Apparently, this blog is my area to complain about things that I can't or won't complain about in real life. That being said, I have a complaint about something that happened on Saturday.

I was called by a teacher's organization and asked to judge an honors audition, last-minute, because they hadn't found anyone and someone gave them my name, plus it was just one student, so it wasn't going to take too long. I said that I would, showed up and the whole thing went fine, until I realized who the teacher was, at the end.

She's a piano teacher.

Now, some of you may think this is just fine, but it drives me crazy that people who are musicians think that they are qualified to teach any instrument, just because they're familiar with music. No, no, no, no, no. Voices get completely screwed up that way.

Now, this kid was young, and there was no recognizable damage, but it was apparent that she knew absolutely nothing about diction and that she didn't know anything about the way singers do things at competition. It's slightly different than the way other musicians do things, and it was very apparent that she hadn't studied with a voice teacher.

And that's not her fault.

So, she got a rating sheet full of tips, and her teacher was very nice to me and even said she's been trying to encourage the kid to find a real voice teacher, which made me feel slightly better.

But then the piano teachers showed up and crapped all over me, treating me like I deal in some music-related field, rather than actual music, and I'm some hillbilly from goodness knows where that hasn't read a note of music in her life and is living in an outhouse with seven other hillbillies somewhere in the mountains, brewing up moonshine and planting taters. So I just showed up, in my Sunday best, to write on a sheet of paper. Come on, guys. Give me a little credit.

I'M A SINGER. So I teach singing. That is my area. I don't crap all over everyone else's musicianship, so why do they crap all over mine? If there was a sight-reading contest, I bet I'd win at least 75% of the time, and I got almost all As in theory at college (except that one semester when I got a B because the grad student lost four of my papers, which I'm still pissed about, by the way, but never mind). I don't teach strings, even though I took about nine years of lessons. I (sometimes, if they beg me, because I have a complex about my craptastic piano playing) only teach very beginning piano students, because I really have studied it extensively. I'm just not able to play terribly well because, among other reasons, I get too nervous and then my hands shake. I don't teach any other instrument, even though I've taken classes in many of them and read books about them, and I understand the ways to play them and how they work. I leave the teaching part to people who've spent more time on the instrument and know it really well.

Ugh.

I don't know why I feel so pissy about this, and for sure I wouldn't have stayed cranky if I hadn't been pushed, for the zillionth time, to join the community choir, even though I've told this particular pusher that I don't sing in choirs right now. I just don't have the time to do it, and it's not really my cup of tea, although I do love listening to a good choir. I'm just working on so much of my own music for, you know, JOBS and stuff, that I don't have the time or inclination. I'd bet that I get asked to join choirs/handbell choirs/praise and worship teams/etc. about ten times a month. Almost every day. It's fine that people want to ask, and I'm flattered, but why can't anyone take no for an answer? I'm trying to have some semblance of a career, and if I can't put it on my resumé and/or I don't get paid for it, I can't do it right now unless I have an emotional reason to do it, like singing for a friend's wedding or funeral or doing a fundraiser for one of those groups that does good stuff for people.

Or because they offer me cake and/or wine at the end. Maybe cake and wine would put me in a better mood. I doubt it. People's egos annoy the crap out of me. I need to get one of those and then maybe I'll say something about it when it's happening and I'll feel better about the whole thing. Yeah, not going to happen.

Oh, and they published my article in the paper and added a comma to a place where I most certainly did not put a comma and I'm also annoyed about that.

I realize that has nothing to do with my page, but I needed to get it out before I exploded, and I didn't want to just save it for tomorrow and have to write a whole page about it.

Happy fricking Monday.