Inspiration

I’ve been going for deep tissue massages over the past several weeks for a back thing that was bothering me. When I told my therapist that I’m a singer, she said she’d work on my intercostals.

Quick biology lesson: Costals are ribs. Intercostals are the muscles between the ribs. They aid in breathing in and out.

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Now, for the past 15 years or more, I’ve always felt pain in my back when I took a deep breath. I knew it was muscular but didn’t know there was anything I could do about it. I was just... used to it. Then... hello deep tissue massage! Ursula (yes, that’s really her name) is a miracle worker. Besides taking care of the original problem that brought me to her, she has been working on my intercostals. It’s insane, what she does. Near the end of the one hour massage, when I’m on my stomach, she has me take a deep breath and then she pushes, hard, 4or 5 times while I exhale, on 6 different areas of my back, three on each side. Then I turn onto my back and she does this on my sternum. The sternum is that long bone in the front, running vertically between the ribs. It’s like CPR. And when she’s done... holy cow. I can take a deeper breath than I’ve ever been able to take, and without pain! She freed up those muscles and the connective tissue. It’s amazing. I can take these huge breaths. So now I’m working on using my new fillup capacity to really fill up with air before singing a line. I’ve been singing without it for so long that I have to make a conscious effort to remember to do it. Soon it will become habit, I hope. That’s the plan, at least. I’ve found that having all this “extra” air in me has helped me to control my exhalations too, so I can much more easily vary the volume of a note. I think that before, I was blurting out notes by shoving out the last dregs of air. Suddenly there’s no need to blurt. It’s amazing. Like a whole new world of breathing. I can take deeper breaths to relax, and it’s also improved my posture.

The best part of all: My health insurance is paying 70% of the bill. It’s about time my health insurance paid for my voice lessons in some way.

Speaking of health insurance paying for voice lessons, my teacher is away this week. It’s like having your psychiatrist go on vacation. I’m hanging in there. Luckily I can now take long, deep breaths to remain calm and focused.

Trying to Float

I have a voice lesson this afternoon. To prepare, I usually listen to the previous lesson while I'm at work. Obviously I don't sing along… but it helps put me in the right frame of mind. So this morning I took notes on what my teacher said. Here is some of it:

• Pull it up
• Get the tip of the tongue down
• On top of air all the time
• Make the connection (from exercises) to songs
• Think UP as you do down
• Keep the air going
• Keep it on the air
• Open jaw (as notes got higher)
• Drop jaw like you're going to vomit
• Pull it up (the voice) for the "flip"
• Right away on the airstream
• Drop it (the voice) on top of your airstream
• Float it (the voice) on your air

Anyone else sense a theme here?

One of the things I noticed last week when I was doing it right was that the airstream never changed - just the notes did. Before, I had been in the habit of changing the air along with the notes. It really is so much easier to sing with that steady airstream - like no effort. The voice really DOES seem to just float up top.

So I seem to get some of the cognitive stuff. Now I just have to continue practicing the physical side. Float it, baby.

I'll report again after the lesson.

Patience

Trying to figure out this vocal thing here. Consistency. Want it. Don't have it.

I can do the warm-up exercises great. I can do all the notes on all the vowels. Too bad I can't do a recital of vocal runs. So why do I lose it during certain (read: higher) parts of the songs?

Here's what I think is happening and what I'm planning on doing about it. This is in no particular order:

For one thing, I have to forget about the consonants. The l and the r bog me down. Gotta just forget that they exist.

I've made up vocal exercises using the runs that are causing me trouble. I do the notes in order but up and down the scale. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

When I do that, and when I sing the songs, I'm being very very conscious of my breath. What I mean is, I'm really filling up, expanding my rib cage, and really steadily pulling my abs in as the air comes out. I have to trust my throat will make the right notes, so I can give the air flow the attention it needs. So for the songs I'm doing one section at a time, consciously filling up and letting the air out.

I understand now what my previous teacher meant when she said to think of all the notes on one plane. Because when I have the air in the right place, the notes really are all there in that place. It feels great, it sounds great. I understand. The high notes are no different from the lower ones. I understand!!! Now I just need to convince myself and do it more. And do it more in order to convince myself.

Also I have to go back to the "basics" of legato - of not touching the ending consonant of a word until the beginning of the next word.

I feel like I'm back at that place where I have to hold all these three-dimensional shapes together in the space in my head. I have to concentrate, and at the same time, sort of relax and let them go. It's kind of like when you blur your vision to see those 3d pictures. Did I mention that the last time I wrote about this? With those, once you start to see something you can relax and just let your brain focus on what's there.

I trust the concept of "muscle memory." I want my body to just relax and do what I'm training it to do. I can get there. I just have to be patient. Wish me luck with that.

Yesterday, Breathe, Tomorrow

Yesterday was fun. Voice lesson in the morning where of course we went over Batti Batti and how to "fix" some of my trouble spots. It's almost all psychological of course. Breathing. Trusting that I have enough breath. Controlling the breath to avoid a blurty sound. Remembering to breathe at the right parts so I have enough breath. Maintaining the legato. Modifying a vowel in my mind so that it sounds the same to the listener, as the correct vowel, but the note is more ringing and bright. That was fascinating, because I simply thought of a different vowel and the sound changed but the pronunciation didn't. That easy, relaxed relief I feel in the second half, how to achieve that for the entire song. The first half is no more difficult or easy than the second. It's all in my mind... I think you get the idea.

Then I had an Opera Project rehearsal where I got to run through the song with the accompanist. She is so talented. I forgot to mention that last week, when we were trying to decide what type of intro she should play since the aria just starts with the singing, she quickly ran through the entire recit to see what came just before the aria. Like, out loud, softly and quickly, the way you zip through a song to get to the part you want to be at. Yesterday, she noticed that I was cutting off certain notes in the same spots, where they appear in the same pattern in different parts of the song, and she thought that perhaps I was doing it because I feel like I need to sneak a breath in. She said a lot of singers do it. She assured me that there is plenty of time for me to complete the note for the proper length and still get a good breath in there. She said that I was actually getting ahead of her when I was doing that! She kept assuring me that it was ok and that I had enough time. Full-time accompanist, part-time counselor of singers. The man who runs the group also mentioned the breath, using the breath, riding the breath. Basically everyone is telling me the same thing. Maybe I should start to pay more attention? I sang it a second time with more focus on controlling my breathing and I could hear the difference. I have it in me, I just have to trust myself. The parts of the aria that just flow out of me are when I relax, breathe and just trust my body to sing the right notes. Maybe I have to stop thinking so hard and just let go. Let it out. I'll try that, somehow.

Today I breathed a lot. All day, in fact. I bet you did too.

Tomorrow of course is GoW at Carnegie. I think I'm going to go with the multi-colored peasant skirt and brown top that I wore to Carmen and in Florida. It's uber-comfy, the skirt is so long that I can wear what someone I know calls "cheaters," meaning, SHHHHH knee-high hose instead of horrible all-the-way-up ones. Seriously. Who needs another layer of control top on top of the fancy overpriced flab-flattening underwear I'll be sporting. Hm. I can answer that question. I do. But I'm going to forgo that added "fashion" for the comfort of being able to breathe. And eat and drink! Another friend (who as far as I know is not going to Carnegie that night) might be meeting us at the restaurant for a drink before the performance. Should be fun!

Radiating Joy!

I'm participating in the holiday chorus at work again this year. We had one of our cafeteria performances yesterday. It was fun. Once again, they took me and one other woman aside and quietly asked us to stand in front of the microphone. But that's not what I want to focus on.

I want to talk about the absolute joy that radiated from our director's face throughout the entire performance. She was dressed in black with red sparkles in her sweater. She has straight black hair and was wearing red lipstick. As she directed us she had this HUGE smile on her face. She looked just like a doll. She was in her element - directing music. And the quality of the singing didn't affect her... because trust me, while a few of us can sing, there are many who have a hard time singing on pitch or even at the correct time. But in spite of that, she radiated joy during the entire performance. It was awesome and contagious.

One odd thing that happened to me, and I seem to recall this happening last year too, is that I got a little light-headed, like I wasn't breathing enough or correctly. We have one more performance so I'll focus on correct breathing. Don't want to hyperventilate my way through the entire thing.

Practice Drive

I know you're supposed to only practice when you do nothing but practice. I know. And I know you're supposed to make the time in your day to do so. But too bad. I can't always do that, and I'm not a professional, so I have to bend these "rules" to fit my lifestyle.

I sing in the car all the time, and yes, I practice there too. To me, the difference between practicing and singing is, when I sing I just sing, but when I practice I focus on incorporating or improving particular aspects of singing.

Today on my way to work it was all about the breath.

A few weeks ago I made a CD of the piano accompaniment of the songs I've learned so far. Some of these are from when I first started my lessons. So today I was going through the CD and singing some of the early songs while focusing on my breath. Or more accurately, on the support. Like in that Pearl Fishers video, I was actively pushing out my abs and then pulling them in in a controlled manner for each measure of the particular song I was singing. Controlled being the important word in that sentence... I'm getting much better at controlling it so I can hit the higher notes without sounding like I'm blurting them out. And one thing about sitting to do this is that I can really focus on the abs while the seat supports the rest of me. I mean, I relax into the seat and really concentrate on what my belly is doing while I'm singing. Or should I say, what I'm doing with it. And when I'm really controlling the outgoing air, I'm then able to focus on relaxing my throat to really open it up. Bit by bit, little by little, I feel the layers adding up.

And one other positive aspect is, it makes the commute (ok it's just 10-15 minutes) fly by!

I've Got a Hunch

Ok not a hunch exactly... more like a scrunch?

I forgot to post yesterday about my voice teacher's feedback about my performance at the recital.

She said that she noticed that when I started my breaths, like at the beginning of a line I guess, I was sort of hunching up and using my chest. In other words, instead of keeping my breath low, I was using my chest to breathe. I actually haven't had time to check the videos since then. She reminded me that the breath must come from low in the abdomen and I must keep my shoulders down in order to keep the breath down. I remember that from last year's studio class when she told me to press my hands toward the floor. I'll have to take a look at the vids and then work on keeping that regal posture no matter what my arms do. No hunching or scrunching allowed!

Filling the Balloon

My voice teacher gave me an exercise for homework. At my last lesson, I was having trouble grounding and getting the full use of my breath. So this week my homework has been to sing If Music be the Food of Love, phrase by phrase, using my low abs only. Filling the balloon - meaning, pushing my abs out to draw in air, then pulling them in slowly to sing the phrase. I'm hoping that this exercise will help me gain some control over some of the notes that sometimes come out all blurty.

I was able to use the program on the CD to bring the song down a pitch, but there's no way to save it unless you shell out cash for the full version. So for now I'll be practicing that in front of my computer.

Finally, today's unrelated note:

Today when I got to work I found this on my chair, wrapped in pretty ribbon:



And it wasn't even a birthday present! One of my work friends (the woman who directed the talent show and with whom I've gone to a few operas) was cleaning out her bookshelves and thought I'd like them. Wow! I can't wait to show my teacher.

The In-Between Times

I'm in between the chorus performance at work and my voice lesson. Yes, here I was yesterday thinking there was nothing to write about because I forgot all about today's performance.

It was fun. A bunch of us were in a conference room waiting for someone to come with a keyboard, I think, to warm up. I couldn't just sit there so I sort of started things going - had everyone stand up and stretch, showed some breathing techniques and gave suggestions on how not to shrug the shoulders up, as some people were doing. Then the keyboard came (I'm not sure but I think it was a toy) and we did some vocal warm-ups.

The performance was fun. I learned that I am not the only one who didn't know all the words, and in fact, I knew them a lot better than most of the people standing around me!

One thing I noticed - actually I couldn't NOT notice this - was that I was getting lightheaded. It's like all that deep belly breathing was similar to hyperventilating. What's up with that? In between songs, or when I didn't have to sing, I concentrated on normal breathing so I wouldn't pass out. I never felt faint, but the whirly-twilry head feeling was there. And of course, while I was singing and feeling this, I was wording a blog entry about it in another part of my brain. Multi-tasking! I'll ask my voice teacher about it tonight.

"The Only Thing Stopping You is You"

That's what my voice teacher said to me last week. I forgot all about it, but luckily I wrote it down, and I came across it again the other day.

She's right. I am the only "thing" stopping me. I kept that in mind as we went over Vedrai Carino this week. I vowed to not be the thing stopping me. So we went over the IPA, the rhythm and the melody. Then we jumped right in and started singing line by line. And you know what? Once I stopped being the thing that stops me, I instantly noticed an improvement. I'm slowly but surely getting better at coordinating the breath and the throat. I'm not yet at the point where I can just instantly relax my throat and use my low breath, but I can get there much faster than it was taking me before, and I don't have to concentrate on it as much.

It is such a relief to be back with an Italian aria. The French was a pain in my arse, to tell the truth. And what's funny is, I studied French much more extensively than I studied Italian back in college. I'm sure that the fact that my major field of study was Spanish has a lot to do with it. I do find myself having Spanish interference sometimes with the Italian words. For example, in Vedrai Carino I want to say Vedrai Carin-yo, as if there were a tilde ~ over the n, because that's the word in Spanish. So like everything else, I just have to train myself.

And speaking of training, I practice all the time. When I'm not singing I'm thinking about singing and about the music. I also practice reading along in the music while listening to the accompaniment. As a result, I'm slowly getting better at reading music. I can't glance at a staff and tell you the note, but I'm pretty good with note-to-note relations, so I can learn a new piece of music that way. "Ok, these two are the same, and this is a half step up, and this is an 8th note, and then back down a third..." and so on.

I love that all the different layers I'm learning are getting easier for me to put together. The breathing, the throat opening, vertical space, taffy-pull rubber-band type throat, and then the notes, the pronunciation, the words, the music, the rhythm, the meaning, the feeling and the legato. I would love to be able to pick up a new piece of music and have that all come together right away, but my style of learning is that I have to focus on one or maybe two layers at a time before integrating them or adding another. But it's getting easier and easier to integrate them with each new piece I study. Not to say that it's easy, but it's not as frustratingly difficult as it was at first.

Now I just have to remember to not be the thing that stops me.

Another Quick Pipette Update

My poor little future opera singer... we went to his cousin's birthday party on Saturday, 1.5 hours from home... he went outside to play and within a minute was having trouble breathing. Pollen was flying everywhere... so we came in and did a double breathing treatment with that little machine and he showed no improvement. SCARY doesn't begin to describe it. Luckily for all involved, my brother, whose house we were at, just happens to be an ER doctor specializing in pediatrics. He assured me that Alex was ok and didn't need to go to the hospital because he was showing no signs of retraction. He said that in the ER they would put him on a pulse ox, give him a double dose of the meds like we did and would give him prednisone if he didn't improve. He just happened to have some prednisone pills (I didn't ask why, I was just thankful) so he calculated the dosage based on Alex's weight, ground some up and mixed them with applesauce. Meanwhile I put a call into the pediatrician. She called back within 15 minutes (thanks to what I said to the service, that he was having an acute attack and not responding to treatment.) I explained where we were, what happened and what we did. I couldn't tell if she was annoyed or not but she did rx some more prednisone b/c you have to take it for a few days. Poor guy coughed and wheezed all the way home. It was pitch black and pouring and I was trying to figure out where the nearest hospital was for the entire drive. Then, to top it off, when we got home there was one of those giant hairy scary bugs also known as a house centipede on the wall that I had to remove myself.... eewwwwwwwww. WARNING: Do not click on those links unless you are ready to be completely GROSSED OUT.

Husband is not allowed to go away for a week ever again.

Edited to add: He's much better now, no more wheezing !! He's still hoarse from all the coughing but hopefully will be back to singing his favorite arias soon. Oh and just to make this a bit more operatically themed, I let him watch TV while he does the breathing machine, and lately he has been asking to watch what he calls, "Figaro, when the cart comes out," which is "All'Idea di Quell Metallo" (I apologize for the spelling errors there...) and then after that "the part where they chase him," meaning, rewinding to when Count Almaviva tells the musicians to go and they run after him thanking him loudly so he'll give them more money to be quiet and leave, from the Met's Barbiere. I asked him why he likes All'idea - is it the cart or the music? And he said he likes the music at that point where the cart comes out. That's the "numero quindici" part of the duet. I like it too!