Emily F. lesson 1/22

Emily F. lesson 1/22: I came to my lesson having warmed up for about thirty minutes and my voice felt good. I turned in a song analysis form. Laurie and I discussed drinking water. I am SO BAD about drinking sufficient water, so I proposed that if I drank my full amount of water in a day, I'd count that for 10 minutes of practice. Laurie was fine with that and time is a good motivator for me. We did "the wobble" vocalize for a couple minutes. It takes a lot of concentration for me to not try to "set" my voice and just let it fly, so it's a good exercise for me. Then we did some "pleasant voice" talking. We did "oh no" on 1-3-5-8, a major 3rd trill, back down 8-5-3-1. My voice was kind of sticking, so Laurie asked me to silent scream. We did "za la ze la za" on a descending five note scale with an ascending third on each pitch. It was tricky to navigate the "z" and "l" so quickly and required me to have a really floppy jaw. Then we did a "getting high" exercise, and I was able to reach an E6 fairly effortlessly. My body felt strong and energized and from my neck up it felt loose and easy, so it was great! Laurie had asked me to get "Mandoline" by Faure singable with the lyrics and notes. I was prepared so we practiced that. I began singing and it was a little heavy and pushed (surprise, surprise), because I felt like I was competing with the piano and that my volume was insufficient, but then I lightened it up and it was easy and fun. Then we worked on "Parto, ma tu, ben mio", my Mozart aria, specifically the fioratura passages. I have worked out all the pitches on my own, but I have been unable to sing them all up to speed so far. We tried a couple different ways of practicing it. It's hard to believe that I'll ever be able to sing the whole passage cleanly in one breath, but I'm going to keep practicing and hope that it'll get better. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the whole aria is actually much better than I expected it to be for a first time through. We ran through pitches and rhythms on one more song. Next week I'll turn in another song analysis. My goals are to drink water, choose pieces for NATS, and work on my diction, translations, and memorizations of my songs.