a little more credit please

Two events...

- A couple of weeks ago, my father suggested he try connecting my digital piano to the karaoke machine so I'd be able to play accompaniment over the music, and the karaoke singer I guess.

- Last night, our family was relaxing around the living room while an old Chinese singer's CD was playing in the background. He has a smooth voice, with an operatic quality to it. His range goes up pretty high for a male I suppose. During one of his songs, my father said if I wanna get good vocals, I should learn from and sing like that guy.

Both these suggestions/comments got me pretty annoyed at the moment, and got me thinking,
"Please, give music a little more credit,".

I won't go into the family dynamics of this household just so it'd bore you out, but it really frustrates me to think he finds it appropriate to pass such presumptuous comments about something he knows so little about.

For starters, people takes years to learn to improvise and accompany singers on the piano and he thinks I'm able to do it after three months with my new teacher and just over a year of picking the piano in general -- unless he wanted me to get the chords of the Internet and learn it song by song, not to mention me trying to improvise ahead of time with what little of that skill I have.

Secondly, just 'cause a singer's voice sound smooth and fits his idea of good singing, doesn't mean it's a good idea to just learn how an existing professional sings. He even said I should try learning that song that was playing since it was easy. Oh man...unless one is experienced and trained, no singing is as easy as it sounds. It takes some atheism to hold notes, and sing up and down the scales. I don't think he as any idea, since he sings in a very lazy manner. You can literally hear how relaxed he sounds, which is why he has so much problem singing.

Besides, just 'cause a song sounds nice to you, doesn't make it healthy to try singing the same way, since a singer with what to you sounds like a nice voice, may not have good vocal technique to back it up. Not to mention how it's always better to sing with your own unique voice.

Singing without strain means singing without strain to the vocal cords, and not without tension in your body at all. I guess a person won't know what it's like until they try it themselves.

*sighs*

perfect pitch, technical skill, music theory, chord theory -- vocal cord closure, resonance, connecting the voice, using your own voice to sing, breathing, etc. etc.

Imagine, if a beginner made the list above, how much longer would it be if an experienced musician were to make it.

I get how music should have some artistic freedom and spontaneity, but please, there's so much more that goes into it then what you hear -- and by saying things that makes it seem easy, when you aren't actually involced in it, it sorta demeans all the years of hardwork and dedication musicians put into their craft. If being able to make good music were that simple, well, you could probably guess the rest of this sentence...so please, give music a little more credit and respect. And I'm not just directing that to my dad, but to everyone else who does the same thing. I understand it's easy to seem ignorant because it really isn't your profession and so understandably, you don't have the knowledge. I know I would never say fixing the water pipes in a house is easy, because I know nothing about it, and hence apart from the TV and perhap Wiki and a few forums, I really don't know enough to judge plumbers and their work. Same goes for anything other fields I'm not acquainted with. But still, try to at least learn more about it and maybe put yourself in another's shoes before judging and assuming.

Sorry for the rambling and if it was incoherent but I needed to vent to a musical "someone" and this is all I have at the moment. So yeah...

(Ah...I feel so much better now...)