Here is my weekly update on my journey towards become a multi-media bard.
Vlog : Skill Building
For my skill-development endeavors, I continued focusing on the exercises taught in the Berklee Vocal Technique DVD.
Featured this week in my YouTube Video is one simple exercise from the DVD — the 5-1-5-1 exercise, where the singer sings a vowel and slides up and down across the range.
Creating MuseScore Accompaniment
A portion of each practice session went into using the open-source MuseScore software application to create piano accompaniment scores so that I can sing on key.
Here is a Github repository that I am developing that has my personal notes as I study the Berklee routine.
Link to my music-study-notes Github repository.
The piano played in the background of this video comes from one of these MuseScore files.
Lilli Lehman, How to Sing
In addition to the Berklee DVD, I also acted on helpful advice from Reddit user: AKA-J3, who suggested that I look at a video from the YouTube channel, Music Lessons with Lauren.
The video was informative and I’m still working on incorporating the content in the piece into my practice routine.
At this time, I am mostly focused on reading the book that Lauren recommends: How to Sing by Lilli Lehman.
The book is over one-hundred years old and is in the public domain.
As I’ve been reading through it, I’ve been sharing quotes that I enjoy on my X.com feed.
General Session Records
| Date Session | Duration (Minutes) | Public Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-07-20 | 78 | Berklee Vocal Technique. First few exercises, then notated exercises in MuseScore. Studying Lilli Lehman and Music Lessons with Laura’s vowel lesson. |
| 2025-07-21 | 91 | Berklee Routine. Working on notations for practice in MuseScore. Lilli Lehman study. |
| 2025-07-22 | 69 | Berklee Vocal Technique. Working on notations. Lilli Lehman. |
| 2025-07-23 | 30 | Berklee Vocal Technique. Working on notations. |
| 2025-07-24 | 60 | Berklee Vocal Technique. Working on notations. Lilli Lehman. |
| 2025-07-25 | 80 | Berklee Vocal Technique. Working on notations. Lilli Lehman. |
| 2025-07-26 | 81 | Berklee Vocal Technique routine. Working on notations. Lilli Lehman. |
| 2025-07-27 | 80 | Berklee Vocal Technique. Only going through currently notated exercises. (30 min.) Lilli Lehman (1 hr.). |
Memories to Share
Here is a story that I’m sharing with my students this year by way of introducing myself:
Recently, I was stranded along the highway in the middle of the Alaskan summer forest fires and a mysterious kind lady saved my life.
In July, I went to visit a friend in Nenana. Along the way, as a result of some of my eating habits that need improvement, I stopped at Costco and bought a few items of junk food: white-chocolate covered macadamia nuts and mini smores.
After eating a quarter of each bag, I was feeling guilty about the amount of calories I consumed. When I arrived at my friend’s home, I offered his family the rest of the junk food and they charitably took it off my hands.
The time with my friend ended and I turned around to head back on the highway. However, after I drove a few miles up the road, I discovered that the summer forest fires had spread to cover both directions of the highway and I had to stop. I could go neither north towards home nor return to the south as the fire blocked both paths.
There was plenty of distance between my location and the fires, so I wasn’t at risk of being burned. What was the danger? The risk was, of course, my hunger. How can an over two-hundred pound gentleman such as myself live without constant food? As the hours passed and the pain in my stomach grew, I questioned my decision of giving up my only means of sustenance to my friend.
Then, out of nowhere, a lady came walking along the highway. I don’t know where she came from. She had a duffle bag full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She smiled as she handed one to me, along with a drink. The entire exchange took less than a minute; I never learned her name or even saw her again.
The sandwich was delicious and the danger of my starvation abated. The mysterious lady saved my life.
Several hours later, the forest service cleared enough of the road for me to continue on my way home. This crucible of burning forest along the highway was easy to endure, given the satisfaction in my stomach and the memory of the kind mysterious lady on the road.
Artificial Intelligence Transparency Report
No artificial intelligence was used for the writing or performing portion of this blog post.
I used Google’s Gemini AI to help me write a sql script to export my database records of my practice sessions into a .csv format, and convert that table into the above HTML table, as seen above.
How You Can Help
I need your help to become established as a teacher and storyteller.
Here is a link to a blog post that describes how a supportive reader can help me in my quest.
In short, you can…
- Like, comment and share
- Buy a copy of my children’s novella, Westly: A Spider’s Tale