What is the desired sound?
 
The vast majority of the population are born with the predisposition to be musical. Singing ability is developed as muscles and ligaments are trained and coordinated to produce a sung voice vs speaking voice. Then comes the ability to produce a melody line that goes higher and/or lower.  With that ability, there is the auditory ability to hear differences in pitch, and whether a melody is going higher or lower. Rhythmical awareness, discrimination, and replication. Only a small percentage of the population 2-5% do not have the brain-wiring for these vocal skills.
 
When singing muscles and brain pathways are underused, their abilities need warming up or training to produce the desired sound. Practice does not make perfect (what is perfect?) – but it certainly improves underused abilities. It is normal to have narrow singing abilities when voice muscles are unfamiliar with producing other sounds.
 
This world needs more singing!

Performance-quality singing is not the baseline expectation for sharing your voice or your song. There is no formal stage or audience when we are singing with a group of friends, at a family gathering, in a church service, with kids or remembering an old song with an elder. The more YOU get comfortable with this idea, the more you give permission to people around you to be ok with their singing voice, and the ripple effect will see more singing in the everyday lives of everyday people. Music is for everyone – all ages, all abilities.
 
Singing has the potential to connect us and makes us feel good! I think our communities and this world could benefit from a little more of that. Do you?

A review of what success looks like at Music Interchange in Year 1:
 
​Kids expressing themselves musically in their home environment!

Teens feeling more confident about their abilities to create music!

Adults having fun, positive, group singing experiences and gaining confidence in their singing abilities!

• Crash courses in basic music theory for 15 adults support the music-making activities they are involved in
• A dozen 5-6 year olds make friends through music
• Working with early-childhood organizations to bring interactive music classes into their spaces, impacting 50 kids aged 1-5 years old.
• Engaging 100 adults in a pop song choir event, mixing choral singers and self-declared non-singers, without sheet music, and HAVING A BLAST delivering this experience!
• Expanding piano playing skills of a dozen kids who confidently performed at an end of year recital for their family and friends. Five of these kids participated in the Yellowknife Music Festival.
• Expecting 15 people to register for a program, and being overwhelmed with 35!
• Expecting 30 people at a drop in event, and welcoming 60!
• Helping a group of Francophones and a group of New-to Canada teens write lyrics and music for two songs about Yellowknife!
• Receiving grant money to run programs and buy necessary instruments + office equipment to deliver programs!Thanks for NT Arts Council!!  Thanks to ITI SEED grant!
• Being organized, delivering well-planned programming and making it happen!​
• Being overwhelmed with the number of program requests in this community

And now onto year two!

Lately I have felt as though I am standing at the edge of a high diving board, about to jump. With a range of Community Music programming advertised, registrations coming in, it's GO-time! This is the work that I have been preparing for and it is exciting that the opportunity to do it is in front of me! Am I ready? Sometimes I feel that I am, and other times I feel scared. I have suited up, climbed up the ladder, walked out to the end of the board… The only thing left to do is jump. While I stand at the edge of the board looking down, I reflect on where I am and what I am about to do. If I think to much, I could psych myself out. 

“Don’t think about it, just go!” - a personal motto created for myself and my cousins for swimming in Lake Superior. The water was always shockingly cold, and too much hesitation resulted in turning around before letting the water surface rise past our belly buttons. The best method? Rush into the water and dunk our heads under before our minds had the time to question what we were doing. Knees up, arms flailing, shrieking briefly before you nearly lose control and fall into the massive lake. The adrenaline rush of the cold, the quick acclimatization, that floating feeling, the fun of hanging out on the floating dock – this is what we were after, and what resulted from moving swiftly past that initial fear of the cold water shivers and numbness. If the water really was too cold – all we had to do was walk out of the water and towel off. So simple. Nothing lost.