Sam Meredith Lesson Summary 11/25

I was well warmed up for my lesson today, but I feel like I would have been more prepared if I had practiced more over the weekend. First we did some vocalizes. We did a new one where I sang a 5 tone scale on the word 'ning'. It was hard keeping consistent space throughout the exercise, so Cindy told me that I should feel like the inner space is stretching throughout the duration of the exercise. It improved in that aspect, but once it did there were some other problems we noticed. My neck was tensing up and my tongue was retracting. Next we sang the words 'no never no' on a descending arpeggio. This helped me insert some emotion into the vocalize and also have a more speech-like quality in my tone. After that we sang the words 'may oh may I'. We started on scale degree five, went to one, then went back to five and descended down a five-tone scale. Next we did the same vocalize I did last week where I had to practice making the transition to my upper register gradually rather than making the change suddenly. After that we focused on my repertoire. We started with 'si tra i ceppi'. I feel like I have made a lot of improvements on this song, but there are still some things I need to fix. My entrance at the beginning of the piece, for example, still feels colored and is sometimes under pitch. This week I want to speak that line before i sing it in practice and also do some exercises to pitch my consonants better. I also need to release the tension in my neck, tongue, and jaw. At some points these things were keeping my timbre from having the spin that it needs to. Breathing was another problem I had. It was a problem today with all my pieces and not just this one. I was taking a lot of really gaspy sounding breaths. I need to focus on making my breaths silent, low, and inconspicuous. I'll have to do some good breath exercises this week. Next we worked on 'beau soir'. I'm still struggling a little bit keeping the tempo up, so Cindy made the accompaniment move really quickly. That way I really had to be on the ball to make sure that the vowels were all right on the beat. I was still have a little trouble with constriction on the ascending, climactic phrase near the end. I think to fix this I'm going to turn this line into a vocalize this week and practice it using the [i] and [e] vowels so that I can make the transition between registers smooth and released. Finally, we worked on 'wohl denk ich oft'. The problem I had with this piece was that all of the awkward jumps seemed really awkward and there wasn't enough of a legato feeling. I think when I practice this song this week I'm going to play the top note of each phrase while I sing just so I keep a more connected quality in my timbre and avoid rough-sounding changes from note to note. I also want to add more dynamic contrast into my longer notes.