1 From Pitch Names to Syllable Names: Why Singing Needs Another Perspective In the previous article (see: Awakening of Voice · Foundation (I): Pitch Structure and Auditory Stability), I have already introduced a basic fact of the modern vocal system: sound does not exist randomly. Starting from the overtone structure, a certain...
Most People Ignore the Variables in Life
Life is actually more like an extremely complex and constantly changing equation, full of variables: era, environment, family, opportunities, health, cognition, personality, choices, and even luck. And these variables are not simply superimposed, but influence and restrict each other.
But many people always like to understand life as a linear “input-output” relationship, as if as long as they invest something, they will definitely get the corresponding result.
For example, some people think: “As long as you work hard enough, you will definitely succeed.” But they often ignore that success never exists independently of the environment. The same effort, in different eras, different platforms, and different resource conditions, may lead to vastly different final results: some people rise with the wind, while others exhaust their lives in the headwind. Effort is of course important, but it is only one of the variables, not a universal formula that decides everything.
For another example, some people feel: “Make money desperately when you are young, and you can be happy when you are old.” But the problem is, no one can determine in advance that they will definitely reach that “old age” smoothly. Even many times, it is precisely the long-term overdrawing of the body, sacrificing health, and squeezing the spirit when young that ultimately causes the body to collapse first. As a result, before people have time to enjoy the future, they have already lost the ability to move towards the future in advance.
Many times, reality is not a stably running assembly line; it is more like a dynamic system—variables change at any time, conditions can be reset at any time, and formulas that held true in the past may not necessarily hold true in the future. Many seemingly natural life logics are essentially just phased experiences under a certain specific environment, rather than universally applicable truths.
Therefore, what people really need is perhaps not to cling to a certain fixed life formula, but to always retain awe for “variables.” Knowing that life cannot be absolutely controlled, and understanding that many things are not guaranteed to be obtained just because you “worked hard,” or realized just because you “planned well.”
This cognition is not pessimistic; on the contrary, it means that a person begins to truly understand the complexity of reality, and therefore knows better how to balance, exercise moderation, and cherish the present.
And this is what it truly means to understand the four words ‘life is impermanent."
1 Why did I write this article? The purpose of writing this article is not to create a vocal tutorial, nor is it a complete overview of music theory. It is more like a record of my own reflections—attempting to answer a simple yet complex question: What on earth am I listening to? And why do these voices affect me in this way...
1 Why do we think a song sounds good? Sometimes I repeatedly think about a very simple question: Why does a song make people feel it “sounds good”? This “sounding good” is very mysterious—it is not as clear as music theory, nor does it have standards like techniques; you cannot measure a melody like you measure CPU performance...
1 The cause of the third optimization of the blog's active-active architecture: A few days ago, I was preparing to perform a very routine maintenance operation on the Mac mini node in the blog's active-active architecture: upgrading the version of Portainer. As a result, a seemingly insignificant small problem ended up putting the entire node...
1 When we get used to “the original singer is the standard” but forget whose voice ours is: When most people start singing, there is actually an “invisible standard” by default in their minds—whatever key the original singer sings in, we should also sing in that key. It seems that only by completely following the original singer can we be recognized...
1 Preface: With my recent initial achievement of the goal of “larynx position freedom,” I have been reflecting on the detours I took over the past two years of studying “singing”—it is no exaggeration to say it was a winding mountain road. The fundamental reason for taking so many detours was that right from the start, I was misled by various online “vocal teachers”" teaching...
1 Entering ‘high placement’: A deified concept of high notes. Speaking of “high placement,” I believe many friends who learn singing and have watched countless instructional videos must be familiar with it. Searching on Bilibili, the three words “high placement” bring up a screen full of tutorials, with titles like “Unlock the secret of high notes,” “Sing high notes easily"...
1 Preface: I have been using an entry-level VPS ($39/year) from Racknerd's Chicago data center to build the “read-only node” in my blog's active-active architecture for almost half a year now. Over this half-year, the overall stability of the VPS has actually been quite good, at least...
1 Preface: In the process of seriously studying singing over the past two years, I encountered a very thorny problem: my ears' ability to distinguish could not keep up with my body's vocal ability. When professional vocalists listen to an original recording, they can often immediately judge how high that high note actually is, or whether that low note really sinks that low; but for someone like me...