Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:47 — 6.8MB) | Embed

Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I sing and play guitar at my church, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share stuff I learned from a group of people who qualified for AARP.

Golden Spiral Media now has a Patreon page! Patreon provides a way for you to financially support Golden Spiral Media for as little as $1 a month. In return, we’ll be able to do some cool things and improve some of the things that we do. Additionally, you’ll get some cool stuff in return for your support. Head over to www.goldenspiralmedia.com/patreon for more info.

Friday Forum
Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can participate in Friday Forum by calling and leaving a message at 304-837-2278, emailing an audio file to feedback@goldenspiralmedia.com, or clicking on the Send Voicemail tab on my website, GoldenSpiralMedia.com.

What I Learned Yesterday:
I think most people dream about being a singer at some point as a child. For me the first memory I have of dreaming what it would be like to be a rock star was when I was first introduced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. I was 6 years old.

I don’t think I ever really thought I’d make it as a big time singer and never really pursued it. In fact, I never even sang in front of anyone except for the occasion when my brother would catch me singing along to the radio. That all changed on a random day after I graduated high school.

We had a new youth pastor, named Tim, at the church I was attending and since I we were pretty close in age. I thought it would be cool to get to know him a bit so I asked him if he’d like to hang out sometime. He invited me to go to the city with him one day when he was meeting up with some of his other friends and I agreed to tag along.

I had just discovered this really cool a cappella group and was really amazed by how much music they could make with only their voices and I brought their cassette tape with me. At some point I popped it into the cassette player of Tim’s car and he liked it too. I sat in the back seat looking out the window and singing softly to myself as we drove around Oklahoma City picking up Tim’s friends.

I had no idea at the time, but Tim was in a vocal quartet and the friends we were picking up were the other members of his group. I was also unaware that I was singing loud enough for Tim to hear me. I became suddenly aware when, at the end of one song, Tim hit the rewind on the tape player and told me that he was going to play it again and he wanted me to sing again, but louder. I was reluctant to do so, but he coaxed me into it. After the song was over he announced that the group had just found their new lead singer.

I thought he was joking. I wasn’t auditioning for a vocal group. I’d never sung in public before. In fact, the audience of four that were in the car made up the largest group of people that had ever heard me sing. Tim had a way about him, a charisma and a confidence that attracted people to him, and I eventually agreed to join their group.

The other members were Tim’s little brother Josh and two high school kids named Kevin and Nick.

Tim’s gift was his charisma and energy. Honestly, he was a bit tone deaf and didn’t always sing on key. Nick had a great bass voice and was really talented. The only problem was that he didn’t know how to sing the bass parts. He mostly just sung the same part as the lead singer, but he did it at a lower octave. Kevin was the tenor singer and he was pretty talented. He liked to stretch his voice and sing really high parts. Sometimes he hit the notes, and sometimes he missed.

I only knew how to sing the lead part. I tried to pick up some tenor from Kevin but this turned out to be a mistake. This got us both into a bad habit of changing parts in the middle of a song. If one of the other guys was doing lead on a song, Kevin and I just made up parts that may or may not have sounded good and may or may not have been the same parts that the other one was doing. Since Tim was also singing the lead part, this often meant that me, Tim, and Nick might actually be singing the same part on any given song, and Kevin might be singing tenor or might be conducting some sort of vocal experiment.
That leaves Josh. Josh was 14 or so and his voice had not yet changed. He was truly the only one of us that had any type of natural talent. He could sing lead, tenor, or soprano. If Kevin or I were wandering, Josh might be the only one actually doing a real part on a song.

Now, we weren’t as bad as I’m making us out to be. We practiced a lot and had a lot of fun. Nick’s bass was really good even though it wasn’t adding harmony to the songs. Josh was fantastic. Kevin stayed on the tenor parts most of the time, and I stayed on the lead parts most of the time. When we each did what we were supposed to do, we could sound really good. But the truth is, we were really inconsistent. We never knew how we would sound when we took the stage.

At one point we were invited to a recording studio in Tulsa. We were beyond excited. We got the invite because Tim had a lot of connections in our church’s denomination and the guy who owned the recording studio was doing us a favor. I think we all thought that he’d turn on all of the equipment and we’d record our best song. That’s not what happened. Instead, he had us all stand in a circle facing each other and told us to sing.

When we finished the song he mustered up a few encouraging words, but it was clear that he was not impressed. He pointed out that for a vocal group of 5 members, we had a severe lack of vocal harmony. Honestly, until that moment, I hadn’t even considered the fact that so many of us were singing the same part. He tried to coach us on how to fill in the missing pieces of the song by having each person sing a different vocal part. I understood what he meant, but once we left, none of us really had the experience or skill to really direct us. We never really got better.

A short time later I moved to a church that was much closer to where I lived. Nick and Kevin were struggling to balance all their school responsibilities, so the group just fizzled out. That was the end of my singing.

A couple of years passed by and I started attending a different church with a friend. After a while I started singing solos from time to time. One day a vocal trio at the church asked me if I’d like to join their group. It sounded like fun, so I did. This group was much different.

For starters, I was 22 years old and I was the only member under the age of 50. The other members consisted of a married couple named Bob and Bochy, and another guy named Larry. They had each been singing and performing for the length of twice of my lifetime. Bob and Bochy had worked with country music legends Ray Price and Willie Nelson. Larry had a barbershop background. Barbershop is a very precise form of singing and has it’s own set of disciplines. We spent a few hours each week practicing, and there were times where we did nothing but discuss how we would pronounce each vowel sound in a song. This may seem odd, but we all have southern accents and it’s important to be consistent on word pronunciations.

They not only taught me about vowel sounds but they also taught me about using my diaphragm, breathing techniques, vocal warm ups, and how to hear harmonies. I worked every other weekend, but it didn’t take too long for us to start getting recognized. We soon had singing gigs lined up in some church in Oklahoma, Kansas, or Texas nearly every time I had a weekend off. We had a great time traveling and singing at various churches, and I earned enough money to buy an engagement ring for Kari.

Here’s what I learned.

I had a hidden talent that I never knew about. I really enjoy singing, and I never would have realized it if someone hadn’t urged me to step out of my comfort zone. If I’d never started singing, I never would have picked up the guitar. Honestly, I really don’t like the sound of my singing voice (or my speaking voice for that matter), and I don’t think that I play the guitar that well.

However, I’ve had enough people tell me that they like my singing to give me the confidence to keep doing it. I know that I hit bad notes sometimes, but I just look at those notes as something to keep me humble and an opportunity to improve.

I also learned that having enthusiasm or love for something doesn’t necessarily make you good at it. There is a world of experience out there that we can learn from. I never once minded hanging out with 60 year olds because I learned so much just being near them. Each moment was a learning opportunity whether it was hearing a story as we watched the road pass by or it was sitting around a kitchen table talking about vowels. Bob, Larry, and Bochy were great teachers.

We live in a world today that has more access to information and experience than ever before. What is it that you want to learn? I can pretty much guarantee you that a quick search of YouTube and iTunes will provide you with a video and a podcast from someone sharing their knowledge about that subject. In addition to that we have access to online courses from universities or teaching communities like Udemy, or a myriad of book choices that can be instantly downloaded to your tablet or computer.

But most importantly, there are people all around us eager to share their knowledge with us and help make each generation harder, better, faster, and stronger. Wait, did I just end this episode with a Daft Punk reference? Yes, I did.

I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.

[sc:stuff]