Here are five of my favorite lesser-known resources for singers.
1. Skiplagged
As musicians, we fly a lot. Flying is expensive. I’ve used Skiplagged almost exclusively for the past few years to find the cheapest flights. One catch, this doesn’t work well for extended gigs, just for short audition trips and overnight stays since you can’t check a bag. The way it works is that you buy a flight but just don’t take the last leg or legs of the trip, you get off in the middle. Those tickets are often cheaper than buying a direct flight to the city you want to go to.
Again, the only catch is that you can’t check a bag, which usually isn’t a problem for a quick audition trip.
Isn’t that illegal? Well, as the tagline on the website says “United sued us, but we won…” Even if you don’t buy the flights through the Skiplagged website, it’s an invaluable resource to find the chepest flights and often the cheapest predicted time and day to fly if you have flexibility. give it a try!
2. International Wiktionary
Ok, I know we all love the Nico Castel books, which have the translations and phonetic transcriptions for the texts of all of our favorite operas, but they are bulky, expensive, and let’s face it, you don’t learn the language at all when you rely exclusively on them to do your prep work.
If you want to train yourself to speak the language better, but need some IPA reference help from time to time, my favorite resource is Wiktionary for the country of the language in which you are singing.
For French, it is: fr.wiktionary.org
For Italian: it.wiktionary.org
and for German: de.wiktionary.org
There’s one for virtually any language we sing in, even Czeck, which is: cs.wiktionary.org
Every word you look up will produce a phonetic transcription in IPA and many times will also include a sound bite of how to correctly pronounce it.
It’s also invaluable when you can’t find the infinitive for a verb conjugation. Many times you just type in the conjugation and the infinitive will pop up. give it a try!
3. Tripit
Ok, back to travel. Because we travel a lot, we have so many different hotels, AirBnb’s, flights, trains, and other travel related tickets to keep track of.
Tripit keeps them all in one place for you and even updates you when gates, flight times, or delays happen. Most of the time, Tripit alerts me before the airline even does.
The other thing Tripit does is alerts you if the price of your recently purchased flight goes down and tells you what to do to contact the airline to get the lower price. Great stuff!
It’s only $49 for the year, which in my opinion is absolutely worth it, but there’s a free version as well. If you want to compare the features of the Pro (paid) version and the free one, you can find that here.
4. Global Entry
This is specifically for Americans. If you frequently travel internationally, the Global Entry card is a game changer. It comes with TSA Pre-check as well, so that right there is enough reason to get it.
What does it do? It allows for expedited passage through customs when you return to the United States from an international flight. Believe me, waiting through that massive customs line is the last thing you want to do when you reach American soil again!
Global entry does require you to have a passport, and you have to visit an authorized Global Entry enrollment centers at airports throughout the country. You can find one near you here.
The cost is $100 dollars, but that is for a 5-year membership. Again, a no-brainer as Pre-Check is $78 for a 5-year membership, but you get both Global Entry AND TSA Pre-Check with your Global Entry status.
Renewal for Global entry is $100 at the end of 5 years, while TSA Pre-Check renewal has a small discount and is $70.
5. Song Helix
As singers, we are constantly looking for rep. When looking for art song rep, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin, or frustrating to search through a major search engine when so many results pop up for a very specific type of music you are trying to find.
There are some excellent rep books like the Carol Kimball art song books which I still use weekly, but sometimes even those excellent resources can’t help you find what you are looking for. There are thousands of songs out there!
This fantastic resource was created by University of Utah professor Seth Keeton and is an excellent way to get some seriously in-depth info, and access to a formidable search feature that will help you find songs. There are 19 different keywords you can use to search for songs including things like nature, people, places and time.
Give it a try!
What are your other favorite unknown singer resources?
