GANEIDA'S KNOT.

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Quaker by conviction, mother by default, Celticst through love, Christ follower because I once was lost but now am found...

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Wednesday's Woes.

I'm not really a good singer. But most people aren't, either. Robyn Hitchcock.


Ditz has her moments. I told her she had a fortnight to prepare for her audition. She looked me straight in the eye & said, "Mum, that's 6 days. I have 6 days." She was right. She did have 6 days. I'm the one who can't count ~ or read the calendar. Something.


I believe Ditz said something about killing Alison which I chose to ignore, poor kid. She was buzzing like a bumble bee in a bottle & kept asking me what she was going to sing. Naturally any suggestion I made was met with rolled eyes & disparaging comments. Six days just isn't long enough to learn the sort of songs that Ditz normally chooses for her audition ~ ethereal, harmonically difficult, key changing songs that I actually like & enjoy even though I'm not doing the choosing ~ which is a good thing when I have to listen to them ad infinitum. No way was Ditz going to get something like that together in 6 days.


U~Tube. Don't you just love U~tube? This is what cheesey pop songs are for, folks! Musically unchallenging, lyrically repetitive, completely uninspiring. I can assure you that 6 days of listening to I want you to want meeee every available waking moment & I too wanted to kill Alison! A Cheap Trick hit that sold millions that really makes you wonder what people are feeding their brain.


I seriously don't think this song moves out of one octave but at least there's none of those high operatic notes either that give me such a pain in the head! We are talking about a song where I can hit most of the notes & I have about a 5 note range! Ditz complained I kept getting the words wrong but she would sing it in the car & it's one of those terrible, mindless songs that gets stuck in your head & goes round & round. UGH!


So we bused in to town early so we could pick up our Singaporean dollars [2 weeks & counting down to lift~off folks] & I picked up a pair of washable silk pants for me [A$10~at the thrift shop & nothing at all wrong with them] detoured into the craft shop for the metal bits so we can hang our paintings which we did manage to meet the Art exhibition entry deadline for this year before wandering up to the school for Ditz's audition.


We timed it a bit early so Ditz could duck into the loos & change into her *audition top* & were all ready to go when Alison arrived. She was the bearer of good news. Ditz has passed her exam. No details yet except that she was very soft, which she is in her upper register, but a pass is a pass & given the way Ditz feels about exams any sort of a pass is a bonus. I like the exams because it is something tangible I can show her supervisor for all the music Ditz does for *school*.


Scales. Ditz can manage close to 3 octaves on a good day. According to Alison she's gone by her high G. According to Ditz her G is fine. It's the F her voice cracks on. They can argue that one out between them. What did shock Alison was how far Ditz could go in the other direction to her bottom G. I know there are musical terms for these but no~one here is that musically adept yet. Suffice to say I know all about Ditz's ability to sing in her boots. It's her party trick because she normally looks & sounds like a high soprano ~ which she isn't.


Ditz then let rip with I want you to love me & it was all Ditz & I could do not to burst into giggles. Power. Raunch. Grunt. Alison has never heard Ditz sing like that before & she was genuinely shocked. I get it all the time. As I told Alison, that's how Ditz sings when she wants to show off & I am so over it! Poor Alison. She is having to rethink everything she thought she knew about Ditz!


Ditz is spewing. She's just graduated to the Alto section! That means she has to relearn all her music. *snigger* You know what they say though....Altos Read Music [the implication being of course that sopranos singing the melody never need to learn & therefore are 2nd rate musicians; snarky]. I should stop reading Facebook buttons. I laugh at the wrong things.

3 comments:

Molytail said...

Gaaaaaaah!!!! I just told Cindy what song Ditz chose and now *she* is singing it all over the living room. Yep, we know a lot of cheesy stuff here too LOL ~ and that song was actually redone in the Bandslam movie and as we went to see that cheesy movie too, she knows it quite well. I did play the original for her after we'd been, but she didn't like it as much. Kids! :-P

2 weeks, wowsers..it's snuck right up on ya LOL

seekingmyLord said...

Oh, no! The range Ditz has was just about the range I had when I was her age, if you can believe it, and I loved singing first soprano also, but often the choir directors put me in second soprano. I really did not like it, but looking back it was great training for hearing harmony and holding it against altos or first sopranos standing right next to me, which is always were I was asked to stand too. I feel for Ditz.

Ganeida said...

Argh, Moly. They're just show~offs! ☺ Someday we're going to be in some place together, no doubt confined, with those two girls & murder will be done! lol. I can imagine your end as I'm sure you can imagine mine. Now you get it twice over. Lucky, lucky you!

It was only ever 6 days. I misread the date so counted wrong. lol

Seeking: I think Ditz's range might be even bigger but it's hard for me to tell, she loses it at auditions as well & her voice has changed quite a lot over the last 2 years. I think it is very good training & Ditz rarely muffs her part though ocassionaly there are notes she struggles with because she can't hear them properly. I'm actually really pleased. I prefer alto voices & hated Ditz doing Queen of the Night with a passion!