Same Old Story, With Giggles and a Dash of Hatred

Today I was given a gift of an extra, free, double-team voice lesson! My teacher will be unavailable for a while starting next week, and she wanted to see me again before the recital... and she had one of her friends come to the lesson too - another "retired" opera singer (go ahead, click the link!!) who teaches. She had been bragging to him about how much improvement I've made and how quickly I learn, so my goal of course was not to make her into a liar. I sang Lascia and Se Tu M'ami. He had some great advice about maintaining the legato. Same stuff I've heard a million times from other people, but somehow it gets through when you hear it in a new way. So then he had me singing the melodies just on ahhh before singing the actual words. I had been singing kind of choppy - like, when I started concentrating on keeping my voice on top of the air, I lost my legato. That's not unfamiliar to me, as you all know from my many prior posts about it. And then when I concentrate on my legato I lose the tone. But slowly, slowly, they're overlapping. I think of it like, legato is my right hand and tone is my left hand. Bit by bit the fingers are intertwining. And then, you know me, when I liked how I sounded I got the giggles. A giggle fit in the middle of my voice lesson. Again, not unfamiliar. I think they thought it was cute. I just get all giggly when I hear myself singing like that - I can't believe it's me, and then I laugh. But I managed to get myself under control and concentrate. Part of my problem was that I wasn't relaxed enough. Relax... relax... yeah ok gotta work on that one. But when I am relaxed and I do manage to get the legato and the tone all at once - WOW! And then... I giggle.

The giggling didn't end with the voice lesson. Later I was on a video chat with some of my new 30STM friends where we got very very silly. Giggling is good for the soul.

So since my teacher didn't charge me for the lesson, Alex and I went to the supermarket beforehand and he helped me pick out a nice selection of flowers to make into a pretty bouquet for her.

And speaking of Alex, I'm sad to say I had to remove all his videos from YouTube. A mom who checks for these things alerted me that a pedophile website had linked to them on a message board and there was a thread of comments there. And yes, I would like to find these people and strangle them all with my hands. However instead I immediately took down all the videos after downloading the YT stats for them. I then went to Wikisposure, looked at each person's profile and blocked the ones who are on YouTube. I also reported them to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Somehow I managed NOT to barf on my keyboard while doing all this, although I did have a good cry about it in the car while blasting some angst-ridden 30 Seconds to Mars songs. So bye bye Beethoven's Wig videos. Guess I won't be making any more. I will hopefully be able to harness that rage and anger if an aria calls for it. Not to say that there's anything good about the incident. I've just never experienced such strong feelings of hatred, anger or outrage before.

My next lesson is on Monday, and then I don't know when my teacher will be available to resume giving lessons. Luckily her friend who was there today said that he'd teach me in the meantime. A male voice teacher - should be interesting. He was great today, telling me stuff, getting all animated, so I think it'd be fun. I had been wondering what to do while she was unavailable. Now I know.

The Ridiculous Costume

A professional photographer comes to the show to take pictures, and he also does professional head shots for what they say is a reasonable price. Not that I would know.

Turns out he was there today and snagged a couple of shots of the costume that stopped the show with a fit of giggles:



These photos were taken by photographer Jeff Reeder. Look, not only does he have that professional web page, he also keeps a blog. Check it out!