live vocal improvisation fri 7 dec
I'm tired, it's been a busy day. It's a little after 11:30pm and I've only just finished my dinner.
The tiredness is also exacerbated by only getting around four hour's sleep last night, and right now by wearing my new fleecy onesie and slipper socks. I look ridiculous, but I'm super warm (hence encouraging sleepiness) and there's no one else here so it doesn't matter.
None of which is massively relevant to this week's live vocal improvisation performance, except by contrast to last week, and may also explain a simple error I made.
The simple error first. I think I was already tired when I did the improvisation. Or at least that's the excuse I'm using for getting the date wrong on the live video, hen I shared it to my personal Facebook page, on YouTube and on Twitter. In fact I only noticed I'd written the date as November instead of December when I started this post.
And in relation to last week. When I did that performance I felt really low on energy, and ended up going to bed very early. I felt like I'd half-assed the performance and hadn't put in the effort it deserved. But the video was very well received by the standards of my largely ignored efforts.
This week although the performance was little gimmicky - I improvised with my hair clippers while shaving my head - I felt like there was more energy and engagement from me. Which almost certainly means it'll be roundly ignored like most of the rest of my improvisations.
That said, as with many of my recent performances I can't help but be dissatisfied with it. I feel like a lot of the time over the last two or three months I've been regurgitating the same strategies and ideas, not pushing myself far enough, and not exploring anything new or challenging.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I suppose I could take a break, or make the videos less frequent, but there were good reasons for wanting to produce live performances weekly:
It was something I'd had in mind for more than a year when I started doing them at the end of May. I believe it's a good way of ensuring I get practice; of consolidating things I learn and discover along the way; it helps increase my skill, confidence, range and flexibility, and makes the whole process more natural; it has the potential to be a useful promotional tool - this is what I can do, and I can do it on a frequent, regular basis, and; in the absence of any actual real-world gigs it's a way of doing something I enjoy on the regular.
For all those reasons I think I'll continue as I am for now. But be aware that I'm constantly critical of my own performances, and I spend a lot of time thinking about whether and how to continue doing these improvisations.
Oh, and I have another reservation. Since I'm living in a housing association block with neighbours on three sides and immediately above, I'm wary of letting go with very loud sounds, or anything too blood-curdling. That makes a lot of the performances more restrained than I think is ideal, and limits what I can do.
So with that unduly long prologue out of the way, here's my latest vocal improvisation performance.
The tiredness is also exacerbated by only getting around four hour's sleep last night, and right now by wearing my new fleecy onesie and slipper socks. I look ridiculous, but I'm super warm (hence encouraging sleepiness) and there's no one else here so it doesn't matter.
None of which is massively relevant to this week's live vocal improvisation performance, except by contrast to last week, and may also explain a simple error I made.
The simple error first. I think I was already tired when I did the improvisation. Or at least that's the excuse I'm using for getting the date wrong on the live video, hen I shared it to my personal Facebook page, on YouTube and on Twitter. In fact I only noticed I'd written the date as November instead of December when I started this post.
And in relation to last week. When I did that performance I felt really low on energy, and ended up going to bed very early. I felt like I'd half-assed the performance and hadn't put in the effort it deserved. But the video was very well received by the standards of my largely ignored efforts.
This week although the performance was little gimmicky - I improvised with my hair clippers while shaving my head - I felt like there was more energy and engagement from me. Which almost certainly means it'll be roundly ignored like most of the rest of my improvisations.
That said, as with many of my recent performances I can't help but be dissatisfied with it. I feel like a lot of the time over the last two or three months I've been regurgitating the same strategies and ideas, not pushing myself far enough, and not exploring anything new or challenging.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I suppose I could take a break, or make the videos less frequent, but there were good reasons for wanting to produce live performances weekly:
It was something I'd had in mind for more than a year when I started doing them at the end of May. I believe it's a good way of ensuring I get practice; of consolidating things I learn and discover along the way; it helps increase my skill, confidence, range and flexibility, and makes the whole process more natural; it has the potential to be a useful promotional tool - this is what I can do, and I can do it on a frequent, regular basis, and; in the absence of any actual real-world gigs it's a way of doing something I enjoy on the regular.
For all those reasons I think I'll continue as I am for now. But be aware that I'm constantly critical of my own performances, and I spend a lot of time thinking about whether and how to continue doing these improvisations.
Oh, and I have another reservation. Since I'm living in a housing association block with neighbours on three sides and immediately above, I'm wary of letting go with very loud sounds, or anything too blood-curdling. That makes a lot of the performances more restrained than I think is ideal, and limits what I can do.
So with that unduly long prologue out of the way, here's my latest vocal improvisation performance.
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