"Angie, do you want to take voice lessons? If you do, you have to be serious about it." That's somewhere along the lines of what my mom said to me before she signed me up for voice lessons as a six-year-old. Apparently I agreed to her conditions to take it seriously. Which is really no surprise, because even as a six-year-old, there is recorded evidence that I was sort of out-of-control serious about pretty much everything, but especially singing. Old home videos prove that I was determined to be in the spotlight for my voice - fake vibrato and all - no matter if it meant pushing three-year-old Martha out of the camera's view.
Se. Ri. Ous.
When it was time for my first voice lesson, of course I didn't know what to expect. But that was the first time I ever felt like I was auditioning for something. My mom and I practiced "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" from the Children's Songbook (it was my very favorite song to sing when I was that age) and headed to the house about fifteen minutes away from our own home.
It was a brown wooden house with a huge driveway, steps leading up to the front door. My mom and I waited and the door opened. There she stood: Helen Ritchey, owner and operator of The Ritchey School of Music. She was an older lady, tall and very thin, with shoulder-length curly brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and high cheekbones. She shook both of our hands and we went in. To my right was a gigantic living room with high ceilings and quilts hanging on the wall. There was a small lofted area directly above the kitchen. To my left was the "studio." It was a very small room with two pianos and huge wooden cases of sheet music and books. There was a door on the far wall that led to the garage.
The next thing I remember is singing the song for Mrs. Ritchey. She smiled the whole way through. I remember my heart pounding as I sang for her, as if I thought she wouldn't take me on as a student if I didn't blow her away. Even as a six-year-old. I think my mom left after that and we began my very first voice lesson. It consisted mostly of warm-ups: placing my back and shoulders up against the door in the studio that led to the garage in order to keep a straight back, placing my arms in a "rainbow" over my head in order to open up my lungs, smiling and frowning very quickly, lip-buzzing, you name it. By the time I walked out of my first lesson, my six-year-old brain was going crazy. I had so much fun and could not wait to return the next week.
As I think about it now, I am seriously staggered by the technique she taught with and the ideas she had. I wish I had realized when I was taking lessons from her that she was such a musical genius. See, it was school to her and she needed it to be school to her students as well. Each half-hour-long lesson was jam-packed full of information: warm-ups, theory lessons, theory tests, etc. Thanks to Mrs. Ritchey, I know how to read music - bass and treble clef; in fact, I knew how to read both staffs by the time I was eight years old. I learned how to read time signatures and keep a steady beat. Before I was ten years old, I was able to articulate what a ritard was, a fermata, pianissimo, sforzando, andante, crescendo, and the list goes on and on and on. I didn't love the music theory tests then, but I certainly do now.
But here's the real kicker. Mrs. Ritchey, for the nine years that I took from her, had me dip my feet into every genre you could imagine. In my almost-ten years with her, I am willing to bet we "checked off" over 200 songs. I sang country; I sang gospel; I sang pop; I sang movie songs; I sang classical; I sang contemporary, folk, Christian, vachai, opera, Latin, oldies, blues, musical theatre, calypso, legit, carol, Italian, lullabies... I seriously could go on forever. Because of this extremely extensive array of music styles, some of which I despised doing at the time, I was able to close the chapter with Mrs. Ritchey when I was fifteen years old with so much under my belt to help me in the future.
Of course the other voices teachers I had after Mrs. Ritchey have helped me continue to grow as a singer, but I believe that the work that Mrs. Ritchey put into me was what kept the ball rolling. Because of the gospel training, I can sometimes sing like a black lady. (Sounds crazy, but I'm serious.) Because of the country training, I was able to later learn how to yodel and utilize my "twang" in songs and roles that came around. I also fully believe that I have a three-octave range because of the training I received from Mrs. Ritchey in those unbelievably boring (yet obviously effective) vachai, Latin and Italian pieces, the opera songs, etc.It's just one of those things that you don't realize at the time is going to literally help shape you into the performer or person you will be.
She absolutely gave me the gift of music in the nine years that I took lessons from her, and she did it with such grace, such esteem, such warmth, and such wisdom. She made me love to sing and she made me want to be good at it. I am truly grateful for what she has done for me.
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