Facing Your Fears
A little, 8 year old girl stares with fear in her eyes at her mom as the mom dials a specific phone number. There is a lot at stake. This phone call will decide whether she gets to take music classes to learn to play the block flute recorder like most of the other kids at school are already doing. This is something she wants very much.
The mom greets the person at the other end of the line and after couple minutes of "how are you doing" chitchat she asks, "my daughter wants to learn to play the block flute recorder, but she is completely tone deaf. Do you think it will ever work?". Thankfully, the music teacher smells money in the shape of yet another student and says, "sure that might work".
The little girl is extremely excited and promises to try to do her best, practice, and not make a fool out of herself when her mom gives her the permission to join. She does her best and later starts playing the organ and the clarinet instead of the block flute recorder. She joins the local brass concert band and later gets the opportunity to play in national level brass concert band comprised out of the best from each local brass concert band. She still is under the believe that she is tone deaf and that she should sing very softly or lip sync when forced to sing in a choir at school.
Many years later when the girl has to move to go to another school, she join another music school to keep playing the clarinet. The girl learns that she will have to sing as a part of the music program there. She has always been told that she cannot sing and hence believes she would be kicked out if she tried to sing in front of the teacher. She can't bear the possibility of that shame and decides to drop out.
A decade later the girls starts hearing about Singstar. She has all those year secretly believed she was not tone deaf but has always feared that she is simply too tone deaf to hear that she is. It never made sense though. She wants to try Singstar, the Playstation karaoke, but is afraid.
One day the girl has the chance and decides to face her fears. She sends her boyfriend out to jog and watches him jog away outside the window to make sure he isn't sitting outside the door listening. She also makes him promise to ring the doorbell before he comes in. She sits down, starts sweating, shakes, and is truly petrified when she sings the first tunes of Madonna's Material girl....
To her big surprise the Playstation program tell her that she is a "Superstar". Then on second try she is a "Totally Singstar"... She tries more songs and at higher level of difficulty and still she is manages to be a "Lead singer" few times. After all those years her suspicion is confirmed. She isn't tonedeaf. She just has an extremely boring and a not so pretty voice. That she can live with.
This girls wants to tell everybody one important lesson she learned from all of this.
Disclaimer: This does not mean that the girl will ever play Singstar with anyone. She still has some years to go before she can fully regain her confidence.
Trying not to hold a grudge!
Henrik, what in the world makes you think this girl works at Opera:-O? Hehe I think the girl will limit her singing to Singstar when she is home alone. She is really bad:-).
This girl has basically not touched her Clarniet since the day she dropped out. It is too late and really not that sad since she had more of a practiced talent than real talent. It is just sad that such a thing stopped her from having fun a little longer and caused her all this grief.
Carlson, thanks for the lesson in names! I never knew a "block flute" was called a recorder. I would never have guessed that those two are the same. And the Icelandic dictionary was obviously wrong in telling me that it was brass band that I played:-). I need to go and fix my entry.
You realize that 200 dollar aren't that much. Your friends could easily pitch in and send you to Idol;-).
Anonymous, you are right. Singing should be for fun. I have a lot of fun trying Singstar home alone and singing songs that are way too difficult for me. I don't think I would enjoy it much to sing in front of other people though:-).
After hearing your story about the girlfriend that was tonedeaf I keep wondering if the mom of this girl is really the one that was tone deaf or if maybe I used to be and trained myself into not being so when learning to play.
In any case, this girl is just happy that she tried Singstar and just wants to forget the past!
Blockflöte spielen mit Noten aus dem verlag
If it makes you happier, it is called "blockflöjt" in Swedish and "blockflöte" in German. Perhaps it is the English speaking who make things more complicated than they have to? :-)
200 dollar was choosen as a reasonable amount to make it worth doing it, not a bizarre large amount to prevent it from happening. Similar to the joke about a man asking a woman if she would have sex with him for $500,000 and after consideration she says yes. Then he asks if she would have sex with him for $50. She gets upset and asks what kind of woman he thinks she is, to which he replies "I already know, I'm just trying to find out the price." :-/
I'm sure if someone pointed a gun at you, you would be able to play a few tones on your clarinet, in particular if you once were in a youth national band, even if the population on Iceland is not that large.
Few notes maybe
Yes, I guessed that the name might be Scandinavian/Swedish oriented.
Sure I might be able to get out few notes but I get tired quickly and I have lost the smoothness. It is an instrument that you need to maintain. I am also not that excited to get back my never ending sore on my chin after having a wet tree thing lying next to it a lot:-).
Btw. liked your joke:-)
Opera-musicians?
Just out of curiosity, is this girl on the opera-musicians mailing list?
-Henrik
Sing out loud...
Singing is something people are meant to do for fun. Have a couple of extra beers one day and play singstar with me. I mostly suck at it, but I have fun. And if I have enough fun, that seems to compensate for my actual lack of ability to follow the tune, and other people around enjoy it too. (These are my friends I am talking about - I know they are not that polite :) ).
And anyone who can play an instrument decently must have some idea about tone, even if it is learned more or less mechanically. I always learned instruments mechanically rather than by ear, since I really do have poor hearing for tone - sometimes I can spot a tone that is wrong, others I simply don't notice. And even if I do, I can't always get the right one...
But yeah, don't believe everything people tell you. On the other hand, you know that stuf they tell little kids about not running in front of cars? Sometimes they're right. It's the awful thing about they... and why they are sometimes believable when they're totally wrong :(
I had a girlfriend once who insisted I was tone deaf. Since everyone had told me that, I believed her. I listened carefully, and got some other people to. She was the tone-deaf one. But it didn't matter - she sang because she enjoyed it, and anyone who didn't was welcome to move... in the end, even people who sing like howling dogs or crying cats (and she did...) can use music to make people happy. Because as wonderful as some music is, the performance is about a lot of things, not just the music - especially when singing.
I'd like to teach the world to sing...
Cute tale. Some comments:
The "block flute" is better known as recorder, most probably treble or soprano recorder. I still use my one from 2nd grade, although it has a lot of tear by now.
I suppose having a "music ear" helps a lot, but theoretically even a tone deaf person who is motivated and intelligent enough to learn notation and fingering would pick up how to play the recorder or most other simple woodwind instruments fairly good.
I believe the little girl with the clarinet played in a wind ensemble or concert band. Technically, a brass band would only consist of brass instruments such as trumpets, horns, baritones, euphoniums and tubas, plus some drums. However, it is a common mistake to mix up brass band and concert band.
I have no idea how Singstar works or how it measures skill. I know I totally and utterly suck at singing - I've been told, and when I record my own voice and play back, I know they're right - but I have vast musical skills in terms of playing an instrument, arranging a tune or even compose my own. I probably wouldn't audition for Idol and spoil a whole day waiting unless someone offered me $200 or more.
Although I have my reasons to despise clarinet :-), do you still play it? Maybe there is a concert band (janitsjar) somewhere in Oslo which is on a suitable level. There are a lot of those bands in Norway, and the Norwegian championship takes place in five divisions (difficulty level) every year. For the upper divisions, some bands even take part of a qualification round a half year before the main event.