Emily F. lesson 10/22

Emily F. lesson 10/22: It's been a rough week because I haven't felt well and my whole lower body was hurting all week. But I was pretty well warmed up and felt better than I had in days. I brought my last new song to pass off for the semester! We did several mixing exercises and lots of ascending, energizing warm-ups and I was able to warm up quite high for me (D above high C!). We then worked on three of my songs. The first is a simple melody, but it requires a lot of attitude, which is hard for me to express ("Non giova il sospirar"). I didn't get a good connection with my body and voice until I did natural expressive movements, what I'd do if I were really speaking this to someone. It's hard for me to do that-- when I sing, I go into this "proper" mode, where I don't feel like I can move or be too obvious. When I really let loose emotionally on this piece, I sounded much better, and the singing felt connected and natural. Now I just don't know if I can do that in front of an audience. The next piece we worked on was the one I worked on with Thomas ("Berceuse"). We talked about what colors I'd picture the song being. I chose some, and really picturing them helped me a lot. I stopped thinking about what my voice was doing or how I was supposed to breathe or form the vowels. When I wrapped myself up in the idea of the color, everything was just better. The last song I did, "La Serenata," was one I did last semester. I still struggle with my tongue on this piece. I tend to scrunch it up when I sing the "oh" or "ah" vowels, and I don't know what to do about that. I also am trying to remember the lyrics, so I'm not invested in the feeling. For the next week, I need to get some stuff done for my recital-- posters, slides of translation of lyrics. For my songs I need to work on TEXT, text, text!