Lighten up, there are no salacious stories to relate and the reason for mentioning her is she was a professional opera singer. She's the one who taught Cat to sing and one of the lessons was to put books over her stomach and Cat had to raise them with her diaphragm to increase its strength.
We were speaking of Cat's mother this morning because we were talking about different vocal ranges and her mother had strong opinions on singing something by Wagner. Cat said, regardless of your opinion of Wagner, that work is, for an opera singer, like climbing Mount Everest because at least one of Wagner's operas runs for six hours with only a few intermissions. The importance of this was because she believed and had the experience to know it destroys a young soprano to attempt Wagner because of the difficulty.
Drawing Cat out to sing is one of my favorite hopes because she has such magnificent passion for music. Perhaps you need to talk to her to feel how much she loves and lives for music. Just now, the distance is too great and the Internet is still too primitive to try to work with her online. This is the kind of thing in which musicians need to be able to look at each other for support, encouragement ... the mind melt. That's not possible with the Internet so it remains one of my favorite hopes.
In the larger context, the discussion was about how annoying sopranos can be when they're forever staying in their highest range. That someone sings soprano only is an indication of the highest notes a singer can reach but the range may go well below that and this is why one of my favorite themes is for almost any singer to come down an octave, maybe more if you can do it.
Many people think of soprano as high and bass as low and this is sufficient because anything more than that is too technical and, screw it, I just want to dig the music, man. Fair enough but it's interesting to me so I plow forward.
My favorite example of soprano is Tarja Turunen and she goes for the really high notes when she covers "Phantom of the Opera" with Nightwish but the key point is she does not do that all the time and exploits her entire vocal range as much as she can. Turunen has the benefit of university education in opera so she knows precisely what she is doing.
The most extreme exercise in soprano came from a composer I don't know but right after that and a wee bit lower is a composer everyone knows: Mozart.
Briefly on the different vocal ranges: soprano is the highest, mezzo soprano somewhat lower, contralto somewhat below that, and so on. Each range is defined musically as two octaves with each overlapping the other but some sing many more octaves than defined in the range. If you want to review in depth, here's a link for reading. WIKI: Vocal range
Maria Carey is said to have a five-octave range but, frankly, we're not that impressed with what she does with it. Although she has achieved great success, we wonder what might have become of her with university education in this art.
Cadillac Man surprised me when he said he often did not understand what I write when the topic is music. At first I was taken aback as I don't want to patronize but I do want to explain clearly. It's ok, tho, as, man, I know how it goes with him. I just want to dig the music. Fair enough!
We were speaking of Cat's mother this morning because we were talking about different vocal ranges and her mother had strong opinions on singing something by Wagner. Cat said, regardless of your opinion of Wagner, that work is, for an opera singer, like climbing Mount Everest because at least one of Wagner's operas runs for six hours with only a few intermissions. The importance of this was because she believed and had the experience to know it destroys a young soprano to attempt Wagner because of the difficulty.
Drawing Cat out to sing is one of my favorite hopes because she has such magnificent passion for music. Perhaps you need to talk to her to feel how much she loves and lives for music. Just now, the distance is too great and the Internet is still too primitive to try to work with her online. This is the kind of thing in which musicians need to be able to look at each other for support, encouragement ... the mind melt. That's not possible with the Internet so it remains one of my favorite hopes.
In the larger context, the discussion was about how annoying sopranos can be when they're forever staying in their highest range. That someone sings soprano only is an indication of the highest notes a singer can reach but the range may go well below that and this is why one of my favorite themes is for almost any singer to come down an octave, maybe more if you can do it.
Many people think of soprano as high and bass as low and this is sufficient because anything more than that is too technical and, screw it, I just want to dig the music, man. Fair enough but it's interesting to me so I plow forward.
My favorite example of soprano is Tarja Turunen and she goes for the really high notes when she covers "Phantom of the Opera" with Nightwish but the key point is she does not do that all the time and exploits her entire vocal range as much as she can. Turunen has the benefit of university education in opera so she knows precisely what she is doing.
The most extreme exercise in soprano came from a composer I don't know but right after that and a wee bit lower is a composer everyone knows: Mozart.
Briefly on the different vocal ranges: soprano is the highest, mezzo soprano somewhat lower, contralto somewhat below that, and so on. Each range is defined musically as two octaves with each overlapping the other but some sing many more octaves than defined in the range. If you want to review in depth, here's a link for reading. WIKI: Vocal range
Maria Carey is said to have a five-octave range but, frankly, we're not that impressed with what she does with it. Although she has achieved great success, we wonder what might have become of her with university education in this art.
Cadillac Man surprised me when he said he often did not understand what I write when the topic is music. At first I was taken aback as I don't want to patronize but I do want to explain clearly. It's ok, tho, as, man, I know how it goes with him. I just want to dig the music. Fair enough!
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