Who Run the World? Depersonalizing your voice and getting fierce...Sasha Fierce. Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of "Who Run The World?"  This post is the second part of a 3 part series! If you have not already, please see Part 1!  

My friend Veronica, Mr. Kristoff and me after a concert

When I was in High School I had a really awesome chorus teacher who loved Musical Theater.  His name was Mr.Kristoff.

He spent his free periods singing with whoever wanted to come and sing with him, and if you brought a vocal selections book to him you could just plop it down on the piano and he would play through the entire thing with you.  I would cut class to go sing with him (as many of us did) and   he introduced me to so many of what are still my favorite songs like everything from The Last Five Years and a song called Miss Byrd.  (I know what you're thinking and, yes, he recommended a song with lyrics such as “My nipples start to throb inside my bra” to a 15 year old.  If you knew him you wouldn't be surprised. He also used to shove me into my locker, call me Bonehead, stick his fingers up my nose when I wasn't paying attention and give me wet willies.  He was THE most inappropriate person but he loved his job and his students.)  Mr. Kristoff passed away at the end of my junior year.

We had some substitute teachers step in and during that time we were also starting rehearsals for a school show.  There I am… I was Maria Von Trapp…

The Sound of Music .... could I have straightened my lederhosen for the cast photo?

I remember rehearsing one of the songs at the piano with a substitute teacher for the first time and he said I wasn’t singing the way Maria would sound and that it was too "bright." Now, if you know me, you know that my singing voice does happen to be very bright because I basically taught myself by obsessively listening to The Little Mermaid and Sherie Rene Scott recordings.  At that time, I didn’t know how to make darker sounds at all even if I wanted to.  I only knew how to sing in the voice Tom now calls “The Jen-DeRosa-In-The-Shower Voice”:  Bright, squeaky, highest larynx in the world.  But Mr. Kristoff always made me feel so good about my voice even despite its squeakyness!  We would sing for hours and he never said anything about making it sound darker.

I hadn’t had a formal voice lesson in my entire life and any and all criticism was a direct hit to my little nerdy soul.  In a weird way, I probably would rather have heard, "Jen is fat," in high school than, "Jen can't sing," because I knew I could always cut back on the ice cream, but my voice was my voice!  I couldn't change that!  Well, I couldn't change it at the time, anyway.  When I started to listen to the Parade cast recording and imitating Carolee Carmello is when I figured shit out and started developing what you might think of as a vocal alter ego.  Then I started just playing around with singing roles that were totally wrong for me... Mother in Ragtime, Lily in Kiss Me Kate....  And that's when I realized, "Maybe it's not just a joke that I can make myself sound like this! Maybe this is what the substitute teacher was asking for!"

Carolee Carmello-- You Don't Know This Man, Parade



When I consciously brought just a little of that older voice into my Maria rehearsals is when it started feeling easier to sing for a new teacher.  When I got feedback, I wasn't taking it as personally because he wasn't commenting on MY voice.  Now he would be commenting on a voice I was putting on for that play.  And I wasn't so territorial about the thought of changing what Mr. Kristoff and I had worked on together.  I started to understand that I could have more than one voice and that I could save the brighter one for my other songs. 

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Here's a piece of a coaching I had just this March!  I decided to just go sing for an hour with a coach I made friends with. Listen to what happened!

Years later and people are still asking me to make the same adjustment.  After that run-through, the coach told me I should make the darker voice my default because "it's a more lovely sound."  Did I cry?  Did I take it personally? No! I laughed about it and took it as a fun challenge!  He asked for another voice and so I translated that in my head to, "Ok. You're asking for the mom character who is 15 yrs older than me and has 48DDD's," and I sang that way instead.  Easy on my brain and easy on my soul because, truthfully, I don't consider any of my voices "MY REAL VOICE" anymore....not even the squeaky, bright one.  They're all my voices and some people prefer to hear one over the other, that's all.

If you can learn to weave in and out of a couple of vocal alter egos, it can make whatever feedback you get a lot easier to swallow.  You can stand back after your performance, hear the feedback objectively because it's as if it were about someone else, and then take the adjustment rather than want to quit.  We have to train ourselves to separate our identities from our voices, voices which are inherently personal because they belong to us!

Here's what you can do to start developing your vocal alter ego(s):

• Occasionally sing some songs that are just totally wrong for you. I personally like singing Home from The Wiz. I'm clearly never going to play Dorothy... but I've learned a lot from fooling around with that song and trying to imitate Stephanie Mills, and I can apply what I learned to the songs that are actually right for me.  
• Think of your voice as clothes. How many times has your mom said she hates your outfit? I know my mom has told me that plenty of times.  Do I give a shit or get offended? Most of the time, it's just annoying because I thought I looked nice when I left my apartment and maybe she doesn't get it because she doesn't live in NYC... but I know I can always change my clothes when I'm with her and wear what I want to wear later.  
• As you start learning how to imitate other singers take notice of whether your personal aesthetic has changed.  Are you starting to prefer the 48DDD character? Are the voices of your alter egos starting to creep into your home base? If so, that's not a bad thing. It just means you're more versatile and have more choices!
• This is the biggest thing I can say about depersonalizing.  Are you ready?  When you are imitating someone else, instead of thinking "That's not how I sing," think of it like "That's not how I USUALLY sing."  That IS how you sing... because that voice is coming from YOUR throat!  It's just not where you first think to go when someone asks you to produce a sound.  Even if the Carolee Carmello voice doesn't feel organic to me, it's still an extension of MY voice.     And when someone gives me an adjustment on that voice it's a little easier to take because it's not MY voice that they want to change... it's basically Carolee's ;)  
• Read the third and final section of this post coming soon!

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I'm remembering how when Mr. Kristoff wanted us to sound a certain way he would demonstrate it in a woman's voice and ask us to imitate him.... as if a girl imitating a man imitating a woman would sound at all normal... but he didn't care what he sounded like... he just knew that was how he needed to perform to get the job done....  And even though that's not how he usually sang... his woman voice was still one of his voices!  It'll be 9 years this June since Mr. Kristoff passed away and I can still hear that funny lady opera voice.  I don't know if that voice was his Sasha Fierce or if he even knew who Beyonce was, but he was a goddamn good male soprano if I ever heard one!

Who Run the World? Depersonalizing your voice and getting fierce....Sasha Fierce. PART 1:

"Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I'm working and when I'm on the stage...I have someone else that takes over when it's time for me to work and when I'm on stage, this alter ego that I've created that kind of protects me and who I really am."  - Beyonce Knowles

A lot of people rolled their eyes about Beyonce when she started making people call her Sasha Fierce.

But listen, this woman had the right idea.  She’s now one of the most successful women in the world.  Maybe there’s something to be said for creating and using an alter ego. 

**Disclaimer:  I do not have Multiple Personality Disorder.  I promise.

This past year I learned a lot about myself.  I had to student teach in 2 public schools to earn my Master’s Degree, and part of that required being observed four times by a supervisor who would submit my results to the Department of Education.  Now,  I even get nervous to this day to teach in front of Tom at TBVS.  When Tom watches me work with someone I’m spontaneously paralyzed, can’t play the piano and I start stuttering.  That being said, I had to get a grip because in September I suddenly found myself in a blazer and standing in front of a predominantly Chinese-speaking second grade class.  Panic ensued.  How does this relate to singing or performing at all?  I will tell you.

So even though people usually call me “Jenderosa,” my name is Jennifer and people rarely call me that.  I usually even introduce myself as Jennifer and, even if I’m the only Jennifer in the building, somehow everyone calls me “Jenderosa” anyway. But no one in my family calls me "Jenderosa" because... well... we're all DeRosa's so that would be weird.  So I am usually in Jennifer mode when I’m at a family party because the people there call me Jennifer. When I'm in "Jennifer mode,” I am quiet, introspective and observant, and, up until a few years ago, if you were to watch me at said family party you might have suspected that I had social anxiety disorder or something because I could be awkward as hell or found sitting in a corner with a pinot grigio.  A special skill of mine while in Jennifer mode is that I am undefeated when it comes to not getting kicked out of the kitchen because I know how to help while staying out of my mother's way. Every other family member gets screamed at and kicked out every single time.  It’s like a running joke.

At the studio, Tom calls me Jen DeRosa and when I’m teaching I would say I am not nearly as shy as I am where I’m referred to as Jennifer.  I’ve learned (and it was not easy) to use “Jenderosa” instead of Jennifer in the studio because Jenderosa is not AS awkward, she can carry a conversation without freaking out and she can think clearly under pressure.  She is a fighter; not a “flighter” and she can get the job done.   

During the first days of student teaching, I thought it would be most helpful to the real classroom teacher to be like how I am when I’m in the kitchen with my mom.  I essentially stood in a corner until I was needed to go reach something high in a cupboard.  But then I realized I was useless.  My Fight or Flight response was turned on “Flight mode” because, in my eyes, I’d just be in the way if I tried to help, but really I was just in the way because I wasn’t helping at all! I felt like I wasn't good enough, I thought the classroom teacher hated me, I considered a career change, etc.   I thought, "I wish I could feel the way I feel when I'm teaching voice lessons."  And then I realized, "Well, why can't I do that?" 

So I decided to experiment with something.  I brought my voice teacher self, Jenderosa, into that classroom even though I wasn’t teaching voice and something clicked.  I was a much better teacher, I thought faster on my feet, my supervisor gave me more responsibilities, and I felt more comfortable in general.  It was like a totally bipolar experience.  I was suddenly excited to go everyday instead of secretly plotting how I could get out of it.  The same cycle happened when I switched placements and had to be in a high school.  I was placed at LaGuardia High School and was feeling a lot of pressure. So I decided to do the same experiment.  The first few days I wanted to die and then I decidedly turned my voice teacher personality on the second I walked past the security guard in the mornings and felt so much better.  I was still myself but a stronger version of myself who could perform successfully without the annoying negative self-talk getting in the way.  And if I did mess up, I got over it a hell of a lot faster because it was Jenderosa’s mistake; not mine.   Jenderosa is my Sasha Fierce.

Some random production of Jack & The Beanstalk

Something else that got me thinking about alter egos is that someone recently told me that they can do anything on stage when they know it's Children's Theater, but that they are overcome with stage fright when they step out in front of adults to the point of not being able to perform.  That stuck with me and got me thinking:  The “This isn't the real me” thing helps her, too! In her subconscious, she’s probably thinking, "I'm not afraid to look like an asshole because this is not what I really do.  This is not Chekhov.  I'm just playing around to make the kids laugh."   Ironically, in the process of doing this kind of show, she ends up doing some of her best work because all of that judgy junk isn't in her way.  She allows herself to play and isn't concerned about getting negative feedback because the work isn't so personal.   

Into the Woods, Public Theater

There is value to this kind of play/practice because while our subtext is "I'm not taking myself seriously in this moment, so you shouldn't take me seriously either," we let the self judgment go and we can give ourselves an opportunity to discover things about our abilities and talents that can potentially be valuable to the work we do when we do want people to take us seriously.  

This is how you can start to find your own Sasha Fierce:   

• Try to identify other people's Sasha Fierces. Think about it. Lady Gaga didn't start taking the sunglasses off and losing the weird British accent in interviews until fairly recently. For Christ's sake, she even found the loophole for the red carpet interviews by arriving in an egg! (Maybe I should try that at the next Baby Shower I have to go to.) Up until then, she really used that persona to stay grounded during her interviews so she could accurately represent the brand she had created for herself. Take a gander at this: Beyonce Idolization Spawns Alter Ego for Adele

• Think about where you're most confident in your performance life. You could be most confident when you're cooking, when you're dancing, heck you might even be most confident when you're fooling around with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Wherever you find this version of you, name her something. Then bring her along when you have to go to an audition or sing in public (Make sure she has clothes on, though.). 
• If you're one of those people who say, "I can do it in my voice lesson but it doesn't work when I go to auditions," I bet you there is something about the way you're thinking that is inconsistent, too.  Try to measure how relaxed you are, how confident you feel and how much fun you're having at your voice lessons.  It's good to be as aware of yourself as possible when you're in a relaxed circumstance so you have markers for how you should try to make yourself feel the day you need to perform.  When you're relaxed at your voice lesson and laughing and thinking about getting Taco Bell later, are you clenching your ass or sticking your neck out? Maybe not!  It's just good to be aware.
• Don't underestimate the importance of how you sing when you're just joking. I can't tell you how many times girls have come in and said "I need to sing like Kelli Ohara" and then when I say, "Well how would this sound if you were making fun of opera?" they sound really close to the sound they’re actually looking for. 
• And most importantly, treat yourself to some lessons specifically when you're not preparing for something. Tell the coach you're just there to play. Secretly, you'll be working just as hard as you always do, but he doesn't have to know that. You will create an instant low stakes situation while you take some mental notes of what works.
• Read Part 2 of this post coming soon!

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This past week I was formally observed for the last time on my student teaching journey.  The feedback I've gotten consistently from both of my observers has been "You have a great teaching persona!  Anything that you did that may have needed some adjustment in your lesson is secondary to having a good teaching persona.  You can't learn that!"

Little do they know..... ;)

ET TU, VOCE?: PART DEUX

Guys, look what I friggin found. You gotta see before you draw. Bam!

ET TU, VOCE?

I have a few students who can sing whistle tones like Mariah Carey. When I try to compete with them, it's totally impossible and I look like Kermit the frog when Miss Piggy is hugging him too hard.
I'd like to be able to sing that way and I can verbally articulate what I'd like to be able to do, but the notes just don't come out no matter how much I hope they do before I open my mouth.  The stubborn Irish/Italian girl in me doesn't allow me to listen to any Mariah Carey recordings, by the way.  She tells me I should just be able to make these sounds without listening or having any point of reference whatsoever because I'm a proficient singer and I should know how to do it without help. When I inevitably fail, I get aggravated in my Irish/Italian way about how my brain doesn't make a noise that high.  I know what you're thinking: "You mean your voice can't make noises that high."  Take a seat on the carpet! It's time for a story, children!  

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There was once a young Italian painter. He had a palette of beautiful colors, and ceiling-high stacks of canvases covered in passion-filled strokes lined the perimeter of his teeny apartment. The painter painted every waking hour. There was nothing he would rather do than paint the Tuscan sunset or countryside with its beautiful flowers and Cypress trees. But the poor, young painter rarely sold a painting.

After several days of living on but crumbs and water, he went to the town marketplace to find what food he could afford. There he saw many of his friends from painting school. He found his friend Giancarlo selling his famous paintings of dogs wearing hats. He found Franco selling his famous paintings of dogs wearing hats and he saw Stefano selling his famous paintings of dogs wearing hats. Paintings of dogs wearing hats were all the rage in Tuscany and they were flying off the easels before the young painter's very eyes. Giancarlo, Franco and Stefano counted their Lira while the young painter scrounged for a measly apple.
Giancarlo approached the young artist with glee and said, "Take a look at our dog paintings.  You must  paint dogs wearing hats so you can eat and be fat like us."
The young artist nodded his head in agreement but wondered if he could paint a dog in a hat.  He had only learned about landscapes in painting school and had never tried to paint such a thing.

On his way home he shouted to God in his thick Italian accent, "Why-a, God-a? I paint-a such-a beautiful-a landscapes of the Tuscan-a countryside with-a such-a skill... such-a panache...and nobody will buy a single painting! If I must-a paint dog picture to eat, then I must!"

When he got home, he picked up his palette and nervously held his favorite brush in his hand.  He put the brush on the canvas.  He closed his eyes and began to paint.  To his surprise, he felt his hand making swirls and circles and thought, "This surely must be the best painting I have ever painted!"
After hours and hours of swirls and circles, he shouted, "And now I open my eyes to see my painting." The young painter opened his eyes. His jaw dropped in awe. It certainly was the best painting of his career thus far, but to his dismay, he had not painted a dog with a hat.  He had painted the Tuscan sunset over the countryside covered with verdant, green Cypress trees and red and orange poppies. The young artist's eyes filled with hot tears. "This is the ugliest painting I have ever painted! I will never eat again!  My brush, you have betrayed me!"
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Because Musical Theater is not only an art, it is a business, we can't always depend on the gorgeous landscapes we have in our back pockets to make us money even though they're fun to paint and they make us feel like real artists. Sometimes the sounds in demand are, unfortunately, the dogs wearing the hats.  For instance, high belting is a sound that is in demand right now.  Do we all do that naturally?  No, of course not, but we need to be versatile if we want to work more often.   On the same note, many of us Musical Theater people have a hard time singing pop music. We close our eyes, take a deep breath and just hope whatever we're singing comes out authentically pop/rock enough for the casting director to buy it.  I know, personally, I didn’t understand for a long time what made pop music poppy or rock music rocky.  Finally, a genius named Sheri Sanders published a book on how Musical Theater artists can cross over into pop/rock.  To supplement what she writes in the book, she suggests listening to some pop singers on Pandora to get accustomed to their styles and to hear a variety of new songs you wouldn't have heard otherwise.  Once I forced myself to sit down and take notice of what these singers were actually doing and stopped myself from trying to reinvent the wheel, I finally got a grasp of what I was supposed to tell my voice to do and not what I should expect my voice to be able to know how to do on its own.    (As a side note, if you have not read this book, then you need to read it immediately: )

Rock The Audition by Sheri Sanders (featuring Tom Burke!)

When I was 12, I did a production of Into The Woods.  It was my first show and I was cast in the ensemble (... I was seriously the only ensemble member... I basically WAS the ensemble....) but luckily the girl playing Florinda quit so I got bumped up to Florinda.  The girl playing Cinderella was maybe 16 and she had a great voice. I tried to sing Steps of the Palace at home and it just wasn't happening.  It was way too high for me and it only went up to a D.  I remember asking her after she stepped off the stage from a rehearsal with the piano, "How do you do that?" and she said "Do what?" I said, "Sing that high!" and she said, "Oh, that's not that high!" I was stunned.  It sure felt high to me!  I went home, switched my Irish/Italian attitude to that of a Scotland Yard detective and really practiced my ass off from the time I was 12 to the time I was 14 without the help of a teacher. I got a full octave under my belt just by listening really hard.
Looking back now, I couldn't actually “visualize” those notes with my ears , similarly to how I can't hear those Mariah Carey whistle tones with my "mind's ear" now. I've listened to Musical Theater repertoire every day for the past fifteen years so now I know what to do. I can hear it in my head before I open my mouth. But I certainly haven't listened to enough Mariah Carey to really understand what the hell is going on up there.  (My friend Norman, on the other hand, HAS listened to Mariah Carey every day and he CAN hit those notes. And he's a guy. So there's something to be said for THAT.)

While learning how to paint dogs in hats, we need to understand what a dog in a hat looks like before we put the brush on the canvas.  We can't just close our eyes, hope to God it looks right and then be disappointed when we open them and we didn't get our wish.  We can't blame our brushes (or voices), either.  They're just the tools.  We're the bosses.   We've got to have a plan and we've got to come prepared.  What kind of dog?  What kind of hat? What size brush? Which colors?

Maybe if I really sat and listened to Mariah Carey every day like Norman does I could come close to hitting some of those whistle tones, but I just haven't done that! I can't be mad at my voice for not knowing what to do when my brain doesn't even know! Nobody wants to listen to a Jackson Pollock vocalist. That's a mess.

This guy is a great multitasker... 
he can also balance on a thing!

Here are some things to think about:

• Don’t get distracted by the acting.  Use your left brain to take notice of the technical things that have to happen aside from the dramatic aspect of it. Then when you've got some muscle memory...
• you can use your right brain! But I am begging you-- don't turn your left brain back off!!! Don’t negate all the technical vocal work you’ve just done.  It’s like the tummy rub, head pat thing.  You’ve got to multitask!!
• Don't get frustrated with yourself. It might not be that you just can't do it... it could be that you just don't understand it yet. When you go on a trip, you know your destination and hopefully you look at a map to figure out how to get there first. Teleportation doesn't exist yet. Don't let the stubborn Irish/Italian girl who lives in you deny you your right to the map.
• Try not to compare your work to your friends' work, and recognize that just because your work isn't what people want to hang on their walls right now doesn't mean it's not amazing. The painter wanted to quit just because he wanted to paint a dog but could only paint a tree. The tree is great! Keep the tree! Bring the tree to the marketplace and convince people they need the tree! Just keep practicing the dog!
• Record, record, record!!! When you get it right and you don't have it recorded so you can go back and see what the hell you did ... I will kill you!
• Take a look at your landscapes and see if you can find any little dogs in hats sneaking around. You might already be accessing the sound you're looking for without even realizing it... and the pressure of making that sound in THIS particular song is freaking you out. I swear to God, when I am fooling around and singing Beyonce songs in the shower I can hit certain high notes, and then in the context of a Mariah song I just cannot do it. I need to teach my brain not to get freaked out when I think of it being a Mariah note. It's the same freakin' note! Just not in a Beyonce song!

In closing, I promise to listen to some Mariah Carey over the next couple of weeks and I will report back. Holy Jesus, here we go.  Sorry, new neighbors!

[**The story about the young artist may have sounded like Hans Christian Andersen could have written it ... but I actually made it up.  All rights reserved.  ;)  ]

I PRACTICE WHAT I PREACH!