Foreign languages. Blah.

This week in my lesson I was sick. Boo. I started taking vitamins because I seriously have the worst immune system of all time. So we went through la conocchia and even sang through it. I had most of the words correct, and we smoothed out a couple spots. I still need to work on notes for that one because I've been focusing so much on the language. I can't forget about the most important part! We also finished reading through Chanson d'amour and then sang through it. Dr.Hepworth said I actually did a good job, but I still feel like I'm not quite getting my mouth around the words like I need to. Practice practice practice. Once again I still need to work on the notes though. I've been neglecting my actual singing practicing a little bit because I've been so focused on score study. That's something I probably shouldn't admit in a blog, but I promise that now I'm getting the words and I'm feeling better there is going to be a ton more singing going on! But I have been listening my butt off to all my songs. I am just so happy with all my rep! It's a great feeling. We also kind of sang through Nacht und Traume. This song worries me the most out of all of them because it's my favorite but the rhythm and tempo just kind of really confuse me. It is supposed to be taken sehr langsam which means very slow and Dr.H told me to think of the eighth note as the beat which might make it a little easier to practice. I think once I get Mr.Phil to record the accompaniment for me it will make things a lot easier too than just trying to sing it by me counting. Dr.Hepworth says that I'm ahead of schedule from where I need to be at this point in the semester so hopefully I can stay ahead of the game. I CAN'T GET SICK ANYMORE. And I'm not planning on it. I need to get all my foreign language pieces memorized by spring break so I better get on that.

French is hard.

In my lesson we went over a lot of diction stuff. We hadn't actually sung yet, but that's okay because I think the actual singing is going to be the easy part of a lot of my rep this semester. La Conocchia's ipa isn't online so we went through and figured that out for that. Thank goodness it's Italian so it's semi easyish so it wasn't too painful to figure out. Then we went through the french in Chanson d'amour. It's such a beautiful song and I can see how people say that French is such a beautiful language. The song and the words together are just stunning when put altogether. However, French is very very difficult I think. There seem to be so many little sounds you have to be sure you get in for each word. I think being in diction this semester is really going to help me out with that though. Already reading ipa source is just a thousand times easier because I recognize symbols and know what they mean. My assignment for the week was just to speak through la conocchia and get the words down real well and speak through the first part of Chanson d'amour. I also borrowed Dr.Hepworth's Italian dictionary because I couldn't find the translation online for la conocchia and it's always nice to know what you're singing about. I'm really excited to get back into the swing of lessons and start singing again. I am really excited for barriers at the end of the semester because I already feel like I'm on the right track for being prepared. Just have to work on my languages!

Rep is ready to go!

In my last lesson we finished picking out my rep and did a little bit of ipa on my french and italian pieces. My last songs are Kiss Me Not Goodbye from The Mighty Casey which is just beautiful. Into the Night which is also very beautiful, and finally Nacht und Traume which is my FAVORITE!!!! Holy crap it is so unbelievably beautiful. Schubert is probably my favorite composer ever. I listened to a Renee Fleming version and I no joke seriously almost bawled. It's so pretty. I think this semester's rep is going to be a really big challenge for me. I think every song is going to have an obstacle I'm going to have to fight to overcome, but I am really excited. I love every one of my songs, and I can't wait to get started singing in lessons. Barriers this semester.................LET'S DO IT!!!!!!!!

First lesson of second semester!

Well, it is finally that time again. I hate break because then all I do is work at stupid, boring Hy-Vee and I hate it because I would so much rather be in school because I love school. Weird, I know. Anyways, yesterday we really just talked a little bit about scholarships, which I am in dire need of, and picked out music. So far we've only got three songs which are Vanilla Ice Cream from She Loves Me, La Conocchia, and Chanson d'amour. Vanilla Ice Cream is pretty much going to be the bomb.com this semester. I am getting the whole thing all planned out in my head and I know that once me and Dr.Hepworth start working on it, it's going to be the greatest song ever. Chanson d'amour is just beautiful. I have a feeling French is going to be super hard, but I'm always up for a challenge. Plus it'll  be totally awesome when I can tell people that I'm singing a song in French. I am just so cultured. Finally, La conocchia is just adorable. So far I'm really excited with what we've picked out and I can't wait to get the semester started! Let's dooooo this.

My last lesson

My last lesson for the semester was pretty short. We really just went through my rep. I need to work on a couple diction issues on An die musik, and continue practicing O cessate to make sure that I don't go all nasaly and stuff. I am actually feeling really prepared for juries, which is actually a really weird feeling. I have everything memorized, and I know all the right notes and everything so I'm really just hoping that Dr.H and Dr.Lofgren pick the songs I want! It has been a pretty successful semester, and I'm really happy with the progress I've made. I'm finally starting to get vibrato a little bit which is super exciting. Maybe someday I'll have a real singing voice after all!

Aubrey's LAST lesson!!

Well, this was probably our worst lesson ever. Depressing, I know. We hadn't had a lesson for like 3 weeks or something like that from me being gone for convention and her being sick and stuff so I figured it would be a little rough, but I didn't think it would be that bad. Right off the bat I was irritated before we even started because she told me earlier that day that she'd lost her music. I now know how Dr.Hepworth and Dr.C and all the other professors feel when we don't come to lessons and class prepared. Luckily, she found it so that was good, but I could tell right away that she didn't really want to be doing this lesson. I told her that we were going to start with lip buzzes and she rolled her eyes and she didn't like even remember how to do them. Right then I got in panic mode a little bit. So we did some lip buzzes and after that we were going to do some sliding I's on a fifth. I had her do couple sirens before so she could remember where her head voice was. Then I changed my mind to do some of the sing ah talking and then sing ah singing. In hindsight, I really did not manage this lesson very well. She was lost from the start so I should've took things way slower. I just really didn't expect her to like forget how to do everything we talked about. After we did a few sing ah sing ahs  we did some mI on a sliding fifth. She did okay with the sing ahs. She would start out in the head voice and did a pretty good job talking in it, but once she'd have to go sing it she would tighten up and there just wasn't any resosnance and it was just all tight and pinchy. As we were going up on the mI I started telling her to think lighter because I thought maybe that would help her get into the weak feeling head voice, but it really just made her sing quieter which I really should've saw coming. I told her to get a lot of space in her mouth and do the head voice and I told her to get the buzziness in her nose. But she STILL tried squeezing her chest voice up as we ascended. So I just stopped with that and went to the sing ah. I told her not to open up to the ah until she she got a nice buzzy feeling in her nose. She was feeling the buzz until she opened up and then she said it felt tight. I told her that she needed to have a nice open throat and  a raised soft palate. I tried doing this thing that I saw Dr.Lofgren doing in one of his lessons. I had her do a siren starting on a note, but that really didn't work at all. She really hates dropping her jaw so I had to keep reminding her of that, and when I had her do puppy whimpers she still wants to use her throat to muscle up the sound but we got a few good ones in at the end. Then just to do a couple more warm ups we did some I ahs up and down five and she did okay with it. I know she doesn't like Is so I just let her do some ahs so she could get her jaw dropped. We started on the song and she was singing it incredibly nasaly and her vowels were really bad. Also, she was not really using her head voice at all. I wanted her to tell me what she thought she did right and wrong. We decided that she had good phrasing and we came to the conclusion that she was using her chest voice on the high parts. We also said that she wasn't opening her mouth very wide throughout the song. We also touched on a few of the vowels that she needed to fix. There is a couple spots that there is an a, c, e, f and we worked on it a whole bunch of times and she just could not get it into her head voice no matter what we tried. I told her to sing it like an opera singer and she mostly just sang it louder, but it did make her open her mouth more. We talked about thinking skinny when she got to the high notes and to hold her hands in front of her like a tepee and I explained because that will remind her to lift her soft palate. I had her read through the text in a head voicey sound and she towards the song she just started talking like normal. The last page she was just pure talking through her nose in a really nasaly voice. We went through the song for the last time and she actually did really well singing through it. She got in her head voice most of the times she needed to. Then we were finished and I apologized for having the last lesson so far away from the others because I really think that just caused a lot of problems for this one, but oh well. I think that if we would've had a consistent lesson time every week we could've acccomplished a ton more things. I think she did learn some stuff, but I don't know if she'll apply it to her everyday singing or not. She's stuck in the pop sounding world! But I told her she'd learn to love her head voice someday just like me :)

Aubrey's fifth lesson

We started with lip buzzes like usual. I didn't really want to spend too much time warming up because we really hadn't been working on her song too much, and we only had two lessons left! Then I had her do a couple sirens and some puppy whimpers. She has a really hard time with puppy whimpers for some reason. She just tries to do them with her throat and it is the weirdest thing. No matter how much I explain that she doesn't need to do it in her throat and it's all in her head and nose, she just doesn't like to grasp that concept. I explained to her that what she was doing was just making her vocal folds slap together and she gets a really hard sound coming out, and I know she can feel what she's doing is wrong. Every time she does get it right she hates the way the buzz feels in her nose so I don't know if that has something to do with it. Then we started doing the sing ah in a talking voice and then singing it like she did with Dr.Hepworth when we visited her a while ago. She really doesn't like to open her mouth up very wide and it traps a ton of the sound in. We tried doing sing-ahs down five and I told her to keep the buzz in her nose and when we went down that helped her keep the buzz a little better. I can't even count the times I told her that when she's using her head voice it's going to be weak. Then we did I vowels and we're constantly having to do sirens to feel her head voice. We did sliding I's going down a fifth and she did really well with that. She said it felt weird and I took that as a success. Then we went up five on an I and right away she started trying to pinch it off with her throat so we had to keep doing sirens on an I. I felt like she would start out with her head voice but as she ascended she would switch back into her chest or just try and squeeze the sound off. I tried having her do an ah vowel because I thought maybe it would make her feel a little more open. It wasn't really working. So I tried doing the thing where I had her sing like a 5 year old and then 15 and then like she was like 20 or something and then like she was 80. Epic fail. I don't know why I said 80 first of all, and second of all it just did not work like I thought it would. I was hoping that it would make her open up but it really didn't, and then I did it and I just sounded like a flipping idiot. But oh well. We started her song and I told her to think like opera singer and hooty before her entrances just so she doesn't forget about the head voice. First we just spoke through the rhythm of the song to be sure that she'd get all the note values correct. I told her to really over exaggerate her words and to connect some of them. Also, I am a terrible accompaniment player. She was singing very pinched so we spoke through the words in a hooty voice. There's an arpeggio in her song that's a, c, e and so we did some I's on it and she got in her head voice a little better after that. She was still singing very closed mouth so I had her put her hands on the sides of her face and watch in the mirror to be sure that her jaw was dropping. She got through the rest of the song really well. We fixed the word fly on the f5 because she was spreading out the word a little bit so I told her to make it taller. Every time we had to start the song we had to talk through it in a head voice which was getting a little irritating to me, but she'd always get it if we'd do that. She wouldn't get it at all if we didn't do that first. I told her to start switching into her head voice at an a4 so that she'd have an easier transition into the high notes because she wouldn't switch until she'd get up to about an d5. She did really well with that train of thought. Side note: It doesn't sound half as good on a recording as it did in real life. And I hate listening to myself on the recording. It gives me the creeps. Anyways, we ran through the song again and I had to remind her a few times to go into her head voice. She started out really well, but as the song went on she kept wanting to use her chest voice. It was definetly the best she ever sang it though. I tried to just really assure her that her head voice sounded really beautiful because I could tell that she was hating the way things were sounding. That was easily the best lesson we had, and I think she liked that we actually got to work on the rep versus just doing a thousand warm ups the whole lesson.