Blind Music

I was expecting this week to be pretty crazy, nut I was completely unprepared.

I guess one of the problems started Friday. Though, technically I could trace it back to December. But if I wanted to get really technical I could go back to the birth of a certain human, and the birth of their parents, and their parents, and all the way back to the beginning of the universe. But I’m just gonna stick with Friday. Friday is when I got the phone call to tell me I couldn’t use a calculator on the AP Calculus exam. I didn’t punch anyone, so go me! I can’t use a standard TI-84. Basically its because I’m blind (legally blind that is). Instead I use calculator apps on my iPads. Ive gone through at least a dozen different calculators to find one I liked. And it didn’t work. I use 2 different apps. But I really like them so its fine. One, Good Grapher Pro, is really good for- you guessed it- graphing. The other, Calculator ∞ is the only one I found that can evaluate integrals. I’ve been practicing with those calculator apps for 6 months specifically for the AP exam. And because the wrong accommodations were requested, I can’t use them. So my mom spend Monday in meetings while I was in class to try and figure it out. And I spent 3 hours trying to learn how to use a TI-84. I gave up the TI-84 soon after that because it was so hard for me to use. The test was supposed to be the 14th, which is why I mention it. It’s not music- sorry about that- but it made the week that much crazier.

This is the set up I had.

I put one of these calculators….

Under one of these magnifiers…

But I haven’t Even gotten to the week yet. Monday before school was graduation music rehearsal. I’m in the choir, so that means singing at 7 in the morning. And if you haven’t tried that, it SUCKS. It’s awful. Don’t do it if you can avoid it.

But apparently I’m terrible at following my own advice because I sang at 7 a.m. 4 times that week. aside from graduation music, I had Men’s choir twice and the scholarship breakfast. I’ve mentioned this before in a couple posts, but we’re singing men in tights for men’s choir. With choreography. So its exhausting. And wayyy too early to be singing and dancing.

The scholarship breakfast is where seniors are recognized for the scholarships they were awarded. Personally, I think its kinda stupid, but someone likes it. Probably. I hate it. Except for the free food. I like that quite a lot. But the choir always stands on these old wooden bleachers. We stand on the seats. And they are not safe. At all. They wobble when you stand on them and there were10(ish) of us on each row. I was slightly terrified of falling and making everyone else fall over too.

Moral of this week: Follow your own advice and don’t stand on old wooden bleachers.

Not writing lyrics. That stresses me out. I like learning lyrics to songs. I feel like thats pretty true universally. Maybe I just listen to weird music- which I’m 99% sure of, but people never seem to pay a lot of attention to lyrics of songs. Which I think is a shame, because there are some awesome lyrics out there!

This weekend I went to an activity thing. It was basically a guys night. There was a lot of food, ping pong tournaments, Mario kart, and skits- in which I played, Tiffany “Hotter than you” Slade”. My brother and I were about to leave when some of the guys started singing “The Ballad of Farquad” ( https://youtu.be/W4APxLMmT-g ) from Shrek the Musical so I had to join in. The song wouldn’t be half as funny if we didn’t know the lyrics. And we wouldn’t know the song was about the son of Grumpy the dwarf or that Lord Farquaad had daddy issues.

And I wouldn’t know that “You can’t trust a man dressed in yellow” ( https://youtu.be/2nr9gYCGC18 ) had so many good puns in it if I hadn’t listened to it so many times that I know the lyrics by heart.

I could go on and on. But I won’t because I despise writing. But here are a couple more songs with great lyrics.

Fun story. We recently did a survey in my choir class about the graduation music that has been performed at my graduation since my school was started 120 years ago. Apparently some important people in the district think we shouldn’t have religious music at graduation. And while I can understand people not wanting to have a religious graduation, this annoys and confuses me for several reasons.

First, I don’t even know why this conversation is happening. If people didn’t want an invocation, I could understand that. Though I honestly didn’t recognize it as a prayer until my mom told me thats what it was. But the music? What would it be replaced with? So much music is religious. Particularly from the genre you would hear at a traditional graduation. You could have no music at a graduation, but- in my opinion- the music is the most enjoyable part. Or you could use that time for another speaker- the worst part of graduation in my opinion.

The music shouldn’t offend people who don’t believe the words in the song are true to begin with. No one is running the ceremony as a Christian service. We’re there to celebrate the achievement of a group of teenagers graduating high school. The songs we sing aren’t for God or gods or whatever. They’re a celebration because high school is finally over!

The last point is just a question? Why graduation music? Like I said before, so much music has some religious meaning. You could say that graduation is different because family and friends have to be there in order to support their kids. That’s true. But also, whats the problem with people celebrating in their own way. You definitely don’t have to be Christian to attend. And you don’t have to join the singing. (But you do have to go through a metal detector) And religious music is in every single concert i’ve been to. I can’t think of one. To be fair, I cant remember the ones from elementary school.

If people were actually upset, they’d have brought it up long before now.

I like to contemplate the mysteries of the universe sometimes. One of the biggest ones to me is church choirs. More specifically, bad church choirs. From what I understand, the purpose of church choirs- and music in church- is to praise God. Or gods or whatever you believe. I’m not saying which one is right, and thats not even the purpose of this post. Anyway, praising a deity with bad music seems… counterproductive. I think part of the problem is expectations. But on the topic of expectations, I have to admit that I have pretty high expectations. My school’s music program is really strong, so I’m used to hearing good music. My family- on one side at least- is very musical, so family gatherings almost always include music. More than that, its actually pretty good music.

You’re expected to have a church choir. It seems like a tradition thats followed in the literal sense, but the purpose seems to have been forgotten. Now I don’t know why exactly church choirs were started, but the reasons I can think of don’t seem to apply anymore.

1st, Having an organized choir to be able to prepare more complicated or more prepared music.

From my experience, it is far more common to have a small choir sound much worse than the full congregation. And there is never very much preparation. I think there are usually about 4 rehearsals before you perform the piece. They’re not even productive rehearsals.

2nd- this probably won’t make sense to a lot of you- to rehearse.

Sounds weird, right? Well I actually really enjoy rehearsals. Not so much the rehearsals right after you start music, but my favorite part of choir is right before the performance. Not like an hour before though. I mean the week or two leading up to the performance where you sound really good, but you’re not singing in front of anyone. You don’t have to worry about messing up because this is the big event or whatever. You can just enjoy the music you’re making.

That doesn’t happen in ward choirs. Rehearsals tend to be painful.

Now thats just the church choir experience I’ve had. I have heard good church choirs. I think I might have even been in one…. maybe. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember it very clearly. Either way, I hope you have/had a better time with church choirs than I did.

Since I’m graduating, I’m planning to have a senior recital. Which sounds easy until you have to plan it. I wish I could share my knowledge and experience from what I’ve learned, but I’m still stuck. I need to choose a few songs to sing, but I can’t decide on which ones.

I made that part a little easier on myself by planning to do my senior recital with my cousin. So if we keep the program to about 45 minutes, I’ll only have to choose 3 songs. Well that was the idea. The plan was for both of us to choose 3 of our own songs and sing a duet. Which sounds great in theory. I have less songs to choose and I think duets are fun to sing and rehearse. Plus our grandma is accompanying us.

But I cant even decide on 3 songs! I know I want to do the German piece I sang for my All State Choir audition, but that’s all I decided on. Thats a 33%, so I’m currently failing. I’ll probably do a funny song because I’d enjoy that the most. The only funny song I’ve learned is, “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud.” Or at least I think thats what it’s called. Its a hippopotamus love song. Enough said.

But I’m really struggling on choosing the last piece. The 2 genres I’m choosing from are musical theatre and folk song. Both of which I enjoy. I prefer singing musical theatre, but I prefer how I sound on folk songs. So I’m lost. I guess I’ll debate with myself a little longer.

The last full concert of the year at my high school is coming up. Only one left! Unless you count Graduation, which is coming up too. I’m SO ready to graduate. I don’t have severe senioritous, though I think I have a mild case. This is my 5th year in high school, though; so I’m ready to move on.

That being said, I’m really excited for the last few weeks of school. I finally got my awful finance class passed (thats a long unrelated story so I won’t go into it), I’m almost ready to make my decision about which college I’ll attend, I’m finally getting benefits for being disabled, and I’m having fun with music. I just sang an arrangement of amazing grace in church with my brother and two of our friends. I’m also planning a joint senior recital with my cousin. That’s going really slowly… but it should still be good. In my school choirs, we’re singing “Somebody to Love” and “Men in Tights.”

Men in tights is going to be amazing. We’re almost done with the music- and by that I mean we’ve gone through it all, its just not solid- and we’re going to start choreography next week. Last year for this concert, the unauditioned men’s choir did “King of New York” from Newsies, and it was so much fun to watch. The advanced men’s choir started this year and men in tights should be similar to that. Needless to say, I’m very excited. I might have watched “Men in Tights” the movie to do research. Really I just used the song as an excuse. To be perfectly honest, though; the song is by far the best part.

We just started new music in choir. So i thought I’d share how I learn music. Since I cant see music- I can read music by the way- I do almost everything by listening and repeating it. It’s like an oral recall section of an audition- if you know what that is. I listen to the song a lot. And I listen to little chunks of the song a lot. Sometimes I just listen to the same measure for 10 minutes if I cant get it right. Fortunately that doesn’t happen very often, but you gotta do what you gotta do. And since I do music for fun, I listen to one piece over and over again.

Like you might do with a song you really like. Except I’m not as eager to listen to it again after the 40th time. I’ve never gotten sick of a song I was learning for choir, though. Not once that I can remember. I tend not to really get sick of songs tho. Not even ‘what does the fox say?’ But I also don’t really listen to the radio, which is where it got so overplayed. Even when my choir spent 6 months on the same 7 pieces, I didn’t get sick of the music. Which is good, because I have to listen to my music constantly to have it memorized for the concert.

For the last concert, the advanced men’s choir I’m in, we sang a polish war song. As you can probably guess, it was in polish. For your information, polish is HARD. I spent hours upon hours listening to the part track for that song. And that was packed into the 2 weeks before the concert because the part tracks weren’t recorded until then.

If you’ve ever sung in a foreign language, you know foreign languages make the song way more challenging. Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of practice singing in foreign languages. Primarily Latin and German, but I’ve sung in Haitian and African too. I think singing makes the words easier to say and remember, but at the same time, the words make the singing a lot more difficult. Especially in the case of polish. There are wayyyy too many consonants. When said incorrectly, most words just sound like you have a bad lisp or you’re trying to cough up a fur ball. Especially on the recordings. I usually ask for a transcript of the words so I know what I should be saying/singing. I do that for some english songs too, actually.

There was one song for All State Choir, “The ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard” that got so fast I had no idea what the words were. It was all english (and a really fun song) but I had no clue what to sing. So I had my mom type out the lyrics. I’ve actually found that that works really well too. I got a magnifier for my birthday last year called a Ruby. It lets you place the magnifier on the paper and follow the line of text much easier. I tend to use it when there are a ton of verses. I use it for an arrangement of “Amazing Grace” that I’m singing in church in a week.

So I’m graduating this year so we went on a trip for spring break. I’m the second child in the family to graduate, so I guess its kind of a tradition now. We went to Mexico when my older brother graduated a few years ago, and for my spring break, we did the whole Disney world, universal studios thing. I made sure to take multiple pictures so I could finally have a blog post with more than one picture. I think I took over around 50 pictures on that trip. I know this isn’t really that many; but it was a lot for me. So be proud of me.

Anyway… We went to Disney with my uncles family. He’s an ROTC officer and apparently military/ex-military (and everyone with them- Score) can stay at a resort called Shades of Green. Tickets to the parks around Orlando are discounted and there’s a shuttle Stop right at Shades of Green. I shared a room with 1 or 2 of my brothers- it changed several times- and the room was really great. It was on the 3rd- and top- floor so we had a balcony. Aside from my slight fear of heights, that was great too. It overlooked a green area and one of the pools and there were a couple chairs so you could sit out on the balcony in the shade and relax. I loved the room, except I had 0 service. Nada. I had service when I walked 10 feet down the hall, of course, but not in my room. That was not my favorite aspect of the vacation.

We arrived in Orlando Friday and spent the rest of the day playing at the park with my cousins. They’re 2 and 4… I’m pretty sure, so we played on the playground with them. When they went back to their hotel room with their parents, My little brother and I started a game of checkers. I’m not sure exactly what to call it, though. I think it’s ‘life sized checkers’ maybe? Either way, the game board was probably 6 feet long and each of the checkers was maybe 8 inches in diameter. That game probably lasted an hour at least. We ordered dinner about 30 minutes into the game and my parents were almost done eating by the time we finished the game. And I won! I usually suck at checkers, so that’s a great accomplishment for me.

Saturday we went to the Magic kingdom. We rented a wheelchair for me so I wouldn’t have to walk as much. The adventure started when the wheelchair that supposedly showed up Saturday at 7 disappeared. Now I love rollercoasters and other rides, but I’m not a huge fan of crowds. There were a LOT of people there, and there would have been even more if it wasn’t overcast and slightly raining. That was great for the crowds and temperature, but having to worry about getting rained on wasn’t so fun. We started the day at the Pirates ride. I think it’s technically pirates of the Caribbean, but some of it was just generic pirate stuff. A lot of the rides exit into gift shops, which is smart- so Harrison and I fought with the swords there.

Then we went on other rides like Thunder mountain. We tried several of the 4D shows (3D with water mist and/or smells) but we didnt really like any of them.

We did a bounch of other stuff too, none of which I’m remembering right now, but we went back to the resort that afternoon to recover. I wanted to go back and do more roller coasters, so we returned to the magic kingdom to ride roller coasters. Our favorite, by far was the 7 dwarves mine cart. It had a ridiculously long wait, So we thought we’d do it during the fireworks so there would be shorter lines. And there was a shorter line, but it was probably at least an hour.

Sunday we chilled at the hotel. We were gonna go to church, but I was the only one of my brothers awake until noon, so we gave up. I honestly don’t remember exactly what we did Sunday…. but it definitely happened.

Monday we went to the Animal kingdom. We started the day doing a couple safari tours. It was really funny how well rehearsed the tour guide’s speech was. The first tour was on a boat, and that was fine, and the second tour was on a bus. It was SO bumpy. That’s why these pictures are kind of blurry.

We heard that the ride ‘Pandora’ was amazing, so we made sure to do that. It’s based on the movie Avatar. The one with giant blue people with tails. Not the last air bender one. I think its called augmented reality. You’re on a chair thingy that moves around like your’e part of the video. It’s supposed to feel like you’re riding one of those flying things. A Banshee? I thought it was okay, but the wait was totally not worth it.

Even with the disability pass- which we didn’t know about until that morning! Basically, if you’re with someone who’s disabled (a.k.a. Me) you can reserve a time to go on a ride and then not wait in line. You could only have one reservation at a time, but it was still really useful. Of course my brothers made a bunch of “we’re so glad your’e disabled” jokes. Which I participated in fully. (That’s a joke we heard on Britain’s Got Talent, Jack Caroll)

We also went on a few roller coasters. Mt.Everest was my favorite. The slow climb had a sheer drop on iether side that I wasnt a fan of, but I really like roller coasters. I thought that Animal kingdom looked like a giant zoo. Which isnt a bad thing. Except when it smelled like a zoo. That was rather unpleasant.

And finally, we went to Universal studios on Tuesday. Which was my personal Favorite. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, so… yeah. Unfortunately, this was probably the day with the worst weather. We spent a good half hour under a… structure of some kind, while it rained. A lot. And I got the wettest because I was sitting in a wheelchair. I have since learned that Panchos only really work when youre standing. Who would’ve thunk.

We were planning to get an interactive wand (I might have geeked out a little when I heard there were interactive wands), but the lines were 90 minutes long, so we didn’t. We did get butter beer though. I didn’t think it was all that good. Not bad at all, but not amazing either. Our favorite ride in Harry Potter world, and maybe on the whole trip, was The Forbidden Journey. It was kind of like the pandora ride, but so much better. You sat on an “enchanted bench” that was moved, turned, and flipped(it was only part of a flip) by an arm. It was a pretty flawless mix of animatronics and a video. You would be flying behind a quidditch player, and then the arm would turn you and an animatronic dragon head would breathe “fire” on you. It was just steam, but it was still really cool. That was one of the few rides we did twice.

Then my youngest brother (who is now taller than me) and I looked at wands in Olivander’s wand shop. It was only interesting to us, though. My older brother came into the shop with us, but he’s not a Harry Potter nerd. Then we wandered around Hogsmeade (yes, it was Hogsmeede. Yes Olivander’s wand shop was there. No, its not supposed to be there, but that way you could by a wand in either part of HP world) and its various shops until our the train arrived.

The Hogwarts Express was really cool too, even though it wasn’t a ride. Actually, Harry Potter world was had way better non-ride stuff. The line for The Forbidden Journey had a story throughout the castle about the ride. There were also statues and paintings to look at. The Hogwarts Express’s doors and windows were screens, so it looked like the scenery from the annual trip to Hogwarts. The screen on the door had shadows on it so it looked like there were people walking by. We went to Diagon Alley to see the Beetle the Bard show. It was okay, but not at all what I expected. Diagon Alley was cool to look around though.

That dragon breathes fire every so often. I just missed it. But I tried.

We tried to go on the Hulk roller coaster, but it kept raining, so we gave up.

Thursday we went to the Epcot. The park with the giant silver golf ball/death star. We didn’t do much at this park. We did an Augmented reality ride called ‘Sorrin’ that was okay. We also did a roller coaster that simulated testing a car. You designed a car, and then for each section of the coaster, you could see how you did compared to the other people on the ride.

Friday we went back to Magic Kingdom. Nothing too exciting. We went on the small world ride, and the Aladdin magic carpet ride, and then did the 7 dwarves mine cart ride again. Mostly we went for the fire works. Which turned out to be way cooler than we expected. They projected stuff onto the castle, which was really interesting, and looked amazing. The fire works (which there were a ton of) were coordinated with the show. I sang along to all of the songs because I’m special. I took a bunch of pictures until my phone died. These are my two favorites.

Well the lttle mermaid has died. Our performances were the first weekend of March. so now its all over. I have an extra 3 hours every day and my musical theatre quotient is lacking. So I’ve started listening to my musical theatre playlist on Pandora again. In case you want to get the same playlists/mix of playlists I have 5 radio stations that I almost always shuffle. of almost entirely musical theatre because yeah. The 5 radio stations are…(drumroll please) The Addams Family (original broadway cast), Disney (childrens) Radio, Little Shop of Horrors Radio,(Original Broadway cast)Shrek the Musical radio, Collabro radio. (Collabro is a men’s A Cappella group I first heard when they did an a cappella cover of ‘Stars’ from Les Miserable.)
I added the shrek station$ because I love shrek the musical. Its got really funny songs that are so much fun to sing along with. I added the addams family, disney and little shop of horrors for basically the same reason. Ive found that these give me a good mix of clever songs to listen to. I also discover new songs I like all the time. For example, I have heard a couple of the songs from Dear Evan Hansen, namely Waving Through a Window and You Will Be Found. Both of wich are great songs, but my musical theaetre playlist helped me find songs like “Anybody Have a Map?” and “How to Break in a Glove. And those are some of my favorites.

In my Composition class this semester, we just finished writing a foreign experience piece. I wrote mine about my experience at All State Choir- which had been a goal of mine for the last few years. I really liked the context portion of the piece, so I wanted to share it.

I love music. I love that I’m able to make pretty sounds. I don’t know if other people think the music I make is good or not. They tell me they like it when I sing; but I always feel like its a biased opinion. I think people are judging the music based on me and not just the music I’m making. Specifically, I think people see the blind cane I’m holding and think, “its really quite remarkable he can do that with a disability.” This is always kind of frustrating; but in most cases, it doesn’t really bother me.

Why it is that people judging me for my disability is so much more bothersome in the case of my musical talent, I don’t know. It might be pretty universal. One music teacher I had explained that people took corrections to their singing much more personally because your voice is very much a part of you. So when someone says you’re doing something wrong; it feels like they’re saying you’re wrong. I definitely agree with that idea; but I don’t think thats the whole problem.

It’s rare that I actually feel proud of the music I just performed even though I’m always told I did a great job. This would seem like humility, except its not. I feel disappointed in my abilities frequently; either because I know I could’ve sung better or because I just can’t quite hit that F consistently without flipping into my head voice.

This probably sounds like I’m being extremely critical of myself, assuming you understood that last part, and that is completely true. I am fully aware that I’m being hard on myself for something that isn’t fully in my control. I’ve tried to be less critical of myself, but it hasn’t worked. The best I have been able to do is determine the most likely cause for this perfectionist attitude.

Singing has been one of the activities I have felt most capable in for a while. I used to enjoy singing, but it was not on the list of my favorite activities or talents. Then I got brain cancer. The tumor and ensuing surgery made my physical abilities change quite a bit. I could no longer do many things as well as I could before brain cancer. When I woke up after the surgery, I couldn’t move very well at all, I could barely speak with a throat that was incredibly dry and scratchy, and my vision was 20/1200 (thats really bad) in my better eye. Since then, I have improved greatly in all of these cases. And to be clear, I have improved dramatically. My vision is less blurry, I can move decently well- even if that’s still not very graceful, and my voice is probably better than it’s ever been.

I started taking voice lessons when I was 14, and I think that has helped the most. I sing all the time-with my brothers or by myself- and I would imagine that helped too; but I use what I learned in voice lesson whenever I sing, so I think the voice lessons have a bigger role in my vocal ability.I have gotten to a point where I think I sound pretty good most of the time and even really good occasionally. I feel like I’m good at singing. Not good at singing for someone who had cancer; just good at singing. And I’m really proud of that

That was kinda deep, so sorry if you weren’t in the right mindset or mood. I don’t like being serious and what not. I like making jokes that make other people happy; but I wanted to share this anyway.