Vocal Epiphany!

The last two weeks I have focused almost completely on the music side of my life.  With Rinuccio approaching in a month I have been working feverishly in preparing the role.  As I am beginning sing through the role in one sitting, I noticed at first that my endurance was an issue.  Luckily as with most muscular actions, the brain adapts quickly and I am having less and less issue with consistency getting through the role. In coaching the role for the first time this past week I had a bit of an epiphany.

At a coaching a month or so ago I was told to be careful of my pitch on descending lines as I tended to go out of tune.  I found this to be odd, because I generally don't suffer from pitch problems anymore.  Nevertheless, I have since been paying extra attention to my descending lines to make sure they are in tune.  At my coaching last week, with a different coach who knows me and my voice better, I was told again to be careful of descending lines.  The catch and epiphany however, was that this coach told me that I was coming out of my resonance.  Ah ha!  Upon hearing this I was easily able to address the problem and found things to click much quicker.  I learned that if I come out of my resonance that I sound as though I am out of tune, but it is more that I become flat in tone rather than pitch.  I also learned at this most recent coaching the need for pacing myself.  Admittedly I do not really know how to do this, so I am experimenting on my own and doing the best I can to save my big vocalizing for my most "dramatic" parts of this role.

In addition to Rinuccio, I learned last week that I also need to prepare Tinca from Il Tabarro for the same read through.  This doesn't bother me much, although I am now stuck waiting for a score before I can learn the role.  The estimated delivery time is 10 July, which will give me about three weeks to learn the role.  Luckily, the role is even smaller than Rinuccio.

Since my focus has been so much on this upcoming event my language studies have faltered a bit.  I still listen to radio horeb and speak with my German speaking friend rather regularly and feel that I am in a good place with German still.