My Happy Apps

I am selective about my smartphone apps: No to Angry Birds or Tetris, yes to Couch to 5K. No to Minecraft, yes to Vine. I only keep apps that I really like and use frequently. These apps make me happy!

Pandora reminds me of the summer I sold actual physical CDs and cassettes at Camelot Music. We sat around the break room digging through the large cardboard box filled with free promotional cassettes and CDs (okay, only I did that). I scored Madonna's Immaculate Collection, which was a big deal at the time.

I'm always justifying looking for apps for music education. My hardworking ClearTune app helps singers (including moi) figure out how to make the small changes that lead to more accurate pitch, and it's a godsend for nervous new sight singers and pianists ("Was that an E flat? It wasn't? I could have sworn it was. Are you sure?").

Being from the Dark Ages, I learned music theory the traditional way, with workbooks and flashcards. Writing out the scales is always a good idea, but apps are great for drills on note names, intervals, and chords. I like Musicopoulos for straight theory and straightforward practice. If you don't have a smartphone, Theta Music Trainer is a good place to practice.

My perfect pitch made ear training very easy for me, but I have begun to recommend these two solid apps for musical mortals: PlayByEar asks you to sing or play back chords and melodies accurately. EarTrainer shows intervals being played on a piano keyboard.

For sheer fun, the best ear training app is The Blob Chorus. Groups of blobs sing individual pitches, then a purple King Blob repeats one of the previous pitches. Match the blobs, and King Blob gets a crown. Get it wrong, your blob explodes! This is great for singers who are learning to hear their part inside a choir.

I have loved the public radio show Music From The Hearts Of Space since I was a teenage waitress at Elby's. The program aired on WCBE every Sunday night at 10pm as I drove home from the night shift, and I would keep listening as I changed out of my 100% polyester uniform and speed-read some Faulkner for the school week ahead. I use the show's app frequently and also listen to their online archive at www.hos.com

My senior high prom date turned me on to the SomaFM website years ago, as we exchanged one or two perfunctory emails to catch up and therefore avoid meeting up at reunions. He remembered my teenage love of Hearts of Space and recommended this. It was the last I heard of him but thanks, Dean, and I bet you have the app now too! SomaFM is a collection of 15 quirky, well-curated online stations (and that's the last time I will use "curate" in a post) ranging from NASA beeps and blips to bachelor pad jazz. I always wrap presents from Santa while listening to "Xmas in Frisko," their not-safe-for-children radio station.

I just downloaded the Inception app and . . woah. Wierd and wonderful to have music played according to your own movements! When I miss Michigan or DC, I listen to the local traffic report through my iHeart Radio app and then I'm glad I don't live there anymore. I also use a couple of lolofit apps, including the 7-minute workout and Jeff Galloway's Easy 10K. They always make me feel like an Olympian, no matter how infrequently l use them. I wish the 10K app had more variations in run-walk ratios. I don't see why I can't run for one minute and walk for ten, and still have Jeff tell me "great job!" in his Southern twang.

Even on the worst day, my Random Gratitude app asks me to think of something good and type it in. The best feature of this app is that it randomly scrolls through my previous posts, reminding me of so many wonderful little things that I might have otherwise forgotten.

So, what apps should I add to my collection?

A decent interval (song)

Intervals. We know 'em when we hear 'em, right? Can you sing one when you're asked? Can you read it in music? Intervals (which lead to scales and key signatures) are some of the toughest concepts for young musicians to learn, especially singers. But, all musicians must know their intervals -- the measured distances between individual notes. Knowing intervals helps you read music faster and more accurately. Pianists can press a couple of keys, brass players can press a valve or two, and the result will usually be the same each time. Singers learn intervals by feeling the resonance in their heads and throats, while listening to the sound that come out of their mouths -- and that can mean endless variety of pitch. A tuner can help singers identify intervals before they begin to associate them with a "feeling" in their own bodies.

Music teachers always use common melodies to teach intervals; for instance, the perfect fourth interval sounds just like the beginning of "Here Comes The Bride," and the opening notes of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" comprise an octave. Other intervals are harder to quickly identify in music because  . . . they sound weird, they aren't used in music that people can recall instantly, or they're hard to sing. To the rescue, a few YouTube videos that I found helpful:

1.  "The Interval Song," a Latin-beat ditty by a British composer named Django Bates. May also make a good drinking game for college theory students. Sing it a few times and you will know it forever.

2. "Interval Song" by Anonymous. I have never heard this one before but the song and the performer are both really cute. I like any song that attempts to rhyme "octave" and "provocative."

3. "Intervals In Inversion Song," by David Newman. I'd like to hand this guy a rose for coming up with this hilarious song. I love the wonderfully sappy piano accompaniment.

4. For kinesthetic and visual learners, check out Leonard Bernstein's "Young People's Concerts," which devotes an entire hour to intervals called  "Musical Atoms." Might be interval overkill for some, but if you're at all interested, it's an hour well spent.

Do intervals really matter? Ask him.

Ornamenting and "oversouling"

My True Love brought an article to my attention, laughing as he clicked "forward." It was a reaction to Christina Aguilera's unfortunate Lyrical Malfunction at the Super Bowl (poor girl) while singing the National Anthem, but it was also about pop singers' tendency to "oversoul" the melody -- the singer adds quick lines of decorative notes and musical frills between the actual melodic notes, overdoing it to the point the melody is an afterthought. Exhibit A: Mariah Carey oversouling Hero. (Also note Mariah's fluttering right hand -- it oversouls right along with her.) Exhibit B: This completely desecrated version of a famous Christmas song.

In classical music we have vocal decorations known as ornaments. In the Baroque era especially, singers would add embellishments all over the melodies. Even now, coloraturas like me are expected to tastefully ornament our most famous repertoire. First composed on the spot by the singer, the most successful embellishements were written down and are now considered standard.

Classical ornaments tend to happen after a melody has been introduced "plain." They highlight the fact that the melody is on its second hearing. Ornaments tend to be used at the very highest point of a phrase or to end musical idea and launch into another one -- they are not scattered in the middle and they are usually very clearly stated. Classical singers try, but they can't over-ornament much because conductors and pianists can instantly stop them with the crash of a chord. Classical singers can be guilty of choosing the wrong ornaments (or just executing good ones badly), but because so much of the repertoire is standard, the ornaments are part of the vocal furniture now and are practiced carefully, and rarely moved. I've composed a few ornaments for myself, borrowing a bit from this singer and that score, but I'm careful to remember melody first.

Ornaments are for tasteful classical singing, oversouling is the sin of pop divas, but the technical term for all singer-driven note addition is melisma. Melisma has been around as long as there has been singing. (Show me a singer and I'll show you someone willing to mess around with a melody.) But, it isn't always the right thing to do, unless you know when to stop. When my voice students ask if they can do it. I usually say no, at least not while I'm watching. Good melisma can be an indicator of a nice healthy, flexible larynx as well a nice, healthy ego. Bad melisma reveals breaks in the voice caused by laryngeal tension. For examples of bad melisma and criminal oversouling, watch American Idol, Seasons One through Twenty.

Melisma is heard clearly in chants of the Catholic church. A Kyrie ("Lord Have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy") can contain just a few notes -- or thirty five. They start out with the same couple of notes, but they're quite different after that. I like both versions heard here (there are hundreds more). Sadly, very few Catholic congregations sing either one, those that do restrict it to Lent. (I don't find singing chant during Lent to be penitential at all -- it's like Christmas to me!) It's been my experience that parishioners are attracted to melisma as listeners -- it sounds very showy and emotional -- but they don't dare try to sing it in a group setting. Only the monks and choristers are willing to give it a shot. As a chorister, I would be happy to be the Melisma Representative for any parish that would want one. Too bad so few do.

Here is another Kyrie in English by Marty Haugen, composer of the very well known setting, Mass Of Creation. Note how few notes are used in the melody, and how every word gets a note. I'm not a Marty fan and this Mass setting is sickeningly ubiquitous, but I recognize that he composed something that is singable for the average melisma-phobe. (Oversoulers, feel free to muck up Haugen as much as possible.)

The worst oversouling I ever heard was committed by a high schooler singing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. He oversouled "I'll Know," and the audience was instantly transported from 1950s Gotham to an Usher concert. Thankfully and incredibly, Broadway remains mostly free of oversoul. Hope it stays that way, but I'm not placing bets.

H/T Huffington Post