How low can you go?

Friday I didn't get home until 9:30 pm, so I was completely wiped out. Why did I get home so late? Staff. Dodgeball Game.

The staff dodgeball game split up numerous staff members into four teams: Birds, Pigs (of Angry Birds fame), Plants, and Zombies (of Plants vs. Zombies fame). Lizzy was on the Zombies team, and I strongly considered playing as well. I decided against it, and I wish I had just gone through with it. The students and parents attending had a lot of fun, but the teachers had probably the most fun of all. Lizzy noted that it was a really great community builder for the staff, who have sort of come apart in the past few years. It was lovely to see the whole school getting excited for something, and to see the teachers really coming together, even over something as silly as dodgeball.

I was very glad I went to the game, anyway. I was able to help out the parent volunteers and teachers who were coordinating it, and got to put my zombie makeup skills and hall monitoring skills to the test. My choir students and sixth graders who came frantically waved at me and started breathless conversations with me (well the girls more so than the boys), and my previous sixth graders were impressed that I remembered their names. Probably because Lizzy has a hard time remembering all the names crammed into her head, while I am still relatively fresh as a daisy as far as the amount of names I've had to learn.

Oh, and the Birds won the tourney and the Zombies came in last, so their team captain had to eat a cricket. She embraced it and grossed the kids out by how much she enjoyed it. I think it was flavored somehow.)

Honestly, while the dodgeball game was fun, the best part of my day--nay, my week--was in fourth hour. Yes, that's right: fourth hour.

Lizzy decided after warm-ups to re-test the boys voices and toy around with their seating to see how it would change their sound. She had them come up in small groups, facing towards her and away from the girls, and they were brave enough to sing down a scale along with the piano in front of her and the whole class. All the boys matched pitch quite well when it sat in their comfort zone. She arranged them into smaller sections by row, and even reassigned two boys to sing up the octave from the boys instead of trying to push it down low. She and the whole class were very encouraging of them the whole hour so that they didn't feel so out of place singing in the same octave as the girls.

While those two boys were really cool, that wasn't the best bit.

The best bit was when she started taking some of the guys down low. There is one boy who's generally pretty quiet, mostly knows what he's doing, but doesn't sing very loud. I've never even been able to tell if he's really matching pitch at all. We all found out on Friday.

Lizzy started a sol-fa-mi-re-do pattern, starting in Eb-Major and descending by half-step. I can't remember what vowel, but I think it was "naw." Again, I could be completely wrong. All I know is that all of a sudden, I could hear Bingley, as we'll call him for now, singing a really healthy note that was quite a bit lower than the rest of the boys so far. Only one of the boys up until that point could healthily get lower than a D3 (D below middle C), and I think that one had only hit a B2. I could tell that Bingley had hit a lower note and could easily keep going.

I got you this reference image.

Lizzy called my attention. "Kirsten," she said, "That's an A." She kept going, telling me each low note he was able to reach as they continued. Every one of them was easy, free, and not forced in any way. How low did he get?

E2.

Look at that image I posted. Look at where E2 is. Now look at the lowest note most of the boys got, which was a D3. Now think about the fact that between each of those notes listed, there is an extra note (F#, G#, A#, etc).

Now find an online piano and try to hit that note. Can't hit it? That's okay. Most of the basses in Concert Choir at CMU have a hard time getting down to an E2. Nothing to be ashamed of. It's super low. This was a twelve-year-old boy. It wasn't earth-shattering or soul-melting, it was just healthy and natural.

Bingley could have kept going, I could tell, but Lizzy stopped because she was just completely speechless. She showed the class where most of the boys sat on the staff, then showed them where Bingley was. The entire class burst into applause, and Bingley got high-fives all around. Not even the boy who's sung through his change and is the male leader in the class could healthily sing lower than an A2, which is still nothing to sneeze at. Especially in seventh grade.

Every time I think about it I get a smile on my face. The entire class was completely uplifted after that, and worked their tails off until the end of the hour. Even though Lizzy had to change around the seating yet again, the boys's sound was much more confident and unified because of that voice testing.

E. 2. Blows my mind.