Long Notes

It has always bugged me that I can't hold the last note in Debaser for the full 15 seconds. Likewise, that I have to take breaths during the intro to River Euphrates and its 20 seconds of "ride". Now, I'm learning The Happening and it has 18 second long notes...and you have to do them up to 12 times consecutively.  So it is like note-for-18-seconds-big-breath-another-18-second-note...and that goes on for nearly 2 minutes.

I've never been good about doing vocal exercises or breathing exercises or even about practicing my vocal parts. I hate singing in front of people. I also hate trying to mimic someone who has one of the best voices in rock and who I personally look up to a bunch. I mean...I love doing it...I just hate that anyone else has to hear it.

But I recognize too that I'm usually too hard on myself. In point of fact, no one in the world but me cares if I nail these vocals.  We do a pretty good job with the songs in general, so I think that the average listener's brain fills in the missing bits. Essentially we sound like them...and they (the listener) don't know the songs as well as we do anyway...so they probably could not tell you how accurate we are.

This morning I went looking for a live clip of Debaser where she holds the note the whole time. I've been on this search before, so I know that there is evidence out there.  But this morning the first four examples I found were these. In the first three she bails really quickly. In the last, she tries, but runs out of breath right about where I always do.









This last one I find particularly endearing, because she's doing what I'm doing...which is trying to reproduce the record.

Here's any interesting twist...Charles comes in and covers the breath and drops out when she's got it again. After watching several vids from the Doolittle tour, this seems to be the way that they resolved it. She takes the first 4 bars, he covers the second, then she comes back in. It actually looks like sometimes they traded back and forth for all four times through the progression.


Anyway, the moral of the story is...it's hard. And it doesn't matter. But what else is there in life but to sweat the small stuff?