What to Sing IF I Sing

I have a bunch of upcoming events. Maybe.

1. There's the voice evaluation for the music school in mid-May.
2. There's possibly an Opera Project recital near the end of May. Well there's definitely an OP recital but they're not sure they have room for arias this time around - more on that later.
3. There's the recital my teacher puts on of her students.
   

I'll need two songs for the evaluation, two for the student recital and one for OP if I can sing with them next month. Overlap is allowed of course.

I have three songs that I'm shuffling around for the events, plus another I can toss in for the eval.

1. Art is Calling for Me
2. Nel Cor and
   
3. I've pulled Vedrai Carino out of the closet of my brain.

So here's how I've got it mapped out.... for now.

1. Voice eval: Batti Batti and Nel Cor (or Art is Calling?)
2. OP if I get in: Either Nel Cor or Vedrai Carino
3. Student Recital: Art is Calling for Me and Nel Cor
   

The voice eval is a few days before the OP event. Shouldn't I sing there what I'd sing for the event? I'd certainly know by then if I'll be in. I'll find out next week. As of now they're doing tons of Wagner, the Lucia sextet and then some duets. I so want to do a duet! They told me they'd find someone for me for a duet so I'll talk to my teacher about what I could do. I'm stuck on Zerlina now and would love to do La ci darem la mano. But as usual, I need a baritone. I guess if I could possibly do it I'd just have to learn my part and ask them if anyone wants to do it with me. I feel so green about this stuff. But as usual I digress. As of now the program is full, although the fact that whatever I'd sing would be very short, like 2 minutes, is a plus.

So the plan for tomorrow's voice lesson is, I'm going to sing the three pieces for my teacher and then we'll decide together which one(s) I can get into shape to perform. I like having a plan.

By Request

Alex just asked me to sing Una Donna and then Vedrai Carino. Haven't sung VC in a long time. Wow! I sang it the best I ever have. I impressed myself. Notes that before had seemed difficult or sounded screechy to me were easy and sounded nice, natural. I could feel the difference in how I'm now able to control my breath, relax my jaw and open. And a section that before I could never seem to get right just came out correctly. I heard myself singing it - it felt right and it sounded right. If I thought about it I would've lost it so I didn't think, I just sang.

Maybe the key for me is to have the listener bounce on a mini-trampoline while I'm singing. Oh and of course to put things away for a while to let my brain process them.

Hot!

Yesterday evening on YouTube I did a tour of Vedrai Carino. Wow. There is some pretty hot staging out there. Here's a random one. There's a lot of preamble here - the aria starts about half way through. It starts out warm and ends up HOT. That Mozart... he sure was smart.

Old Friends

Voice lesson tonight. Same old story. I was picky, picky, picky, my teacher kept pointing out all the improvements and told me to shut up when I got too down on myself. I'm sure if I were standing closer she would have smacked me.

Pulled out the old friends - Vedrai Carino and Ouvre Ton Coeur. I can definitely hear a difference. I feel it too. I was almost intidimated by parts of Vedrai Carino, but now I'm taking charge. There are still parts of it that I need to work on, but I hear a difference even from last week. Ouvre Ton Coeur sounded better than I've ever done it before! I still have some, uh, issues, with the French pronunciation, but I'm working on it.

This Sunday my voice teacher is going to see the Met Finals. One of her friends has a student in the competition and invited her along. Yeah, these voice teachers, they all know each other.

Next week's lesson is canceled so no voice lesson until March 5!

Riding the Breath

Had an extra-long voice lesson tonight. I wasn't happy with my voice at all. But I plundered through and worked on some of that dastardly French pronunciation for the Tipsy Song. Or Waltz. Whatever it's called. The pronunciation is causing me to lose my legato. Seriously, I think it's the first thing to go when I need to work on some other aspect of a song.

Then I wanted to go back to Vedrai Carino. Like with Una Donna, I can definitely hear a difference after putting it on the back burner for a while. But then there's that damn legato. Where does it go? I wish I knew. So we did it without consonants and then stuck them back in, which helped. Then we talked about riding the breath. Turns out I was doing something that my teacher said is a common mistake- I'd have a few measures to prepare but would take this one big deep breath just moments before I had to sing, then it would come out with a sort of jarring blast. So I practiced taking that big prep breath sooner than I thought I should, and I began to let some out before starting to sing, so that the breath was on its way when I jumped on with my voice. Hence, riding the breath. I could hear an instant improvement when I did that. We worked on a couple of trouble spots and will probably work on it some more next week.

Tomorrow: Fledermaus.

Off I Go

I'm going to Florida tomorrow and won't be back until Monday. Here's some stuff to hold you over until then. This is all part of my "sing like no one is listening" attempt.

Yet another video of this. I never give up.



And this:



There's one more... if only I could get it to upload. But if you click through those to YouTube (and you should, so you can rate and comment... PLEASE comment with suggestions!!!) you'll see the other. If it ever uploads. Otherwise, you can see it here:
Still Singing Like No One Is Listening - Vedrai Carino



Finally, something professional. I love love love this:

I Was Gonna...

...but then I didn't.

I thought, hey, maybe I'll make another recording of me singing to post here for a laugh. I tried, I did. I sang Vedrai Carino with the accompaniment about 5 times. I know all the words, yet I forgot some of them when the camera was rolling. I can hit all the notes, yet my voice strangled for some of the high ones. Then, of course, Husband and Child came home from their outing during the final, and what I consider, best, attempt. However, you, Dear Reader, will not see any of said videos, and not only because I deleted all but one. No, you won't be seeing the remaining video because if I'm cringing that much while watching (although, I will admit, here and there it sounded nice), no one else will get the chance to cringe, laugh or point all all the mistakes that I know are there, that I hear myself making as I sing them, and that I know I can sing the song without making them.

Maybe after some wine. Husband's outing with Child was to the liquor store, after all. Maybe alcohol will help me sing like no one is listening. Hmm. Probably not a good habit to develop...

Thoughts on Singing (and the original title somehow vanished!)

Had my voice lesson yesterday. Worked on going up and down without hearing a break. It takes some concentration when the notes get lower. But once I sort of figured out how to do it, it got easier. Well duh of course that makes sense for anything. Went over a few parts of Vedrai Carino that I had questions about - the timing of one part, the progression of notes in another, then we went back to French. Tried Ouvre Ton Coeur in a lower key, from the mezzo book. It felt really comfortable there so I'll probably stick with it. Now that doesn't mean I'm a mezzo (darn!), but my teacher said that singers do that quite often - they're just more comfortable with certain songs in a different key. We also worked on me not being influenced by the background music. It's got quite a beat, for lack of any other way to describe it. But the singing is fluid, so I have to ignore that beat and keep the singing part smooth. Here, like this:



Hear that piano? On the accompaniment CD it's very sharp and staccato. I have to ignore that and sing smoothly. It's a nice contrast. The CD is also very very fast. I feel like I'm running a race sometimes.

My homework is to learn the words, translate and IPA a new one in French - Apres un Reve.



Sometimes the first time I hear a song I'm going to learn, I don't like it. I don't necessarily dislike it, but I'm not always instantly crazy about it. But then, once I get into it, pick it apart and learn it bit by bit I really do fall in love with it. Or maybe I just get used to it????

How to Seduce a Scarecrow

Had my voice lesson on Thursday. Figured I'd write about it before this Thursday's lesson.

It was pretty good. We did some exercises to help me remember to open open open before the high notes. So if you think of the scale as doe-re-mi, we were singing ahs of doe-re-mi-fa-so-doe-mi-re-doe. The exercise is to open at so in order to hit the note at the high doe, then keep open and elastic all the way back down to doe. The exercise covers a few things - the elastic throat thing, the open mouth and not giving in to the break at the lower end. I'm supposed to practice in front of the mirror but that hasn't happened yet. Then we went over Vedrai Carino, especially the 2nd half. Now that I can get myself to produce the sound forward and rounder and fuller, I have to work on being consistent with it. So we let that go for a bit and worked on the feeling of the song. My teacher decided it might be easier to get into it if I had some poor injured man to offer myself to. I've mentioned before that my lesson is in an elementary school. This month as some sort of a project the kids have all made life-sized scarecrows and - get this - tied them to chairs. They line the hallways. My teacher tried to embrace one but the chair came up with it. Him. It. So we had to sing to them as they sat in the chairs. Yes. I sang to a scarecrow, "E naturale, non da disgusto" and "si sento battere, toccami qua" (I might have that all spelled wrong, sorry) while I grabbed at my... at my heart. Toccami qua. It's under there somewhere.

Two Things on My Mind

There are two things on my mind and they are jostling for space. Seriously. I know which one is winning and it might surprise you.

Ok so of course totally on my mind is I'd Rather Be Sleeping's reader, Banawoman, who is going to Chicago on Thursday to see Pearl Fishers, and somehow (ha) wrangled herself a backstage pass. Somehow. *cough* However, since I'm not going, while I'm happy/thrilled/girly-giggly for her, it's not occupying the majority of my mind-space. That's not to say it doesn't have a big, ok, HUGE chunk. Just not more than 50%.

No, instead it's the new song I'm learning - Vedrai Carino. I'll even spell it right this time. I'm memorizing the words. I'm busy applying every layer of vocal whatsitmacallit to the piece, bit by bit. Caress the notes, keep the breath low (meaning, pull the low abs in to force the air out), keep the throat open and elastic, legato, legato, legato. My only concern is that perhaps I'm practicing some part of it incorrectly, and then we'll have to undo it. We meaning, me, myself and I. I first wrote we thinking, my voice teacher and I, but really, she'll just point it out and give me tips on how to fix whatever it was I mistaught myself. Ultimately, it's up to me.

I love how much faster this is coming together, though, than the previous songs. It's like some of the technique is finally sinking in and becoming second nature. And to think it only took a year of lessons.

"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.

Something Ate My Homework

I'd love to say that the dog (cat?) ate my homework, but I can't.

I have a voice lesson in about an hour. For this lesson I was supposed to:

• Write out the words for Vedrai Carino. Check.
• Write the translation below the words. Check.
• IPA the entire thing. Ummm...... che... I did some of it, does that count?