My biggest fears about singing are beginning to be realized. I've been taking voice lessons for the first time in nearly thirty years. When I was young, my voice teachers wanted to develop my big, natural voice and had me work on things like "Soliloquy" from CAROUSEL; lots of breathing technique and learning about opening up all those cavities in the head for maximum resonance.

Well, over the years, I've gotten quite good at big, strong, Broadway style baritone stuff; one of the biological benefits of being a man is a voice that improves into middle age if you don't wreck it. Years of being a professional storyteller have given me a strong command of my instrument and the ability to pull out of it what I want in short, controlled bursts. With proper amplification, I can be as soft or as loud as needed and have learned a bunch of performer's tricks about how to work around almost any obstacle.

But when I am not in the performance moment and am just singing, warming up, or practicing, I have a lot of trouble with softer volumes above an E-flat, even though I can comfortably blast all the way up to an A-flat. I often say, "I have no falsetto."

I chose my new teacher, Katie Guthorn (the voicestudio.org), because she is all about soft control and erasing the barrier between chest voice and head voice. Our sessions are full of nonsense syllables designed to open the vocal chords and keep the larynx down. Hard! And since I haven't had a day without phlegm since early February, very froggy.

Yesterday I had the kind of voice lesson where much of what I knew of myself was stripped away and I became convinced I cannot sing AT ALL. It is fortunate I know about this stage and am not despairing cause it sucks.

If I work hard, I'll be able to sing "Dulcinea" in a sweet, softer mix of chest and head voice. But now (and I have it on disk), it is a horror!