First of Three

I have three things to catch up on:

1. My most recent voice lesson
2. That outdoor concert
3. Sunday's rehearsal

So....in this post I will discuss....


1. My Most Recent Voice Lesson:

Had a make-up lesson Saturday morning in one of the practice rooms at Westminster. Like the space so much better than the 6th grade math classroom the lessons have been in so far! With it's "Black Holes are God's Way of Dividing By Zero" banner across the board... yes it's a Catholic school. Yes I'm Jewish. Yes it's vaguely disconcerting to me to be surrounded by crucifixes and other Catholic symbols but I've gotten used to it. So anyway... wow I digress a lot... so Saturday we were in the practice room. The sound was great! My teacher told me that I did really well at the studio class - I didn't realize that this was my first time seeing her since then. Then we did some vocal exercises - one of my favorites where I sing See-YAAAA Ahh ahhh ahhh all legato... I think it jumps up a fifth (?) from see to yaaa and then down in, what, 3rds? I don't know... but it's so much fun to do. She always tells me to "Let loose, sing like an opera singer" and so I do and it sounds great and then I laugh and have to stop because I can't believe it's me singing like that. Then there's usually a point where I don't let myself slide up to the YAAA note for whatever mental block reason and I have a pause between the two notes. It's like I don't feel like I can control the slide to stop at the right note, although I can just hit the note. I think it's the C. I try not to peek at the piano but sometimes I do. So I KNOW I can hit the note, I just have to trust that I can slide into it from below. Anyone out there have any tips for overcoming that mental thing?

So we moved on from there and started "Ouvre Ton Coeur," which meant first checking the IPA, meaning, I copied it onto my copy of the music, then we went over the words and how to pronounce them, back and forth, a word and then a phrase at a time, then the rhythm, chant chant chant to get the words with the right number of beats, then she played the tune on the piano without us speaking the words at all. I recorded it all and have been listening to each part. I'm forcing myself to be comfortable with each aspect before I seriously try to put it all together. I have problems with the pronunciation once I try singing it. And I took French all through college - you'd think it'd be easy for me.

So I have one more make-up class to do over the summer, probably at my teacher's house.