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.

My Drooling Memory

Third post today because I can't believe I forgot to include this, especially since I had the entire post pretty much written in my head last night. I probably thought I had already posted it.

So Alex, our favorite future opera singer, had his music class at Westminster Conservatory on Wednesday afternoon. Parents join the class for the last 5 minutes, so I had some time to kill after I dropped him off. I wandered around campus and came across the student center and book store. "Oh good," I thought, "I'll need a place to hang out when the weather is unpleasant." So in I went.

Ah the bookstore. It's tiny, but there was more sheet music there than I could ever hope to learn in my lifetime, so it's tininess is irrelevant. I just walked past, trailing my fingers across the covers and drooling.












Then I tiptoed over to the textbook section and drooled a little more, until I saw the prices. Ah, college, where they can charge $82 for a small paperback and you have no choice but to fork over the cash.






So then yesterday, Thursday, I had my voice lesson. (Also at Westminster but at a "satellite" campus.) Before the uncontrollable giggle fit I had in the middle of the lesson, yes, I do believe it was before, my teacher says, "I think it's time you thought about what kind of sheet music to buy," and she pulls out this book:



I love when stuff like that happens. Yeah ok I can hear you saying, "Stuff like what?" Y'see, Wednesday was my first time (believe it or not) looking through racks of songs wondering how I'd ever be able to figure out which ones to buy. The very next day my teacher made a suggestion. And that's what I'm talking about. Ok yeah I know, it's not much, but I was going to post about the bookstore anyway, before I went to my lesson. Just play along and pretend it's like this huge fabulous coincidence, ok?