I sat down next to the best guitarist I’ve ever met and asked him what his number one piece of advice would be (this would be right after I figured I should just wrap my trusty Taylor around a tree after hearing him play) and he answered, “buy a guitar stand, take your guitar out […]
“When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume (that’s a fancy word for “include”) yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to […]
In May of 1975, my parents … (Wait…that’s 40 years ago? I’m really old.)…as I was saying, my parents saw Frank Sinatra in concert. He was just a few days shy of his 60th birthday so the pipes weren’t what they used to be, but, as you might imagine, he packed the place. At the […]
Because the Blogmeister is having that kind of day… “All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.” – Louis Armstrong “Do it again on the next verse, and people think you meant it.” – Chet Atkins “My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.” – Colin Firth […]
“Oh, but I can’t sing.” I bet you’ve heard that once or twice. I’ve mentioned the Windward Choral Society to a lot of folks who are fun to be around, thinking they’d fit right in, and out it came, “I can’t sing” or my personal favorite, “you don’t WANT to hear me sing”. Actually, I’d […]
This comes from the “now THAT is really cool” department. What if there were five strands of power line that passed by where you were (kinda like on music paper) and what if there was a vertical strand keeping things all organized (kinda like the end of a measure of music) and what if there […]
Kristina Olsen, a singer and songwriter I had a chance to spend some time with way back when, described musicians and singers as “small muscle athletes”. She pointed out that practicing not only makes you proficient, it also gets these muscles in shape. If you play an instrument like a guitar, your strengthening fingers can […]
Professor James Kellaris from the University of Cincinnati created the term “earworm” to describe the little lumps of music that get stuck in your head and just won’t go away. They pop up out of nowhere and simply will Not. Get. Out .Of .Your. Head. He also published his own “Playlist from Hell” (beware…reading further […]
In the June 2003 “Journal of Voice”, a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information was published entitled, “Effect of hydration and vocal rest on the vocal fatigue in amateur karaoke singers”. Noting that it’s not uncommon for karaoke singers in Asia to sing for hours at a time, the researchers grabbed 20 amateur […]
Welcome to “Windward Notes”, the latest addition to our little corner of the internet that will be appear as part of the News section of the site. We hope this blog will become a place you visit often to find out what’s happening, a source for things you might find interesting (or thought-provoking or informative […]