Last month our class wrote a narrative essay on something that happened to us, and I enjoyed it. It was a fun experience to write and this is my favourite type of essay so far, I hope you enjoy reading my essay about a solo I sung.
The male voice is a complicated thing, it has three main parts to it that any advanced male singer has to understand and navigate through. Your main strongest voice, called your chest voice, your super high voice, called falsetto, which is what most prepubescent males sing strongest. And your head voice, which is the mediator in between high and low. Most guys head voice is the weakest part of your voice, and in the transition between these there is a vocal break where you have to change what voice you are using.
 The Chan Centre is a beautiful concert hall out at UBC that is shaped like the body of a violin. The shape is important because most string instruments are shaped this way for resonance, and that is why the Chan Centre is shaped the way it is. Chor Leoni is one of the top men’s choirs in the world, based in Vancouver they mostly perform here but do tour occasionally, because of their local schedule people from all over the world come to see them. And in this beautiful venue I had the most incredible opportunity I’ve ever had. To sing a solo at the chan.

  I was in a choir run by Chor Leoni to get teenage guys out to sing, the final concert was at the chan centre. I won the final solo in a beautiful gospel song called “There’s a Man Goin’ Round.” I was very nervous as this was my first solo and it was a very weird singing range for me as I had to transitions through my chest, head, and falsetto voices.

 I was very nervous to the point of barfing while eating my lunch, when one of the tenors came up to me. He said, “I heard your struggles with navigating your vocal break; would you like some help tenor to tenor?” I quickly accepted, he took me into a secluded corner of the theatre backstage and got me to sing it two times through. Then asked me a question, “can you sing it all in your head voice? Transitions in solos don’t sound great.”

  I had the last solo of three, so I sang the first two verses as a back up and go a little off pitch. As I walk up and think about his words, and ask myself “can I do it?” I start it on a note I would normally use chest voice for, so I try it in my head voice and find it’s ok, and as the solo is ascending I start to get more and more nervous that I can’t hit the high note. As the note approaches my stomach drops out from under me I’m so nervous. I climb the scale and hit the top note perfectly. I look out at my parents in the front row and watch their faces dissolve into tears as I take my last breath and end my solo on a descending run of notes. I smile at the audience and bow, his advice had worked and I cannot thank him enough.

 I have never met that man again, I have looked through Chor Leoni a hundred times and can’t find him. It’s funny that somebody who changed my life so much, I never knew their name. I don’t know anything about him other than he was a tenor for Chor Leoni, but he gave me so much more than I could ever have asked for. It was incredibly disorienting changing my solo an hour before I sing it in front of one thousand people, but it was worth it. I will remember that moment forever, but those fifteen short words changed me more than a solo ever could have. And this has kind of become a life philosophy for me: If you can do something without transitions do it, because transitions don’t go well. Lots of things in life change, and I hope I can remember those words when things are changing, because if you can just skip the transition it will be better for everybody.