02-19-2010, 08:17 PM | #441 | ||
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02-20-2010, 01:13 AM | #442 | ||
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My teacher told me the other day that she's astounded by how quickly I'm making progress, but it's obvious that it's all happening too quickly for me to actually pull it all together. Every once in a while I'll be singing fine, and then suddenly it will all just come out as a mess for a little while till things click back into place. My brain can't keep track of everything right now, and it's not all habit yet... but it will get there . Even when it falls apart it's still better than my good days used to be, so that's a huge blessing . So, tonight.... I was practicing, and I totally did these amazing D4's . I did an arpeggio up at maybe a piano/mf, then pulled it back to piano/pp, and then let it crescendo out to full volume, then brought it back to an (unfortunately shaky) pianissimo. The good news is that the tone coloring is staying consistent from the pp through to the ff, but I still can't do a Messa de Voce properly. The beginning pp is fine, but coming off of that ff back to the pp isn't something I can do yet. I'll keep working on it. What I'm totally loving to death about the high palate is that now I can begin in my high register softly... I did a couple of the D4's without an arpeggio up to them, and while they weren't completely solid, I didn't totally lose my placement, and they sounded okay. Quote:
QUANDO ME'EN VO!!!!!!! *cough* *looks around* Who said that?! >.< Hector?! Is that you? Well, no sense in fighting him on it. You'll just have to sing it. Then record it and send it to me. >.> So I can add it to my collection. But seriously, this can only be a good thing . I'm glad you're getting it put together! Keep us updated. You should make sure you do a back-to-back contrasting thing... like do a fireworks aria, and then maybe a little Bach cantata with lots of long, legato lines. Even people who aren't strictly "musical people" are usually impressed when they hear a singer do two contrasting pieces back to back. You and the mezzo should also consider singing the Pergolasi Stabat Mater... particularly if she can do straight tone/minimal vibrato. SUCH a beautiful duet. |
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02-20-2010, 12:43 PM | #443 | |||||
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... Actually, i do know this aria but have never performed it. I don't think i will, either - the character of Musetta just doesn't resonate with me. I've never been able to 'get' her enough to bring the acting out in the piece properly. For a Puccini piece i'm much better off with "O mio babbino caro". Quote:
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" ...But the Exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, Akallabêth the Downfallen, Atalantë in the Eldarin tongue." "Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ... " ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline |
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02-20-2010, 05:23 PM | #444 |
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Hmmm, I don't think it's from an actual oratorio, but it's definitely not operatic.
I'm honestly not a fan of Rose and Cav... I personally find the music rather boring, but that's probably just me . Once again not operatic, but a crowd pleaser is the Laudamus Te from the Vivaldi Gloria. Particularly if it's a church event. "Take care of this house" from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a 'prayer' sort of... it was on Sumi Jo's "Prayers" CD, and it's a beautiful soprano/mezzo duet which can be sung operatically. |
02-20-2010, 09:20 PM | #445 | |
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I'm not kidding, EVERY time i have thought about picking another duet for the mezzo and i, that "Laudamus Te" would come to my mind... and then i'd find myself humming it while doing laundry or something. That is such a FUN piece! Hmmm, maybe this is a sign!
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" ...But the Exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, Akallabêth the Downfallen, Atalantë in the Eldarin tongue." "Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ... " ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline |
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02-20-2010, 11:51 PM | #446 | ||
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<.< >.> Sorry, I just absolutely LOVE Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. And, true, Vor, it's not from an opera, but in the eighteenteenth century, the sacred music was pretty operatic. Quote:
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02-22-2010, 03:16 PM | #447 | |||
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" ...But the Exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, Akallabêth the Downfallen, Atalantë in the Eldarin tongue." "Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ... " ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline Last edited by Voronwen : 02-22-2010 at 03:18 PM. |
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02-22-2010, 10:47 PM | #448 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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Yeah, Handel's slow, tragic music is often just ravishing. Cara sposa, Scherza infida...but Son nata lagrimar (what am I doing calling it A sempre piangero ) is pretty much the cream of the crop.
Another thought: Pur ti miro might work. I think it was actually written for two sopranos, but it seems to most often be sung by a soprano and a mezzo.
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
02-23-2010, 12:37 PM | #449 | |
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I thought about looking at some of the Cleopatra/Cesare stuff, too, but i'm not sure whether my mezzo would be up for it. PS~ for Tessar ~ There's a very good chance that i can have my recital recorded. Perhaps i'll be able to finally reciprocate with a little sound bite for you.
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" ...But the Exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, Akallabêth the Downfallen, Atalantë in the Eldarin tongue." "Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ... " ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline Last edited by Voronwen : 02-23-2010 at 12:39 PM. |
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02-26-2010, 12:57 AM | #450 |
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*tiny, high pitched scream*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG LOREENA MCKENNITT JUST CAME OUT WITH A BUNCH MORE OF HER SHEET MUSIC~~!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMGOMG OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOGMOGMOGMOGM!!!!!!! Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo freaking excited!!!!! I've had a couple of the ones she did a few years ago, and I play them all of the time... and I got Penelope's Song from her new album, BUT NOW SHE'S GOT ALL OF THE SHEET MUSIC OUT! At last the long years of waiting and hoping she would come out with all of her arrangements are OVER!!!! I'm totally gonna buy Stolen Child, Snow, and The Two Trees!!!!!!!!! Today is the most EPICLY AWESOME DAY EVER now that I have discovered this. .... OMG~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I should mention that part of the whole reason I checked is that today I sang 'Dante's Prayer' for my voice teacher, and discovered that she is also a huge Loreena McKennitt fan. This woman gets cooler by the day. >.> I'm tellin' ya... how many operatic voice teachers do you know that would not only let, but encourage you, to sing Loreena McKennitt along with your Handel and Douglas Moore? Plus I sang a Sara Berillis song for her last semester, and she told me today that she went and got the album and is now a Sara B. fan. OMG. Intensely awesome day despite the incredibly long hours . Last edited by Tessar : 02-26-2010 at 01:57 AM. |
03-01-2010, 05:39 PM | #451 | |
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Oh, you know... no biggy. If you can, you can. If not, I'll just cry myself to sleep every night after the recital murmuring gently into the enveloping darkness, "Why? WHY?" as I drift away to unsettled dreams. No pressure. I would seriously love to hear it though, if you can get some sound files! I'm so excited that you're doing this. I'm finding more and more the trick to my high register is super bright vowels, keeping the corners of my mouth 'in and forward', lifting the back of my tongue 'up and forward', and keeping my palate high. It's a lot to think about, but it's slowly coming together . I think I've also been singing with too little energy. I think it was required for a while to keep from being tense, but now I need to sing with a more intense, energized sound again. I'm also working on not clipping off the first words of my phrases. I have an awful habit of making the first words of phrases very staccato and stopping the breath for a second. It's really bad if the word is sort of a 'filler' word like, 'and,' 'to,' 'by,' 'my,' etc.... If it's something like 'heart,' 'lord,' 'fair,' or... you know... a more "important" word I don't do it so much, but it's just a terrible habit that kills my legato line. |
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03-09-2010, 12:21 PM | #452 | |
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Well, since it's taking place at my church, and they are set up to record the service every Sunday, then it's only a matter of getting a willing volunteer to do the recording. We'll see. My recital program is currently in flux, though. I'm trying to keep it light, with an almost musical theater type of feel. I'm keeping the Queen of the Night, and "Tornami a vagheggiar", and "Je suis Titania", but may be taking out some of the more serious arias and replacing them with fun 'soubrette' character arias like the Doll's Song..... which is way too much fun to sing, tee hee... Randomness: I popped a G6 yesterday while raking leaves. Something made me laugh (yes, i tend to laugh in the stratosphere sometimes just ask Varokhar!), and i found that place where the air needs to come from to pop out the G's reliably. Woohoo!
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" ...But the Exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, Akallabêth the Downfallen, Atalantë in the Eldarin tongue." "Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ... " ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline |
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03-09-2010, 08:26 PM | #453 | |||
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Now that the opera's over I'm going to try to buckle down double-time to my practicing. I haven't been able to practice in about four weeks due to voice loss and then nightly opera rehearsals. Fortunately my voice is recovering better than ever since I never -completely- lost my voice, and we continued to make improvement even through the crappy vocal conditions. I think I FINALLY have the hang of how the modification needs to work. I ended up just lining up my questions and then drilling my teacher to make sure I had a clear idea of how it works . So what we worked out (in terms that I totally understand) is that the vowel starts bright, then you keep the bright vowel and start modifying the mouth to be more open, then at the top (for me probably from E4-G/A4) you also modify the vowel open. So on 'Baby Doe', I sing 'Ba' (C#4) with a bright a and dropped 'oh' mouth, 'by' (D#4) on bright e with a dropped 'ih' mouth, then 'doe' I open to 'ah' mouth and modify the vowel to 'oh'. Today I worked for about 40 minutes in a practice room, then went to my voice teacher and showed her what I'd been doing and I was SO relieved that I'm getting it right. I was working on my C4, on 'ah' (one of my weakest vowels), and I was keeping the super bright vowel but modifying the mouth to 'oh', and working on floating/placement/dynamics. She told me that I was doing it with about half the 'pressure' that I've done it with before, so that was GREAT. Super exciting to continue making progress. I'm going to keep working my way upwards. My D4's and everything above it still feels shaky, which she thinks is due to excess breath pressure and tongue/jaw tension, so I'm just going to really spend some good time figuring out how to work out those notes. I think I'm still not doing the palate correctly. There just seems to be something preventing me from doing it right. Blech. Time and patience. |
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03-10-2010, 11:30 AM | #454 | |||||
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I think some of us just need to constantly remind ourselves. Have you seen an ENT? I'm not one to tell people to go running about to doctors (and i realize it's also not possible for many), but you may want to make sure that there isn't a physical issue standing in the way. Ask your teacher about it first, though.
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" ...But the Exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, Akallabêth the Downfallen, Atalantë in the Eldarin tongue." "Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ... " ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline |
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03-10-2010, 07:00 PM | #455 | ||
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Look at it this way... your goal is to entertain your audience and do what you love doing. Is it your fault that Mozart wrote two of his greatest, most beautiful arias into one opera for two different characters? I really think they wont care if it's two from the same opera and different characters so long as you present them with something totally gorgeous and to-die-for to listen to, which I'm sure you are 100% capable of doing. Quote:
I had another breakthrough today... part of which happened yesterday but I think today I'm getting the hang of it: I'm keeping my ribs expanded AND relaxing my lower abdominal muscles... so the air is dropping -really- low when I breath, and I have that lovely 'support' from the ribs to maintain my sound on. It also makes me need about 1/3rd or even less of the amount of 'pressure' I was using before, which is AWESOME. When I get it working, and have the vowels placed correctly, it really does feel like effortless, floating singing and I'm in absolute control of my dynamics. Love it . Just got to make it consistent. |
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03-10-2010, 07:06 PM | #456 |
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I'm a little stressed out, though... For the NATS competition in a few weeks we just found out that I can't take my competition package (Papageno's aria, Warm As the Autumn Light, and I'll Sail Upon the Dogstar), because I have to have an art song in a foreign language.
So now I'm trying to learn Les Cygnes (the swans) by Hahn really fast. I need it ready for the first weekend of April and I'm just now starting to learn it. Then today the opera director announced that he wants to do a major opera in the Fall, but doesn't know which one and wont give us any idea which ones he's considering. I know it's probably rude of me to think, but when he said that my first thought was, "You seriously brought us all together to tell us THAT? Really? Thanks... I guess?" But what he really wanted to tell us is that he hopes to have auditions for this mystery opera at the end of this month. He might be able to tell us what it will be by the end of next week, but if I wait to prepare an aria till then it'll be too late... but I have no idea what 'kind' of baritone he might be looking for. !!!! That is super, super frustrating to me! So my voice teacher suggested that I start learning Bella Siccome, because Warm As The Autumn Light isn't showy enough for a 'single-piece audition', and I'm not 100% sure about doing Der Vogelfenger. We'll have to see as we get closer I guess. aaaaaagh..... |
03-10-2010, 11:53 PM | #457 |
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ARGH. *sigh* After practicing for an hour and recording bits of my singing... I can officially say that my tone quality is improving, and is even very beautiful a lot of the time. Definitely a consistently 'nice' sound and often very beautiful.
But also super, SUPER flat probably 50/60% of the time, which is so completely unacceptable I can't even begin to explain how disappointed I am. I'm trying really, really hard to focus on the positives... although my E's are still sort of 'meh' (depends on how I approach it in the song), my C's and D's are extremely consistent and sound great, my vibrato is very steady, good tone quality.... but argh. #$(%)#!!!!!! It feels like none of that matters if I sing flatter than a squashed paper cup. I just have to keep working and building on the good things... at least I'm not flat -all- of the time, right? That's an improvement. I just have to keep taking the pressure off of the voice, relaxing the tongue/jaw, and working on taking better breaths. I have to sing for seminar tomorrow, and I feel awful . I don't want to sing like crap in front of my studio-mates! I can't get out of it though because I've had to cancel three times already... once because of health and twice because of opera. Oh well. Keep working I guess. |
03-11-2010, 06:24 PM | #458 |
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I didn't do so great in seminar, BUT my voice lesson was awesome. In the last five minutes I had an enormous breakthrough with my body tension. I mean literally the last five minutes... we were working the first phrase of 'Warm As The Autumn Light,' (which is literally just the words 'warm as the autumn light') because I told her that part of my problem with the whole piece is that I feel like I never, ever start that first phrase correctly, and it's hard for me to let go of that through the piece.
She had me start the phrase so softly that she couldn't hear it (the 'wa' of 'warm' at super, super pianissimo) and build it from there, then we let it be a tiny bit louder once I'd figured that out.... and something just 'clicked' in my body from doing that. I felt a whole load of tension just literally drop off of my body and all of the sudden I was singing with this spinning, free sound that I've never felt before. My teacher and accompanist couldn't believe it, and we all got pretty excited. The tension wants to come back, but I -think- I understand how to make it go away now. I don't even really know what it is that I'm relaxing, but it's like suddenly my voice just opens up and I can sing with minimal effort. Weirdness! I'm praying that the freedom doesn't vanish between now and tomorrow. Usually it would really bug me to not be sure what it is that I'm doing to make that tension release... but at this point I don't even care. If it works, it works and that's good enough for me right now. I overanalyze my voice so much that at least this one great thing I'm just going to let happen on its own. Oh, we also vocalized me up to a full voice Bb4. It's not surprising to me that I have those notes... I used to be able to do that thing where I could 'stretch' my voice up to the C5, but I've always known that I have a full voice Bb4 in me, I just don't know how to get at it a lot of the time. I don't think it means I'm a tenor, much as I would kill to be one. My breaks are in the spots that baritones have them, and I've just always had that weird little extension to the Bb, even when I was 16... although of course it's still one of those 'once in a blue moon' things. Last edited by Tessar : 03-11-2010 at 06:28 PM. |
03-12-2010, 07:34 PM | #459 | |
Princess of the Noldor (and Administrative Empress of the Lone Islands)
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I'm learning a lot about professional singing from reading this thread. There's so much more to it than just learning a tune and a text by heart
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03-14-2010, 10:50 PM | #460 | |
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Today was sort of frustrating, but also encouraging. I couldn't get my body to let go of the tension, and now I'm hyper aware of it because I sang without it that one time in my lesson. It's really difficult for me to let go of that tension! I don't know why, because it's so much easier for me to sing without it, but it just wants to hang in there. I did manage to let go of it almost completely at the end of a hymn during our third service, and I stayed relaxed and free for that third anthem, but then after the twenty minute sermon I wasn't able to let go of it again. Oh well. I think it's really a mental thing. The tension comes from that gigantic ball of worry that I hold in the back of my head that says, "What if my voice cracks? What if the person standing next to me hates my singing? What if the director decides he doesn't like my voice any more? What if I think I'm singing well and I really sound horrible?" My sister thinks that I'm very self confident, but I told her that if she could live in my head for a day the screaming in horror would probably never end . I'm very self conscious all of the time, I just force myself to do things because I know what I want, and in the end I'm much happier for having done those things . |
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