The Singers Thread

[Voronwen]

Tessar - I don't have much time to write at this moment, and computer access these days while i'm away from home is 'catch-as-catch-can', but i just wanted to say something very important to you: Never give up. I don't care who tells you to change your major, or who tells you that you will never have a future, do not give up. Often it's the people who are told these things when young who end up making fabulous careers Stick to your guns!

[Tessar]

Thanks . I will keep that in mind... my teacher's own success story is pretty inspiring so... with luck I'll have my own success story in a few years. My teacher told me that, particularly as a baritone, I will probably not be singing lead roles but need to start focusing my attention on the 'best friend' roles because she thinks I have a face and a voice to do very well with those kinds of characters.

I had an hour long lesson today, which is the format I think I'm going to change to next semester instead of two thirty minute sessions.

Something else we figured out is that, at least for now, I need to sing everything through puckered lips. To me it feels like I'm sticking my lips way out but in the mirror it's barely noticeable. Somehow that automatically raises my soft palate, and it makes my sound a lot warmer.


SO!!!! My rep for next semester: Fetes Galantes by Reynaldo Hahn (who is one of my favorite composers ever), Who Is Sylvia? by G. Finzi (who I'm not familiar with except by name), I'll Sail Upon the Dogstar by Purcell, Ho Capito (Don G.), Der Vogelfenger (Magic Flute), and Warm As The Autumn Light from Baby Doe.

I'm going to make sure to have them memorized, and have my study-sheets done, before the semester starts. I wont be auditioning for that summer program (I decided that it's a waste of time to spend so much effort on learning the five arias when I probably wont get into the program and I'd rather spend that time strengthening my technique), but there's a competition in March that I will probably be trying out for... it's ages 16-24, and the entry fee is only $25. The location is about an hour away, so it might be worth a shot . I'll also be doing 'mini NATS'... generally trying to prepare myself for big NATS next Fall.

[Tessar]

I'm proud of me. Today we had three services, then a two hour rehearsal right after that, and my voice is still fine. A little tired, but you can't hear it when I sing (I just did a little recording to see what kind of condition my voice is in) and my top notes all still sound great. YAY! I'm about to go sing at a Nine Lessons and Carols thing... which I wish now I had not agreed to do. But oh well.

My focus over the break is definitely going to be letting myself 'just sing' and using the space in my mouth (i.e. raising palate and stuff) rather than over-extending my jaw when I sing.

[Tessar]

I may have figured something out... the other day I was yawning with my mouth closed, and I realized that I think that's basically what I need to do when I sing my high notes. See when I usually yawn I hyper-extend my jaw, tense my neck, and collapse my chest slightly... it feels great when I do it (it feels like my whole upper body is stretching ^_^), but of course that is totally useless for singing .

So I think that's why in the past when people have said 'yawn on your high notes' that's why it doesn't work for me... I have a bad habit of hyper-extending my jaw anyways when I try to sing high notes, so add in my usual yawn and you have a disaster .

I was playing around with it yesterday and I -think- it might be working out... I'm going to practice it and see what my voice teacher thinks about it last semester. I didn't try my very highest notes with it (I think I did like an F#4 or something, so no G's or A's yet), because if I'm doing it wrong I don't want to turn it into a habit.

[Varnafindë]

It's funny how seemingly unrelated habits may be significant, isn't it?

[Tessar]

*sigh* I just never know what's next with my voice. Seriously.

The other day I went to my coach for a little lesson on pronouncing French more... uh.... French-ish-ly and to demonstrate how I would sing something he asked me to sing a phrase... so I did.

Then he made some off-handed comment that I've got such a nice voice that even when I get in my way I can't make a 'bad' sound when I sing. I said I could, he said to prove it, so I sang in my nasty 'nasal and small' voice that I do if I'm not careful.

He told me it's the best sound I've ever sung for him, and in listening back to the recording... it did sound pretty fantastic.


ARRGHLDYBARGLDY!!?!?!?!!!!!!?! Does nothing EVER get to make sense? All of this time I've still been forcing my voice back into my throat thinking that I was keeping it out of my nose... Which, if this really is what I need to do, would make sense that no matter how much I try to make my voice light or float it in the mask, it never stays forward... because once I start 'listening' to myself I automatically try to color it darker and it eventually drops back into my throat.

We'll see if this is what I needed... it's working really well for now, when I can keep myself from letting it slip back into the old habit. The yawning thing I was working on gets the inside of my mouth properly shaped for the high notes, and this seems to ping it up there really nicely... so the two things working together is great.

On the plus side, it also makes my voice notably more flexible. I already have a pretty good coloratura ability (coaches and teachers always remark that I have a very, very good ability to sing Handel melizmatic passages), and this actually seems to give me even more freedom. I've also noticed that all of those high notes I've never been able to hum before (above the B below middle C) are suddenly accessible to me, and very easy to hum so long as I keep my voice placed in that 'too bright and nasal' placement.

[Earniel]

Wait, wait, you're saying that you can't sing a bad sound even when you want to, and this is a bad thing? ça alors!

[Varnafindë]

So something you have tried to avoid, is now something you are encouraged to do - and it sounds good?
No wonder you're confused ...

[Tessar]

Yes, it's very confusing. Particularly because, for me, it flies in the face of how people have always told me to sing as if I'm yawning... When I do that the sound goes into my throat, and this is a much 'brighter' way of singing... I would actually liken it more to being like blowing my nose. It's a sense of pressure in the front of your face, and that feeling like your throat has just opened up all the way for a really huge sneeze.

But my coach said he had the same problem too. Sometimes when you have a lyric baritone voice like mine (or his) you have to sing it 'open'. This was something I had heard from a master teacher (who was talking about a professional operatic tenor he'd trained)... some voices are meant to sing 'covered' and some are meant to sing 'open'. I think I have a natural inclination to sing 'covered' when I need to be singing 'open'.

Originally Posted by Eärniel

Wait, wait, you're saying that you can't sing a bad sound even when you want to, and this is a bad thing? ça alors!

He was exaggerating . It's certainly not a bad thing, either!!! It's just that when I sing incorrectly the sound is pleasant but it's not great, and even untrained singers realize that there's something 'missing'.

I have a lot of natural mid-tone and low-tone qualities in my voice, and those make my voice sound full and warm. The thing that I'm missing is that super-bright high-tone quality that opera singers need to cut through an orchestra. When you have all three, you can be singing behind an entire orchestra that's playing very loudly.

This is actually a good example... Kelly Clarkson. Sometimes when she sings live she doesn't have those high-tones in her voice. It's still a beautiful voice, but you can hear that it's not quite 'right'... and they don't vanish completely, but you can hear that she's just not quiiiiite on top of the pitch all of the time when they're missing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSxl9YZFD5o --live, missing some of those high-tones (you can hear it fall back into her throat a bit on the high notes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBfw362H2BA --live, with them.


Miley Cyrus is actually a great example, if you've ever heard her. On the radio they give her those high-tones, but if you hear her live she's reeeeally bad... I mean come on... the poor girl's only 16 and she's trying to sing pop music live. She just belts everything from her chest voice and that's why her high notes sound blech live. Never mind that her music is bad .

[Tessar]

OMG! OMG!! I was working on doing the singing thing I was just talking about, and I made it work all the way up to an F4 without realizing that's what I was doing because it felt so much easier... when I did the 'too bright' placement thing that I thought was a small and nasal sound, I was not only able to hit the high notes but I actually stayed up on the high notes for a while without my throat getting tight and cutting me off or the sound quality degrading.

I'm still putting too much breath pressure behind it, because frankly I'm still in disbelief that I was able to do that and I kept thinking I was going to need more air pressure, or that the sound was about to cut out.

It doesn't sound amazing (not ugly, just not totally beautiful), but the color is good and if I can back off of the pressure a little the sound will float and be fantastic. I'm actually shaking a little bit O_o. I can't believe I was able to just do that... before I've been able to hit the notes, and every once in a while hit them comfortably, but never like I just did and certainly never maintain the open throat or stay up in that high range so long like I just did.

If this means what I hope it means... then a whole, huge list of arias that I've been waiting to be able to sing may have just opened up for me. Maybe not, maybe I'm making too much out of a small progress jump, but I sure hope it means that.

My teacher kept saying all semester that she had a feeling I was right on the edge of making a breakthrough and being able to actually 'sing' those notes instead of just vocalizing or 'hitting' them.... Hopefully she was right and this is it.


[EDIT] OOOH!!! AND!!! I was working and I just discovered that if I do this right, I can do the thing where you use the same amount of air for the loudest and the softest notes that you sing!!!! It's not perfect yet... I keep wanting to drop back into my throat for the soft notes, and I want to push more air for the loud notes, but when I really focus and keep it balanced I can do it. Just some times my voice will get stuck on a 'volume' while I have to hold the note and think about how to do the louder or softer bit correctly. I can totally do it, though!

I am going to be super upset if this ends up not being how I'm supposed to sing . I mean this seems to be working pretty freaking amazingly, so I'm going to be -VERY- upset if it's not right....

[Tessar]

OMG, you guys... I got my bacon pulled out of the freaking fire.

When I got to church today the choir director asked me to sing a solo verse of a hymn. Before yesterday I wouldn't have been able to sing it very well because it went up to some high notes that I don't always have, but I did it at all three services and it got easier and easier every time. I think the director was even a little surprised how good it sounded.

It was such a huge relief because last time he gave me a solo he was disappointed because my 'solo' voice just vanished the minute I tried to sing the verse... That was a few months ago so I -REALLY- needed this to go well, to prove to him that I can sing well, and it went better than I could've hoped .

I AM SO HAPPY!!!!!

I'm almost 100% certain that this is the right way for me to be singing, because every time I sing now it gets easier to keep that 'super bright' placement, and my high notes just float out like they never, ever have before. It's AWESOME. I finally feel like a real singer.

Also after three services, including the solos, my throat feels as if I've barely sung at all today, so this is obviously very good for my throat.

[Voronwen]

Wow, Tessar! It sounds as if you've had many breakthroughs over the holidays. You must be starting a new semester very soon?

It is interesting to discover how little habits (such as yawning) carry in to what we do when we sing. Often this does lead to technical progress.

I stopped singing for two months, but have been practicing again when i have the chance. I still do not want a full-time singing career, but there's definitely a lot more opportunity in my new location to get involved in musical activities if and when i want to. We'll see where it all goes.

[Tessar]

Originally Posted by Voronwen

I stopped singing for two months, but have been practicing again when i have the chance. I still do not want a full-time singing career, but there's definitely a lot more opportunity in my new location to get involved in musical activities if and when i want to. We'll see where it all goes.

Oh, I hope you'll take advantage of them. I'm sorry you're finding yourself in a new situation, since I know it's not a "happily so," thing, but I do hope you'll consider taking advantage of some of those opportunities. You never know... Sometimes your outlook changes, and maybe you didn't enjoy performing then but you would enjoy it more now .



I am SO HAPPY. Today was my first voice lesson with my teacher since last semester, and she was thrilled with the vocal improvement. What also made me happy was that she said the exact same thing as the guy who helped me with the breakthrough (i.e. "Your voice has natural undertone and midtones, and this is adding the needed overtones and brilliant ring that it needs,"). So I know she's going to head me in the same direction as he would . I was a little afraid I was going to get in there and she would say, "It's not right," and then I would've had to make some hard decisions. But she loved it, and I'm thrilled to death.

I'm also happy because we're doing hour long lessons this semester, and it is SO MUCH MORE PRODUCTIVE than the split up 30 minute lessons were. You know... we'd go in, chit-chat about voice or whatever questions I had for maybe two minutes, do voice-balancing stuff for about 10 minutes... and then you have less than twenty minutes left to actually sing. This way is gonna be super awesome .

I also sang my Der Vogelfenger from Magic Flute and it was a total breeze, including the E4, and she taught me how to add in 'shadow vowels' to improve my legato... i.e. instead of singing 'and then' I add an 'a' between the 'd' and 't' to smooth it out... so like 'and-a-then', but the 'a' is so short it's pretty much invisible.

We also worked out how to fix my base tongue tension on my 'ee' vowel above the F3, so I'm going to be working on that all week.

[Tessar]

Apparently one of my coach's former students was a pretty incredible contralto who he taught in (I think) both undergrad and graduate level. After that she went and coached for a while with one of the top coaches in New York who apparently told her after a few lessons, "There is nothing more I can teach you, you have one of the most perfect voices I've ever heard." It sounds like she had an international career for several years.

So somehow the lady ended up being massively overweight and got a weight-reduction surgery. That, as usually happens, caused her to completely lose her singing voice. What happens is that people who carry a lot of extra weight learn how to support the voice using that extra weight, so (supposedly) their abdominal muscles never actually learn how control the breath. It sounds wonky to me, but apparently there is actually a fair bit of scientific research behind it.

She hadn't sung for 15 years, and she came back this week to her former teacher. He told me that her voice is in absolutely perfect condition except that she has no abdominal strength. So she might be able to get her voice back to the way it used to be. Isn't that crazy? O_o


Anyways... she's also a voice teacher at a very expensive school, and since my coach considers me to be a protege he wants me to go sing for her tomorrow. I'm extremely nervous because apparently he told her I was, "One of only three (current) students with brains and a naturally incredible instrument." .... so, ANYWAYS... going to be trying to live up to that rather mind-blowing praise tomorrow. *gulp!!* As humbled as I am by his incredible confidence in me, I wish I could feel the same way. Holy crap.

They always tell you not to sing for someone that's at a high level unless you yourself are ready to ascend to that high level, so I sincerely hope that this is just going to be a laid back thing and I wont be singing for someone who will later on remember me as being mediocre and not very talented. I've heard of that kind of thing happening.

I think I'm going to try to sing this for her tomorrow. It was one of my pieces last semester: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyL8n900RPk

[Varnafindë]

"a naturally incredible instrument" - wow, that's some compliment!
I can see how it almost sounds frightening, and that singing for that lady sounds frightening too. Let's hope she realises that you are still learning

[Voronwen]

Originally Posted by Tessar

Anyways... she's also a voice teacher at a very expensive school, and since my coach considers me to be a protege he wants me to go sing for her tomorrow. I'm extremely nervous because apparently he told her I was, "One of only three (current) students with brains and a naturally incredible instrument." .... so, ANYWAYS... going to be trying to live up to that rather mind-blowing praise tomorrow. *gulp!!* As humbled as I am by his incredible confidence in me, I wish I could feel the same way. Holy crap.

That does sound scary!!! The best thing you can do is just go in and do what you do best, but that's easier said than done. I totally understand the emotions (been there). It's always nerve-wracking to feel that you need to live up to somebody's glowing review of you while at the same time fearing that you cannot live up to it. That's way too much pressure for me and i do not envy you.

But i think you will do fine. Your desire to perform will override all that scary pressure. Just go in doing what you know you do best, and knock their socks off.

[Tessar]

Oh wow, guys. It was -incredible-.

I didn't realize she was going to actually give me a full-out lesson, but she did. I am completely humbled and awed that she did that without asking for any kind of compensation. She's the kind of teacher you would be paying $300 an hour for a lesson in New York, no joke. I'm going to get her address from my coach so that I can send her a thank you card... I mean geeze, it's the absolute minimum I can possibly do to say thanks.

Know how on New Year's Eve I learned how to keep my voice 'pinned to the front' so that it doesn't drop into my throat? Well she showed me how to keep it placed there but then open up the 'back space' so that I engage my maximum vocal resonance. The only way I can describe it is that it's sort of like a buzzing sensation between your eyes like your voice is wedged in tight, plus it feels like the back of your head has lifted off and you're singing into a cathedral. She actually showed me how to get my voice even a little higher in placement than it has been, so that's just fantastic.

She did tell me that I'm oversinging quite a bit. Not so much in terms of putting out too much volume, but I'm using too much pressure when I sing (because I'm still used to having to 'shove' my voice out), and of course (she didn't say it, but I know) my diction is still atrocious... we were having to fix just about every single word.

Part of that is due to the placement changes though... at first I had to imagine one sound to make it sound simi-correct, then I had to imagine another, and now that it's even higher I'm having to make the vowels differently.

I don't know how much of it was just said because she was agreeing with my coach, but she told me I have a really beautiful voice and that I'm a good actor. She also told me that I'm an awesome student, so that was nice to hear .

My coach was hinting that I need to try to get her for a graduate-level teacher. Apparently other teachers have also said that anyone who goes into her studio becomes an amazing singer. I felt like she and I worked together well and we communicated really well (which is something that I often feel I still lack with my official voice teacher, although I do love her to death) so who knows... maybe that will happen in a couple of years.

To say that I feel blessed and pretty much staggered by the experience would be an enormous understatement. I seriously sat down in my car afterwards and the first thought that popped into my head was, "What on earth could I have possibly done to deserve something that amazing?" I'm still pretty stunned by the whole thing.

[Varnafindë]

That's so great to hear!
Yes, I really hope that you might study with her eventually!

[Tessar]

One great thing is that she didn't tell me to do ANYTHING differently from how my current voice teacher tells me to do things... just she put it in ways that clicked in my head and made stuff come together. The techniques were all basically the same... bring the corners in, get the voice high, open the back space, stay on the pure vowels... etc. Just the way she got me to do them was much more effective for me.

Plus... honestly?... She really pushed me. She wasn't afraid to say, "No! Stop! Do it again." None of this, "Oh that was a little better!" nonsense. I understand how for some people that kind of praise is very valuable, but I don't want it. It's either right, or it's not right. Haha, you should've seen the way they both jumped on my case when I took a breath in the wrong spot . They both yelled, "STOP!" then she said, "Why did you breath there? Never breath there again! Now do it right!" I love it.

There are tons of good singers out there, plenty of great singers, but not as many truly exceptional singers, and I want to be one of the truly exceptional ones.

Anyways, I got the card tonight at the store, sooo... Gotta get the address.

[Voronwen]

Tessar, this is really awesome! What a great opportunity to work with someone like this. It's a blessing to find a really amazing teacher, and when you do, the things you'll take with you from their teaching will be with you for a lifetime.

Addressing an earlier message...

Originally Posted by Tessar

Oh, I hope you'll take advantage of them. I'm sorry you're finding yourself in a new situation, since I know it's not a "happily so," thing, but I do hope you'll consider taking advantage of some of those opportunities. You never know... Sometimes your outlook changes, and maybe you didn't enjoy performing then but you would enjoy it more now .

I don't know. When i do get the chance to practice, i'm just not 'feeling it' anymore. The desire to sing is just not there. I think it's partly because it's time (it's been for a long time) to move away from classical music. My heart's not in it anymore. But when i apply myself to other styles (i would LOVE to go more contemporary), i feel that i can't sing them as well. It's as if my voice is born to work just one way, classical. It's what it does best. But i am just sick of it. I want to do other things now, but i'm not sure whether i can. I've considered finding a teacher of contemporary style singing who can retrain me, but i've never been able to belt. My voice is dismally not built for it. All its power is above C5. Classical training was a natural progression for someone like me who wanted to sing.