Changing Gear and Direction

So Tired

I used to be a driving instructor.  I think that's why it's occurred to me that this lull in energy I'm experiencing requires me to change pace, gear and direction, especially with the blog.  Spending the summer giving my daily attention to my visiting foreign students and teaching them one to one for two, three or fours hours a day, cooking, cleaning, sightseeing, meant that I've been working on the project in the early morning or late at night.  I guess I was burning the candle at both ends.  Then the trips to A&E with the pain which was found to be a gallstone was tiring and disorienting.    Adopting a fat free diet, until the operation to remove the gallbladder happens later in the year, is causing a chemical change.

What's this Blog for Now?

The blog's function is no longer to serve as the main communication hub for the project but to record something else.  I just can't decide what I need it to be.  It doesn't feel right that it should be a purely personal offloading and yet my personal experience is relevant as I am an older woman and things I encounter could be typical of those other older women encounter.  But then I ask myself how many other prospective mature undergrads or women starting out in performance training will find their way to this blog and have any interest in it?  I remind myself that my artistic enquiry is whether I can create a new piece of opera through theatre improvisation, vocal production exploration and add bel canto in some kind of intuitive, unbroken flow.  In that regard it's high time I started reading the books I've located and maybe I can blog about those, that way the blog can serve as a resource for me and any other interested parties.

Practical Activities 

Singing lessons

After a very long break I've started singing lessons again with a local teacher.  She's my 5th teacher of classical voice.  I feel very comfortable with her and so glad that I can discuss with her technical issues that seem to be approached differently by different teachers.  So far these enquiries have centred on support and breathing but as my current teacher and I are focussing on Bel Canto a lot of the lesson centres on the formation of clear vowel sounds and whilst having a loose jaw which naturally adjusts to the need of vowel sound and pitch.  I think my teacher is around my age.  Her singing pupils include other older people and this helps me  a lot.

Talking Technicalities

Breathing and Support

Sometimes I experience feelings of frustration that when I've had to change teacher, each teacher appears to have had utterly different advice about how to achieve the required support and breath control.  Getting down to the nitty gritty, in lay terms, the difference seems to be whether one melts at the perineum or contracts as though stopping oneself  'spending a penny' (or for any non British readers - 'urinating'!).  I've found if I do the latter before the onset of singing I somehow restrict the area available for expansion when breathing through some inappropriate tension which creeps right up the body.  My voice seems to perch like a vulnerable apple on top of a tense and inflexible tree trunk.  If I place my attention at the perineum and allow myself to melt and spread throughout the singing, the support muscles seem to come into play in a way which keeps my voice better integrated with the whole body - the apple is somehow drawn into firmer contact with the tree trunk and the roots - my feet - seem much steadier in the contact with the ground.  Support without unnecessary tension in the upper body seems to be the aim.

Vowels

I've found that different teachers have different opinions on the target vowel sounds, how it's to be achieved at different pitches including what to do with the tongue, but what's great is that I know I can shop for what I want to extract from the experience of their advice and observations.  I no longer have the sense that I must take on each and every comment as though it were the new 'only right way'.  Right now I'm making the tongue work more to give more definition to the /i:/  (ee as in tree) and also learning how to open up more at the back of the throat to allow /a:/ (as in bath) to be sounded with a natural quality and higher resonance.  My current teacher says my /a:/ is resonating more near my mask and I think that's because a previous teacher had said my /a:/ was a bit dark and had brought the resonance forward.  Whilst this is frustrating, I am learning a lot of options!

Well I'm glad that I'm under way and I enjoyed the little bit of singing I did in the lesson and in my warm up at home before I went.  I really need to be singing regularly with other trained voices so I'd better put that on my 'to do' list.

Time to get up and have breakfast.  Bye for now.