Sam Meredith Lesson Summary 3/18

Today I had my memory check. We started with text recitation. It went pretty well. I didn't have trouble remembering the words or their translations. Cindy did encourage me, however, to speak the texts in a more pleasant voice because I have a tendency to let the voice slip in to vocal fry. After reciting all of the texts we moved on to singing. As far as memorization is concerned I did fine on all of my songs, but the singing wasn't as good as I would like it to be. I was still having a lot of trouble with the high F in "the Golden Willow Tree," I was still having trouble with breath coordination in "Der Mond hat eine Schwere Klag erhoben" and "Psyche," and I was till suffering from some tension in "troppa briga a prender moglie" and "wenn du zu den Blumen gehst." Cindy gave me some helpful suggestions that I want to use to fix some of those problems. As far as breathing is concerned I want to spend some more time in the practice room fixing my breath coordination. I think I'm just going to try to be more aware of how my body reacts when I'm almost out of air. I know that right now I have a tendency to let my body collapse slightly, which makes it hard or impossible for enough air to come in and support the notes for my next phrase. As far as relieving tension is concerned, I think I just need to be more aware of the position of my head-neck joint. Once I can do that I think the tension that sometimes exists in my shoulders and legs will resolve itself. If I fix the tension in my head-neck joint, that will also free up my jaw more so that I can sing those high notes in the Copland piece without excess tension. Another thing that Cindy suggested I can do to relieve tension in my body is do other things while I sing. That's something that I want to include more in my practice so that my body can become more accustomed to singing without unnecessary tension.