Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Good Song, Bad Ear

I can't post any more bedroom performances until I rectify this flat vocal problem I have. I can picture Randy Jackson shaking his head and saying, "You're flat, dog. Real flat."
And I am. Let no one say I've got a good ear because people with good ears for music do not sing flat. This was a problem with the violin which once you've got tuned you still have to hit the exact spot on the neck to get the right note. And the note has to match the piano. So you adjust. Well, I never adjusted. I always played in the same spot and some days it was in tune and some days it wasn't.
"No, Oggy, the violin isn't the problem," said my teacher.
"Can't you tune it again?"
"It's in tune."
"Then what's going wrong."
"You aren't listening to the note you are playing."

So, when I sing I usually hear myself as sort of in tune. Like, it doesn't sound terrible, but listening to these videos I have to conclude that I'm not in tune. I'm flat. And the problem is breath control.
Let me introduce you to a guy who has no problem with breath control. Leonard Cohen. This song, I believe, is an attack on Bob Dylan, "The man in white". It would've been directed at his Nashville Skyline album and Self Portrait since Cohen's album arrived in March '71. This is what people go to grad school to research but can we just pretend I already did that? What do you think?

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.