Singing Lessons

Having had a year of voice training when I was young, I can honestly say that anyone who is seriously interested in studying voice should spend some time in India studying classical Indian music with a private teacher. The exercises alone are worth learning. The exercises, strictly practiced in a particular raga (scale) give the voice incredible flexibility and exactness with regard to intervals - and very unusual intervals as well. In a given lesson, we start with exercises to warm the voice - excercises that combine the enunciation of syllables for each tone that do NOT all end in the same vowel sound, thus requiring greater flexibility of tongue - and concentration, with the exact pure, tonal quality of the note, with a complex (for me) 8 beat rhytmic pattern with the hands. Each excercise is practiced in whole tone, quarter tone, half note, and 16th note time, with the goal begin perfect ennunciation, rhythm, and pitch. That's to warm up. Then, there is a time of open improvisation by following the improvisation of the teacdher. The teacher will guide the student around the raga, using expression, and will also extend the range into the highest levels and lowest levels the voice can reach. Always, always the teacher follows the aptitude of the student. It is intense and fascinating and the growth is exponetial. Then, the student tries to improvise, always staying within the raga. Other lessons ensue, with practice exercises to study afterwards. Tonight, I was given a book of poetry and am to compose a raga using the words from one of the poems. The book he gave me is called Birdsong and the poems are by Rumi:

Some examples:
Let your throat-song
be clear and strong enough

to make an emperor fall full-length
suppliant, at the door.
***
Would you like to have revealed to you
the truth of the Friend?

Leave the rind,
and descdent into the pith.

Fold within fold, the Beloved
drowns in this own being. This world
is drenched with that drowing.
***
Rain fell on one man,
he ran into the house.

But the swan spread its winds and said,
"Pour more on me of that power
I was fashioned from."
***
Someone who does not run
toward teh allure of love
walks a road where nothin

lives. But this dove here
senses the love-hawk floating
avove, and waits, and will not

be driven or scared to safety.
***
I want to be where
your bare foot walks,

Because maybe before you step,
you'll look at the ground.
I want that blessing.

***
This is how I would die
into the love I have for you.

as pieces of cloud
dissolve in sunlight.

And so the lessons continue - lessons of the heart and of the voice. One does learn pieces, and there are some famous ones, but unlike western pedagogy, it is not about learning a piece, it is about making music.