Still All in My Head

Ack! It's all happening so fast. First of two rehearsals for the Opera Project recital is this coming Saturday. I'm singing Batti Batti and I go back and forth between thinking I'm not ready and feeling like I can do it. I've done it. I know I can do it. Plus I have a voice lesson that morning and we'll go over it. And of course I've been practicing. Suddenly I can hear myself letting air out all these places where I shouldn't. I hear that h coming out in between where a vowel has two notes. Last week during my lesson, in addition to the zombie vocal frying, my teacher pulled out the ole rubber band and was stretching it out as I sang. Silly as it sounds, it really helps. So I've been doing it at home. It's hard! I mean, my fingers are sore! But seriously, the visual of the rubber band stretching reminds me to keep the steady pressure and not stop for a h break where it doesn't belong. So I do my glottal stop, my vocal fry, my rubber band stretch, trusting that my voice will send out the correct note all pretty and bell-like, all the while remembering the words, keeping the breath low and steady in the abs, standing still, pressing my shoulders down, gazing out over the "audience" (or out the window, at home) and not fearing those certain vowels on certain notes. I was explaining this all to a friend today who was hanging out while I futzed around with the music. She laughed when I did lip trills. I remember when I first learned about them and how I couldn't get through a line without laughing, kind of like now and the vocal frying. We both laughed hysterically at the vocal frying stuff. But I've been practicing and it really does help. She was good because she assured me that the i vowel (that's long eeeee like see or si) on an F doesn't come out all screechy like I feel it does. She said it comes out like I'm comfortable singing the note. And since I can sing the same note just fine on other vowels, it's obviously all in my head. So what else is new.

Vocal Frying

Vocal frying? Kind of sounds like what happens if you sing too much, too loudly and for too long. And perhaps it is. Perhaps my voice teacher made up the term? Then again, maybe not, since I just did a google search on it and came up with all sorts of relevant results. So I thought, ok, I have to trust my teacher and do what she says, as she had me creeeeaaakkk my voice on an eeeeeee before doing a certain vocal run from middle C and up 5 notes. We had been going up and down that range and I couldn't seem to get rid of some sort of breathiness thing that was happening, even with a glottal stop. A glottal stop is that little clickish sort of thing you can do in your throat. You can make it audible or do it silently. I do it to prevent an H sound at the beginning of certain vowels on certain notes. So anyway she figured that my breathiness had something to do with my vocal folds, and yes I just typed that because I've always wanted to mention vocal folds, especially my own, because I'm like that. So she thought maybe for some reason I wasn't closing them all the way, hence the breathiness, and since the glottal stop wasn't working, she had me do what she called a vocal fry. Imagine what a zombie would sound like. Creaaaaak. Make the sound in your throat. Not voiced. Just a creaky spooky sound. Like let the smallest amount of air through, enough to make a creepy noise. Go ahead. Do it for about 3 seconds. Then find the note and go right into the exercise. 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1.

Not sure if it worked because every time I tried to do it I dissolved into laughter. But you all know I'll be frying in the car all week.

The other fun part of the lesson was us trying to fit two different versions of Nel cor piu non mi sento together, only they're written in different keys. I have one version from an iPhone app that's lower than the one in the book. However it has some nice ornamentation and we were trying to pick and choose which ornamentation to use. Then she was transcribing it to the other key and seeing what fit where, and writing the new notes on the music. And she said the song was easier than the other music I've been learning... so of course I had to go and find a way to complicate it. Further complications, which also explain some of my pronunciation and lyric mix-ups, is that every version of the song has slightly different words. Some have the same words but in a different order. So we're going to stick with the lyrics from the latest book because they're allegedly the most authentic. I just need to forget all the others... while at the same time I pull some of the ornamentation over. Without the words. Since they're slightly different. Arrrrghhh my brain is frying too!