt the same since. 

   

    I have a history with sickness and needing to reschedule vocal lessons. In previous years, I have rescheduled my final singing exams because I was sick and completely lost my voice for a few days. I was told to go on vocal rest to try and speed my recovery up. Vocal rest is when someone completely stop talking until feeling better, and many vocalists participate in vocal rest before a performance or when different viruses start going around to spare their vocal chords of any pressure. My previous professor would also allow me to either reschedule or allow me to speak through my repertoire. Repertoire often refers to what you are singing but you will really only hear this word used in classical music. When I would show up for my lessons, she would ask if I felt comfortable with singing and if not then we would speak my music in rhythm. I would speak the music the way it would be sung without straining my voice. We could also work on counting the music. This includes knowing how long to hold a note or for how many counts a note is held, knowing how long rests are, and knowing when to start singing after the intro is finished. 

  

  I asked my current professor when I saw her on Tuesday what her policy is on being sick or needing to make up lessons. She told me that she would like to play most by ear and we can make up my lesson next week. She has an opening after my lesson, so instead of a 30 minute lesson like normal, I will be having an hour lesson. I was told to keep listening to what she has given me and have a certain opinion of what I want to sing. 

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    Now instead of feeling down about not being able to sing, I put most of my energy into playing the guitar. Well, the energy I had after days of feeling sick. I slowly started to understand that the guitar is intricate but also delicate. The main thing I have learned from this week of practice is, the guitar is huge and if you have no spatial awareness you WILL bang it on EVERYTHING. I sat down to play on the floor of my room and the first thing I did was knock over a water bottle that was next to me. I am surprised how big this instrument is, for even when I carry it around on campus I hit the hard case on most doors. I never knew opening doors and running through them would be such a valuable tool.

    Another thing I learned is how to read a chord sheet. A chord sheet is basically a 'cheat sheet' to tell the instrumentalist what notes to play at a certain time. I came to realize that a guitar chord sheet is a huge help and very different from a piano sheet. I played the piano from a young age, so I knew most notes and how to read music. Although, I would like to explain this guitar chord sheet.

    This is a typically guitar chord sheet, do you want to know how easy it is to read this? First, what you are looking at is a typical guitar. The top of the guitar is where the A is and the strings are below. Now, look at the strings, and put your fingers exactly where you see the O on the strings. Next, look above the strings or next to the A, and these X and O's tell you what string to strum. So you strum every note that has on O above or on the strings. You're done, put three fingers on the strings and strum everything but the top string with an X. There you go, you played an A chord!

    To say all this is easy is being over simplistic, for it is easy to read and not so easy to play and memorize. While I might say reading this chart is easy, I cannot play this chord off of memory and still have to look at a chart to even remember what chord this is! I feel like I had higher expectations for myself, but it is only the second week!

    I decided to have fun with practice this week. I downloaded a tuning app that also provides chord charts to different popular songs. Not only do they provide the chords but they also provide a play along with specific lessons for how to play these famous songs. There is a lot more than just strumming and holding down the strings on a guitar. You will have different ways to strum and strings you will have to specifically avoid strumming. I think I might have been a little dumbfounded and maybe too overconfident in my abilities to easily pick up the guitar. There is a lot more that I ever realized and this was the first question my guitar professor asked me in my lesson this week.

    "What was your first week practicing like? What have you learned?" he would ask. My main answer was just how delicate everything was. The placement of your fingers matters, for its the difference between the nice sound of a vibrating note or the flat sound of a string being chocked. I had to file my nails down before the lesson due to not being able to touch the strings like I was comfortable with. The tip of my fingers on my left hand now hurt typing this from playing the guitar so much! 

    As I was going on this little rant, my guitar professor would stop me to say that it is okay to not pick it up fast. With the piano your hands are pressing two separate notes, but with the guitar, the hands are doing two completely separate motions that require more trust in yourself. 

    My lesson today was more practice of moving my fingers comfortably across multiple strings and  believing in myself enough to still move my fingers even if the placement is wrong. His biggest joke today was if you quit strumming to check your finger placement in between every chord, then what is the band going to sound like with the guitar stopping every few seconds? The purpose is to make mistakes to get the feeling of the guitar. The most common warm up taught to me is simply moving my fingers to different strings while looking at my fingers. Simply placing my fingers on the string and pressing down and then letting go of that pressure. It is just that feeling of the string is what matters.

    I am excited to announce that my first guitar song for this semester is hopefully Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison.  Without telling me in the lesson, he gave me this sheet of paper with chords to play and ways to strum. By the end of the lesson, he played all the chords together and I immediately understood that I was learning chords to Brown Eyed Girl! The sheet of paper was now my homework and had everything I needed to complete my first song. 

    I was scared to start these journeys because I felt that I might give up or become frustrated easily by these instruments. But, these vocal and guitar lessons have been an escape from my other classes. I still stand by my first blog in recommending these lessons, for I now have more knowledge in music and actually have an outlet from school that I have never had before.

        - Emma Peppo