Feel Your Feet! Good courage!

Got the feedback from the Voice Eval. There was a check-off part that I won't bore you with and a comment section for each song that I will bore you with. Each person hand wrote their comments - the two "official" evaluators and my teacher.

So I'll transcribe the comments here, by song.


Goodnight, My Someone

**all three commented on my breaking character before the piano ended. It seems so obvious to me now but at the time I had no idea. My teacher blamed herself for that, for not going over all the music and explaining about that. I still feel like I should have just known... but anyway...**

Evaluator #1:

• Lovely, sweet sound
• Nice connection to the text and you're comfortable presenting the song.
• You're not afraid to connect to the character - that's great.

Evaluator #2:

• Keep the breath energy smooth from note to note. [comment from me: nerves?]
• The energy is in the vowel.
• Your mouth shape is horizontal and there seems to be a lot of tension in your lips.
• Some good released sounds in there - notice how that feels.

Evaluator #3, aka my teacher:

• More lower breathing needed
• Good vertical space
• More legato and vowel connection needed [yeah, no kidding]

Lasciatemi Morire

Evaluator #1:

• Good.
• Work on getting deep low breath.
• Stay connected into the body for a fuller, more complete sound.
• Your desire to sing and act needs to be grounded in a really firm technique.
• Feel your feet, think tall and deep (in vowels and tone)
• Think a "queenly" attitude - strong, dynamic, forceful physique! Regal!
• Good [This "good" was off to the side and underlined.]
  

Evaluator #2:

• Get lower in your body.
• It takes time to build the necessary strength in the body.
• Find the core of the tone and maintain it.
• Good start.
• Good courage!

Evaluator #3, aka my teacher:

• Good emotion in the voice
• Don't fold into yourself and ruin your posture
  
• Improvement on vertical space
• Nerves impeded the embellishments

Today when we went over the suggestions she said the emotion was great. We went over the embellishments again and the truth is... I just didn't know them. Ok that's not entirely accurate. I knew the notes and how they fit together but was having trouble with the rhythm and making sure I fit them in all the two measures, so I didn't get them in the right parts of the measures. Sometimes I wonder if this would have been easier had I learned how to read music as a child. We had gone over it before but I had some sort of mental block. Today she described it another way, using math terms, and it was like something clicked in my brain and suddenly it all made sense. So nerves sort of impeded the embellishments, but not in the way she thought - it was nerves about not being sure, not general nerves about the event. At least that's what it seemed like, to me, at the time.

My teacher said that the evaluators liked the fact that I'm into opera because it helps me get emotion into my singing. That's not exactly how she put it but you get the idea. They also suggested a song for me - Ouvre ton coeur, by Bizet. Hey it's in French!

Next week is a studio class where each person will sing one song once or twice, people will offer suggestions and the teacher will give advice. I decided to practice Lasciatemi and do that for the class.

So how do I feel? I'm not shocked or surprised by any of the breath advice, about finding strength and getting lower and being connected to my body and breath. I definitely need to work on that.

I am surprised by all the good feedback. Yeah I know... I can't help it. But now I know there is something in there, in me, some sort of potential, and if I keep working I'll get closer and closer to that sound, to that potential to produce music. That's pretty cool, dontcha think?

"Try to be abnormal"

So said my teacher to me in the hallway after I sang. Apparently my feeling of disappointment in myself, of wanting to rush back in and do it over, of beating myself up over the little mistakes, of just feeling embarrassed about myself, apparently that's all normal. ????

It was so weird. I wasn't nervous until after I had begun singing. I was sort of looking over their heads. Then I glanced down at them and saw that they were furiously scribbling, and any shred of calmness and self-certainty that I had left went out the window. I cracked, I lost my vibrato on some notes and was generally shaky sounding.

I've never sung with an accompanist before. I've never sung in front of people I didn't know, and certainly not people who were judging me. It was so weird - there were little parts here and there where I knew I was off but couldn't control it. I never sang "Goodnight My Someone" with any music other than my voice teacher playing the chords. I didn't realize there were several measures of piano after I was done singing. I was like, isn't it over? Why is she still playing? Did I forget a section? Should I still be singing? I was confused and a bit freaked out that I was doing something wrong. My teacher told me later that I picked up my water bottle while the piano was still going. I don't even remember doing that. She said that was my only real "mistake." She said I incorporated the things we talked about last week about creating vertical space, and she knows that I was off on the ornamentation in Lasciatemi Morire because of nerves. She said that for my first evaluation, and my first time singing with a real live accompanist, that I did very well, that I've worked hard all these months and I should be happy.

So why do I just want to cry? Relief?

Lest I bring the reader of my otherwise lighthearted blog down, take a look at the certificate I got. How silly is this! Yup, it's official. I've been evaluated. It's a little wrinkled because I sort of shoved it in my bag... And what, no frame? Time for a trip to the dollar store!

Warming Up - The Big Relax

So tomorrow is that voice evaluation. I've been practicing my two songs. I can sing them just fine, meaning, I can sing all the notes. But singing is so much more than just hitting the notes! For Lasciatemi Morire I definitely feel the pain as I sing it and my voice teacher told me that it does come through, but then we added the ornamentation two weeks ago... I find myself becoming conscious of it, like, I break out of my misery and think, "Ok, here it comes, gotta get the timing right..." and then mechanically it sounds ok, but that's just it - it's mechanic, not melodic. This morning in the shower (where else?!) I realized that I've practiced it enough and I don't need to be conscious of the notes that much - they'll just come. So hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to relax (yeah uh huh) and let them just come. Might have to pretend I'm in my living room instead of that classroom.

So for Goodnight My Someone - Still working on the damn legato. I stitch the words together and it still sounds choppy. I know I can do it, but why won't it just happen? I know, I know... relax. Dumb jaw. Let it just come. Be Marian the Librarian, looking for that special someone who must be out there just waiting to fall in love with her. Thanks to my teenage mindset I can lapse into that longing-for-a-boyfriend feeling pretty easily. I have found that I have more legato if I sing it quietly, so maybe I have to tone it down a bit, use a little less energy. Maybe it's a muscular control thing, and when I sing it quietly I have more control than when I let 'er rip.

Main point here: Relax, Relax Relax!

Voice Evaluation!! EEK!

I realized that with all the Juan Diego excitement I've neglected to write about my voice lessons.

We've put "Una Donna..." on the back burner, because in two weeks (TWO WEEKS!) I have a voice evaluation. I have a suspicion this is to evaluate my teacher too... so anyway I have to sing two songs for I think 3 or 4 people from the Conservatory (That's Westminster, for anyone who's asking) and then they tell me what's wrong OOPS I mean they'll give me suggestions. So my teacher and I discussed it and decided on 'Lasciatemi Morire' and 'Goodnight My Someone.' I think GMS is a sort of goofy song but it's good acting practice - how sincere can I sound?! It's also hard! It's sort of too low, but not really. It's in a range that coincides with a break in my voice so it's challenging. So in that sense it's not goofy at all. I've been practicing specific vocal exercises to help with the transitions, caressing the notes, and it's helping. They like being caressed. For LM, we realized that we never went over the ornamentation in the last two sections, so I've been practicing them. It's all about the timing - the piano accompaniment has some sections that are hard for me to maintain the correct rhythm, and then when the next parts come around I'm not always in sync with the music and I have to either stretch out or cut a note short. One day I'll try to record a video of me singing it. Until then, here's a similar version from about a hundred years ago. I don't sing it quite like this. I think she sounds like she's got a mouthful of marbles or something. We go a bit faster too. But hey, you can see the music, and that's kind of cool.