I just returned from a performance in Toronto on Saturday which, to me, was one of my most complete performances to date. I didn't do everything technically perfectly, but I was able to get my voice to do what I wanted it to to portray the character I was playing. I was doing a "New Opera" workshop with Tapestry Opera and met a lot of talented and was impressed with how relevant contemporary opera has made the art form. The topics ranged from drug use to family relations through divorce and just about everything in between. One of the wonderful things about doing contemporary opera in your native tongue is the immediacy of the music and text. The entire audience seemed to relate literally to every scene. This workshop gave me a new appreciation for contemporary opera and I look forward to delving into this repertoire more in the future.
Immediately following my time in Toronto, I went to Indianapolis for an audition and am now preparing to go back down to NYC for another audition. I also have to make a video recording for another audition and am continuing to work on new repertoire for next season. Upcoming, I will be performing at a benefit concert and also performing my annual recital at my church in Rochester. This year's theme for my recital is Spirituals and Contemporary American Song, somewhat keeping in the theme from my time at Toronto.
After a month of debate and thinking I have decided to continue forward with my language learning, instead of cycling back around. This past weekend I began my Russian studies. I am starting with Michel Thomas, which is a great introduction into the language. I also have started listening to some Russian talk radio using my TuneIn radio app on my phone when I am in areas that have wi-fi (work). In March I plan to start using LingQ to get some more input and begin learning words and familiarizing myself with structure.
I decided to continue forward because I have started looking at Russian repertoire in my singing and I have found that I sing better when I understand the language I am singing in, even if it is at a basic level. I do need to go back and bring my other languages up to their next respective level, but I feel that getting a basic working knowledge of Russian is more important than bringing my other languages to higher levels of fluency at this point. I will keep you all updated as I move forward.
Showing posts with label Michel Thomas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michel Thomas. Show all posts
Monday, February 10, 2014
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
A Time of Blessing
The blessings of the Lord have been flowing down upon me the last couple of weeks! I'll begin with the language side of my life. Yesterday I finished the Michel Thomas course I have been working on for the last five months. This is significant for a number of reasons. First, I feel that I have a strong base in German now and can comfortably hold my own in basic, day to day conversation. Second, this means that I can now move on to Assimil, picking up where I left off at lesson 24. Additionally, tomorrow I will cross over the 2,000 known word milestone on LingQ. This has taken me a lot longer than I anticipated, however it is ultimately of my own doing. I took a small hiatus earlier in the year from LingQ and in general I am lax about doing LingQ if I am lacking motivation on a given day. This puts me at about the same level on LingQ as my Italian says I am. Although Italian was the "first" foreign language I brought to a significant level it has quickly become my lowest level language, besides my high school level Spanish. At some point I will come back and bring all of my languages to higher levels, but for now I am content with where it is.
Based on where I am in the Assimil program, I have approximately 126 days of work ahead of me, which equates 25 weeks of study based on a 5 day study schedule. That should bring me to about December, which allows me to focus solely and intensively on LingQ for the final month, where I hope to really increase my known words. The nice thing about known words is that they grow exponentially. In French I learned approximately 5500 words in 8 months. If I follow a similar pace from here on out in German that would bring me to about 7500 known words by the end of the year, give or take a few hundred. If I stay on course and hit all of my goals for the rest of the year I should have no problem speaking German coming January 1st.
The real exciting news comes on the vocal front. I went down to New York to have a lesson with JRL and had a very productive lesson. Towards the end of the lesson I was assigned the role of Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi for a sing-through later in the summer. This will be my first time singing a role as a tenor! On top of this, I am also looking ahead to doing my first round of auditions for some summer programs in the autumn. After three arduous years of struggle and hard work I am beginning to come out on the other side of this process and am confident about my prospects.
Another important part of my trip to New York was my coaching with Susan Morton. During the coaching I was recommended a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. While I am still just barely scratching the surface of this book, it has transformed my approach to nearly every important aspect of my life. The concept of "deep practicing" discussed in the tome has made learning a much more intense and rewarding experience. I have witnessed the benefits in my singing while learning this role, in my running as I have determined to beat my chronic shin splints this summer, and even my language work as I near an intermediate level of German. I highly recommend that anyone who is attempting to gain a skill find this book and give it a read.
Overall, the last two weeks have seen many prayers beginning to be answered and many goals in their infancy of being realized. I look forward to where these new opportunities and experiences take me and glorify the Lord for granting me the patience to see these things through to their fulfillment according to his will!
Based on where I am in the Assimil program, I have approximately 126 days of work ahead of me, which equates 25 weeks of study based on a 5 day study schedule. That should bring me to about December, which allows me to focus solely and intensively on LingQ for the final month, where I hope to really increase my known words. The nice thing about known words is that they grow exponentially. In French I learned approximately 5500 words in 8 months. If I follow a similar pace from here on out in German that would bring me to about 7500 known words by the end of the year, give or take a few hundred. If I stay on course and hit all of my goals for the rest of the year I should have no problem speaking German coming January 1st.
The real exciting news comes on the vocal front. I went down to New York to have a lesson with JRL and had a very productive lesson. Towards the end of the lesson I was assigned the role of Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi for a sing-through later in the summer. This will be my first time singing a role as a tenor! On top of this, I am also looking ahead to doing my first round of auditions for some summer programs in the autumn. After three arduous years of struggle and hard work I am beginning to come out on the other side of this process and am confident about my prospects.
Another important part of my trip to New York was my coaching with Susan Morton. During the coaching I was recommended a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. While I am still just barely scratching the surface of this book, it has transformed my approach to nearly every important aspect of my life. The concept of "deep practicing" discussed in the tome has made learning a much more intense and rewarding experience. I have witnessed the benefits in my singing while learning this role, in my running as I have determined to beat my chronic shin splints this summer, and even my language work as I near an intermediate level of German. I highly recommend that anyone who is attempting to gain a skill find this book and give it a read.
Overall, the last two weeks have seen many prayers beginning to be answered and many goals in their infancy of being realized. I look forward to where these new opportunities and experiences take me and glorify the Lord for granting me the patience to see these things through to their fulfillment according to his will!
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Faith: The Most Necessary Virtue!
I have made some good progress this month, both with my German and with my singing. In German I am at approximately 1750 words known on LingQ and I have noticed that I am beginning to be able to follow some of the dialogue on the radio station I listen to, Radio Horeb. There is still a lot that I miss, however I am still encouraged by the process that I am making. I have about twenty days left with my Michel Thomas program and then I will be coming back to Assimil to finish that. This being said, it is apparent to me that I am going to be hitting a few milestones in the next month. My plans for the next two weeks is to start using my German more in certain areas of my life. Primarily, I am going to start praying my Rosary in German at least three days a week. I find that this has been very helpful for me in the past, as I can grow from the Rosary into personal prayers and really force the activation of a lot of the vocabulary I know. I am one-third of the way through my German year and find myself at a very good place.
Vocally things have been a roller coaster ride of sorts. A few weeks back I had a minor vocal crisis where I began to show the signs of a hole in my passaggio. Luckily, after a brief correspondence with JRL, I have patched up that problem and moved on to considerably more exciting things. Specifically, this week I have consistently sang my exercises up to a high C (and occasionally a C#), and today I was able to sing the C with vibrato. To my mind, this means that I am starting to coordinate the note well enough that it is beginning to release. I routinely practice at my former college, Roberts Wesleyan, which happens to be where both of my future sisters-in-law go to school currently. I was informed by one of the sisters that I have a bit of a fan base among her fellow classmates. One even went so far as to figure out the note that I "always crack on," which was a Bb4 for those who are interested. While this is amusing, it also gave me great motivation to get past that Bb4, which I can say I have done now. Instead I crack on the B4 or C5 now!
I am quite humbled by having a "fanclub" at my former school. It is quite a different scene than when I was going to school here from 2003-2007. At that time, the majority of the department was confused as to why I was a performance major. Now the current student population thinks that I am an advanced singer. This goes to a larger point that I was discussing with my language partner, Ernest, yesterday. I have known from the time I became a voice major that I was going to be a singer, and a successful one at that. Despite the dissensions from everyone from classmates to family to professionals, I am nearing the point of my process where I am going to begin my career. If you have faith in your own path you will always achieve your goals. The process may take you through deserts and mountains, however you will always come out on the other side if you maintain your faith. As a Christian, I have put my life's path into God's hands and am confident that, while it may not happen in the timeline of my choosing, everything I have asked of God for my life will occur as it is supposed to. Regardless of whether you are Christian or not, faith is one of the most important character traits we possess. Believe and know that your aspirations will always happen as long as you continue to persevere faithfully.
Vocally things have been a roller coaster ride of sorts. A few weeks back I had a minor vocal crisis where I began to show the signs of a hole in my passaggio. Luckily, after a brief correspondence with JRL, I have patched up that problem and moved on to considerably more exciting things. Specifically, this week I have consistently sang my exercises up to a high C (and occasionally a C#), and today I was able to sing the C with vibrato. To my mind, this means that I am starting to coordinate the note well enough that it is beginning to release. I routinely practice at my former college, Roberts Wesleyan, which happens to be where both of my future sisters-in-law go to school currently. I was informed by one of the sisters that I have a bit of a fan base among her fellow classmates. One even went so far as to figure out the note that I "always crack on," which was a Bb4 for those who are interested. While this is amusing, it also gave me great motivation to get past that Bb4, which I can say I have done now. Instead I crack on the B4 or C5 now!
I am quite humbled by having a "fanclub" at my former school. It is quite a different scene than when I was going to school here from 2003-2007. At that time, the majority of the department was confused as to why I was a performance major. Now the current student population thinks that I am an advanced singer. This goes to a larger point that I was discussing with my language partner, Ernest, yesterday. I have known from the time I became a voice major that I was going to be a singer, and a successful one at that. Despite the dissensions from everyone from classmates to family to professionals, I am nearing the point of my process where I am going to begin my career. If you have faith in your own path you will always achieve your goals. The process may take you through deserts and mountains, however you will always come out on the other side if you maintain your faith. As a Christian, I have put my life's path into God's hands and am confident that, while it may not happen in the timeline of my choosing, everything I have asked of God for my life will occur as it is supposed to. Regardless of whether you are Christian or not, faith is one of the most important character traits we possess. Believe and know that your aspirations will always happen as long as you continue to persevere faithfully.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Language Leap!
I am a little over a quarter of the way through my German year and I have made a considerable leap in my ability to express myself in the last couple of weeks. I had a similar thing occur in French last year, where all of sudden the language began to flow from me with a lot less hindrance. There are obviously still holes in my vocabulary, however I have discovered that I can now carry on conversations beyond mere greetings and niceties. I'm not exactly sure what the turning point was for me and I wish I had kept a better catalog of hours spent working in the language so that I could possibly start to formulate a theory on the relationship between time and achievement. My estimate is about five hours of Michel Thomas, eight hours of Assimil and 10 hours on LingQ. So that is really only about 23 hours, not including time spent talking to myself and others, time spent watching movies and listening to the radio. Truthfully though, this is a very small amount of time and I wish I had more time to devote to learning the language. If I could devote this much time into my week instead of over the last three and a half months I can only imagine how strong my German would be come December 31, 2012! Unfortunately I do not have four hours a day to devote to language learning so I have to do the best I can with the time I have. I imagine that I will be able to add German to my list of spoken languages by August; then I would like to amp up my workload to really achieve fluency by the end of the year.
I have been having some struggles lately with my voice. These challenges are things of my own doing, but they are very annoying nonetheless. It is especially frustrating because I had such a great lesson a couple of months ago and I feel like I have done the two steps forward, one step back thing in the last couple of weeks. I am beginning to pull myself out of these issues, but it appears that it is going to take me longer to recover from than it did to fall into. There are some positives though, I still have built my strength up some as I am now able to sing a fairly consistent A4 ever without warming up (I don't do this often). Overall it is important to continue to look at the positive movements that are happening and use those to get through the troublesome times.
I have been having some struggles lately with my voice. These challenges are things of my own doing, but they are very annoying nonetheless. It is especially frustrating because I had such a great lesson a couple of months ago and I feel like I have done the two steps forward, one step back thing in the last couple of weeks. I am beginning to pull myself out of these issues, but it appears that it is going to take me longer to recover from than it did to fall into. There are some positives though, I still have built my strength up some as I am now able to sing a fairly consistent A4 ever without warming up (I don't do this often). Overall it is important to continue to look at the positive movements that are happening and use those to get through the troublesome times.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Adapting the Learning Process
I am getting back in the swing of things somewhat with German over the past couple of weeks. I have been really good about doing my Michel Thomas, however I have not touched Assimil in over a month. I think that I have subconsciously decided that I will move on to Assimil after I have finished the MT. In truth this is probably a good thing because it will give me something to do the second half of the year in addition to LingQ. I am currently debating whether to go back to the beginning of Assimil, or just pick up where I left off. In my split second decision making process I just went through I will pick up where I left off. The last two weeks have been particularly good for my LingQ work.
It never ceases to amaze me the way that we continue to adapt and evolve the longer we work on a specific task. In the case of LingQ I have just recently modified my approach and find that I am getting a lot more out of the program this way. Before, I went through a three step cycle which was laid out this way:
1.) Listen without reading
2.) Read without listening
3.) Listen and read simultaneously
This way served me well and I thought that this way I could train my listening separate from my reading and visa-versa. I recently though began listening and reading all three times through a passage and have found that my comprehension overall has grown markedly. This should not surprise me since the creator of LingQ, Steve Kaufmann, says that you should never read without listening, nor should you listen without reading in the early stages. The more surprising thing to me is that my brain spontaneously decided to try this approach seemingly out of the blue. I am currently creeping in on 1500 words known, which is well behind my goal, but I am still happy with progress of any kind.
Vocally, I have had a similar epiphany in the last week. It has been about a month since my last lesson with JRL and I decided one day last week to listen to the recording of my lesson. At first I did not really think I was going to gain much other than some reinforcement of the things I was already doing. After going through the recording I was amazed at some of the things that I had let slip in the last month. My practice the rest of the week was great and I felt like I made some very big steps forward, all because I listened to a recording of my lesson.
This was a big time for me in learning how to better learn. Sometimes progress may come in different areas than you expect, however it will ultimately lead you to your end goal.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Coming in like a lion
This has been a rough month for me. The amount of things I have to do at work, which is when I usually study, has increased considerably and taken away my time that I can work on German. Suffice it to say that I have not been able to make much progress so far this month. I have tried to maintain at least one aspect of my study per day though, usually Michel Thomas. I am in the process of trying to restructure my day so that I can fit in my Assimil and LingQ work daily again. The one positive from this month thus far is that I am at a basic conversational level in German. I define this as being able to greet and speak candidly with others about menial, day to day things (i.e. How are you?, What are you doing this weekend?, etc.). I am very pleased and excited about this, especially since I have not been able to put much time in as of late. When I can get back to more regular study I anticipate being able to count this language as being fully conversational by mid-summer, which makes fluency by December 31 very attainable.
I am still in a very good place vocally as well. Since my lesson in February I can feel my voice getting stronger every day. My A-natural (A4) has really solidified as of late and I am now working on B-flat (Bb4) and B (B4). Even my repertory has taken a step up as I have begun to earnestly work on "La donna e mobile" and "E la solita storia." My hope for this session between lessons is to have a reliable B-flat and a workable B natural. Assuming I keep up my newfound pace, I believe I will definitely be audition ready for the fall. I have about two months until my next trip to New York City and am planning on having a lesson and at least a couple of coachings while I am down. Until then, I have much work to do so that I can build on the momentum I have gained from my last lesson.
I am still in a very good place vocally as well. Since my lesson in February I can feel my voice getting stronger every day. My A-natural (A4) has really solidified as of late and I am now working on B-flat (Bb4) and B (B4). Even my repertory has taken a step up as I have begun to earnestly work on "La donna e mobile" and "E la solita storia." My hope for this session between lessons is to have a reliable B-flat and a workable B natural. Assuming I keep up my newfound pace, I believe I will definitely be audition ready for the fall. I have about two months until my next trip to New York City and am planning on having a lesson and at least a couple of coachings while I am down. Until then, I have much work to do so that I can build on the momentum I have gained from my last lesson.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Big Progress!
I had my first lesson in quite a while this past Friday with Jean-Ronald LaFond. My lesson this time around was one of discovery and great advancement for my part. During the course of the lesson I felt myself singing in a way I never had before and I liked it. It was a great experience for me and we even talked about me doing auditions in the fall if I can get a few more things to line up vocally. Since I've been home, I have continued to work with the new concepts I was given and can employ them fairly well in my vocalises (at least I think I do), however I am struggling to put these things through into my repertoire work. This is especially frustrating since I was singing so well at my lesson. I chalk up my difficulties to the fact that I am not in front of JRL receiving guidance as I am singing. I will ultimately figure out how to incorporate and synthesize these concepts into my singing and know that if I continue with the work ethic I have been developping that I will be fine.
Linguistically, however, is a different story. I have had a rough couple of weeks with my language learning time. This is mainly due to a largely increased workload at my actual job which results in less time for study. I am hoping that things will slow back down to normal at work next week and that I will be able to get back to my normal routine, otherwise I am going to have to find a new time to study. This is very frustrating to me because I was on such a good pace with German and now I feel as though I have skidded to a stop. Luckily I still do manage to get in at least a little time with the language, mostly my Michel Thomas recordings. Again my mantra is, as always: Slow and steady wins the race.
Linguistically, however, is a different story. I have had a rough couple of weeks with my language learning time. This is mainly due to a largely increased workload at my actual job which results in less time for study. I am hoping that things will slow back down to normal at work next week and that I will be able to get back to my normal routine, otherwise I am going to have to find a new time to study. This is very frustrating to me because I was on such a good pace with German and now I feel as though I have skidded to a stop. Luckily I still do manage to get in at least a little time with the language, mostly my Michel Thomas recordings. Again my mantra is, as always: Slow and steady wins the race.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Two weeks in... Impatience
I am just over two weeks in to my German studies, and thus far am pretty much on track. I am a little behind on my LingQ work, about 300 words, but I am not terribly worried about it, I figure it will all come out in the wash at the end. As I mentioned before this is the first language I am learning on my own, completely from scratch. I have noticed that I have the tendency to get slightly impatient with my learning curve, chastising myself for not being able to say more. Then I remind myself that I am only two weeks in and have another eleven and a half months to go, thusly I should not worry. I can already have some basic conversations and text messages with my German speaking friends.
One thing I have discovered about going at this completely on my own is that it is a little overwhelming at first knowing absolutely nothing and just throwing yourself in the deep end. I am slowly picking up more and more things every day and I am near 1,000 known words on LingQ. Overall I am comfortable with where I am and feel like I am on a good pace at this point.
I have not written anything about my vocal journey in a while. The fact is that I do not have much to report. I continue to progress towards my goal of being able to sing tenor repertoire comfortably and convincingly. I was supposed to have a lesson yesterday, however those plans fell through, so I now am looking forward to February and my next potential lesson. There have been some important milestones in my singing though in my time between lessons. The most important one being that more of my top notes have begun to show glimpses of themselves to me when singing. I am still struggling with endurance however. I sense that this will be a very important year for my singing career, one way or the other.
One thing I have discovered about going at this completely on my own is that it is a little overwhelming at first knowing absolutely nothing and just throwing yourself in the deep end. I am slowly picking up more and more things every day and I am near 1,000 known words on LingQ. Overall I am comfortable with where I am and feel like I am on a good pace at this point.
I have not written anything about my vocal journey in a while. The fact is that I do not have much to report. I continue to progress towards my goal of being able to sing tenor repertoire comfortably and convincingly. I was supposed to have a lesson yesterday, however those plans fell through, so I now am looking forward to February and my next potential lesson. There have been some important milestones in my singing though in my time between lessons. The most important one being that more of my top notes have begun to show glimpses of themselves to me when singing. I am still struggling with endurance however. I sense that this will be a very important year for my singing career, one way or the other.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Der Plan
As we have started a new year, I have already put in two days of study on my new language for the year, German. I figure I would outline my basic plan for the year with regards to my acquisition of German.
Resources:
German with Michel Thomas
German with Ease by Assimil
German on LingQ
In general, my goal is to spend ten hours a week studying German over the course of the next year. As I do not study on my days off from work, that equates to 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. I will go through one lesson/track per working day with MT and Assimil. On LingQ, I plan to add approximately 100 known words to my vocabulary every working day. This is a little bit slower of a pace than I would like on LingQ, but I think it is the best plan for the amount of time I have available to devote to this study. As I go along I will have to read more and more material to acquire 100 new known words, so ultimately my exposure will grow exponentially as I become more accustomed to the language.
On the side, I plan to watch a German movie every month and listen to some German radio programming every week. Also, I am going to start praying the Rosary in German and hopefully I will get to the point where I can spontaneously pray in German by the end of the year. I also have a number of friends and acquaintances who speak German, so I will be practicing my spoken German from a very early stage, as soon as I start to know some more relevant material than: Der Tee ist kalt.
Based on my previous work in French, I anticipate that I will get to a pretty comfortable place with German by the summer, at which point I will have finished both MT and Assimil. The rest of my year in German will be spent focusing on listening comprehension and vocabulary building through LingQ.
German does present me with some challenges, the most striking one being that I have practically no previous coursework or study of the language outside of the one month I studied it last year. With both French and Italian I had taken actual classes prior to my self-study, so I had a little bit of a head-start. I am excited to see how I do with my first completely self-taught language and hope to be able to use this working plan as model for my future languages.
Resources:
German with Michel Thomas
German with Ease by Assimil
German on LingQ
In general, my goal is to spend ten hours a week studying German over the course of the next year. As I do not study on my days off from work, that equates to 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. I will go through one lesson/track per working day with MT and Assimil. On LingQ, I plan to add approximately 100 known words to my vocabulary every working day. This is a little bit slower of a pace than I would like on LingQ, but I think it is the best plan for the amount of time I have available to devote to this study. As I go along I will have to read more and more material to acquire 100 new known words, so ultimately my exposure will grow exponentially as I become more accustomed to the language.
On the side, I plan to watch a German movie every month and listen to some German radio programming every week. Also, I am going to start praying the Rosary in German and hopefully I will get to the point where I can spontaneously pray in German by the end of the year. I also have a number of friends and acquaintances who speak German, so I will be practicing my spoken German from a very early stage, as soon as I start to know some more relevant material than: Der Tee ist kalt.
Based on my previous work in French, I anticipate that I will get to a pretty comfortable place with German by the summer, at which point I will have finished both MT and Assimil. The rest of my year in German will be spent focusing on listening comprehension and vocabulary building through LingQ.
German does present me with some challenges, the most striking one being that I have practically no previous coursework or study of the language outside of the one month I studied it last year. With both French and Italian I had taken actual classes prior to my self-study, so I had a little bit of a head-start. I am excited to see how I do with my first completely self-taught language and hope to be able to use this working plan as model for my future languages.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
End of the Year Update and Next Year's Plans
LANGUAGE: Well, the year is coming to an end and I think I can successfully say that I have accomplished my goal for French. In my two reading test at the end of this year I have averaged a 97% comprehension rate. I do have one more test planned for next week so I can have a three score average to more accurately rate my ability. Additionally, I feel pretty comfortable in conversation in French and feel as though I can express myself pretty well. I am very pleased with the last eight months of work in French. Admittedly, I was not always as consistent in my work as I would have liked to be, but it provides me with goals for the coming year.
2012 brings in an entire year devoted to German for me. My system will be similar to what I did for French, since it seems to have been the most effective for me. This includes working through Michel Thomas, Assimil and LingQ on a daily basis during the work week, taking the weekends off from studying to allow things to work themselves out subconsciously. In addition I will again be consulting my friend Ernest for conversational practice beginning early on in the process. My goal for the coming year is to be more consistent in my studying - making sure that I get in all three phases of my work, five days a week. Based on the results I saw with French after only eight months, I am hoping to be even farther along in German by this time next year with the extra four months of work.
MUSIC: This has been an enlightening year for me musically. I have grown much as a singer and artist, however I also encountered some setbacks that varied from minor annoyances to things that made me step back and think about what it is I am undertaking. Overall I am better for all of my experiences as they have led me to discover new interests and paths in which I can explore my own artistry.
The most difficult part of this year was the culminating recital, my first as a tenor in nearly ten years. I had some successes and some failures throughout the performance which I meant to talk about here but never got around to it until now. The positives from the recital were that I made it through all of my repertoire without feeling fatigued at the end or ever really feeling in danger of cracking. The negatives were that I never really loosened up during the entire performance and thus my singing came out pressed and my artistic performance suffered for it. I blame these issues mostly on nerves from not singing that high in public in many years. I remember as a baritone that I had similar issues for a number of years until I had enough performances and faith in my voice through performing that I no longer suffered from the fright.
The other challenge this year has been that I do not feel I have progressed as much as I should have this year. I take the sole blame for this and have already begun to plan how to address this issue in the coming year.
After my recital, I began to contemplate if this was really the field for me to focus on and began taking choral conducting lessons with the plan of going to grad school for choral conducting. Much to my delight, I have found that I really enjoy the study of choral conducting and have found myself doing what I do when I become truly interested in something: researching and absorbing as much information as I can about the subject. Ultimately this has not pulled away from my desire to perform and performing is still my primary goal, but I am still considering a MM in choral conducting, since an MM in vocal performance is not necessary for my goals.
For the coming year I really need to focus on more directed, intensive practice. Difficulties abound due to my schedule, namely that I work overnights, however I have to figure out ways to be more productive and push myself if I want to make my dreams realities. It is a challenge only being able to have lessons once every couple of months, but I cannot let that be an excuse for my not progressing. This year I truly have to take my fate in my own hands and constantly remind myself that achieving my goals is a responsibility that rests solely on my shoulders and nobody else.
I am looking forward to 2012! I can already tell that it will be a year of great growth for me as a person and artist. Highlights of the coming year include planning a recital for the fall and my wedding, as well as figuring out where I will be relocating to in 2013. Have a happy holiday season and I will be back in January!
2012 brings in an entire year devoted to German for me. My system will be similar to what I did for French, since it seems to have been the most effective for me. This includes working through Michel Thomas, Assimil and LingQ on a daily basis during the work week, taking the weekends off from studying to allow things to work themselves out subconsciously. In addition I will again be consulting my friend Ernest for conversational practice beginning early on in the process. My goal for the coming year is to be more consistent in my studying - making sure that I get in all three phases of my work, five days a week. Based on the results I saw with French after only eight months, I am hoping to be even farther along in German by this time next year with the extra four months of work.
MUSIC: This has been an enlightening year for me musically. I have grown much as a singer and artist, however I also encountered some setbacks that varied from minor annoyances to things that made me step back and think about what it is I am undertaking. Overall I am better for all of my experiences as they have led me to discover new interests and paths in which I can explore my own artistry.
The most difficult part of this year was the culminating recital, my first as a tenor in nearly ten years. I had some successes and some failures throughout the performance which I meant to talk about here but never got around to it until now. The positives from the recital were that I made it through all of my repertoire without feeling fatigued at the end or ever really feeling in danger of cracking. The negatives were that I never really loosened up during the entire performance and thus my singing came out pressed and my artistic performance suffered for it. I blame these issues mostly on nerves from not singing that high in public in many years. I remember as a baritone that I had similar issues for a number of years until I had enough performances and faith in my voice through performing that I no longer suffered from the fright.
The other challenge this year has been that I do not feel I have progressed as much as I should have this year. I take the sole blame for this and have already begun to plan how to address this issue in the coming year.
After my recital, I began to contemplate if this was really the field for me to focus on and began taking choral conducting lessons with the plan of going to grad school for choral conducting. Much to my delight, I have found that I really enjoy the study of choral conducting and have found myself doing what I do when I become truly interested in something: researching and absorbing as much information as I can about the subject. Ultimately this has not pulled away from my desire to perform and performing is still my primary goal, but I am still considering a MM in choral conducting, since an MM in vocal performance is not necessary for my goals.
For the coming year I really need to focus on more directed, intensive practice. Difficulties abound due to my schedule, namely that I work overnights, however I have to figure out ways to be more productive and push myself if I want to make my dreams realities. It is a challenge only being able to have lessons once every couple of months, but I cannot let that be an excuse for my not progressing. This year I truly have to take my fate in my own hands and constantly remind myself that achieving my goals is a responsibility that rests solely on my shoulders and nobody else.
I am looking forward to 2012! I can already tell that it will be a year of great growth for me as a person and artist. Highlights of the coming year include planning a recital for the fall and my wedding, as well as figuring out where I will be relocating to in 2013. Have a happy holiday season and I will be back in January!
Monday, August 29, 2011
End of the Month Update
I am now more than 75% through my Assimil program and nearly as far through Michel Thomas. I somewhat feel like I've stagnated a little bit as far as progress goes; mainly due to my slacking about the last couple of weeks in studying. The bright side is that the Active Wave exercise today went very well and the majority of items just flowed out of me, which is a good sign.
On a note of wanderlust, I purchased Wheelock's Latin over the weekend and am going to read through it on the weekends when I take time off of French/German (after the new year). I don't necessarily know what I'm hoping to gain from learning Latin, other than that I will inevitably have to sing in Latin so understanding the structure and language will be helpful in that regard. Plus being Catholic, Latin kind of comes with the territory.
Vocally things are going very well. I am feeling more and more comfortable every day. I am going to be actually singing my first concert as a tenor in November at my church as part of an "Opera Hits" concert. I will likely only be singing one aria and a duet, but this will mark my first public performance as a tenor! As of right now my plan is to sing Alfredo's aria and the Parigi, o cara duet from the final act of La Traviata. Hopefully, I can convince someone into video taping this performance so I can post it to youtube, and thusly on here as a mark of my progress.
On a note of wanderlust, I purchased Wheelock's Latin over the weekend and am going to read through it on the weekends when I take time off of French/German (after the new year). I don't necessarily know what I'm hoping to gain from learning Latin, other than that I will inevitably have to sing in Latin so understanding the structure and language will be helpful in that regard. Plus being Catholic, Latin kind of comes with the territory.
Vocally things are going very well. I am feeling more and more comfortable every day. I am going to be actually singing my first concert as a tenor in November at my church as part of an "Opera Hits" concert. I will likely only be singing one aria and a duet, but this will mark my first public performance as a tenor! As of right now my plan is to sing Alfredo's aria and the Parigi, o cara duet from the final act of La Traviata. Hopefully, I can convince someone into video taping this performance so I can post it to youtube, and thusly on here as a mark of my progress.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
French Update
Since I have some free time at the moment, I figure I will free write a post on my progress as of late.
Currently I am sitting in the library listening to France Bleu Isere out of Lyon and they are currently playing a French version of the Frank Sinatra hit "My Way." It actually sounds very nice in French, although lacks a certain swagger that Frank had when singing this. In listening to the radio I have noticed that I am understanding quite a bit of the words, although they are not necessarily completely making sense in my brain (natural listening) and the pace is still a little fast for me. I have to research some exercise to improve my listening to a more natural level. A large part of this I think needs to be approached by simple immersion (i.e. listening to French radio, watching French TV and movies, etc.). I find that the most annoying and challenging thing about immersion for me is that the only way I can access French radio when driving, which admittedly is how I spend most of my waking hours, is through my Palm Pre which has horrible battery life, especially when using streaming apps. I suppose that my solution to this will have to be podcasts. In keeping with the immersion concept, I have changed much of my computer, internet and GPS to French in recent weeks. Truthfully, I don't even notice that most of them are in French, which I take as being a good thing.
I have been working my way through Assimil and Michel Thomas during my studies and have been keeping a pretty steady pace throughout the last month and a half or so. I only recently started the MT and only do one track a day, so I am only at about lesson eleven or twelve and ultimately the amount of material covered is relatively small. For the most part, however, I am using MT as a reinforcement so I am okay with the slow pace I am taking on it. At my current rate it will take me about three months to get through the course and then I will move on to the vocabulary booster and then the advanced course. In Assimil I am currently on about lesson 33, so nearly one-third of the way through the Passive Wave. I find that I am learning quite a bit from the Passive Wave without necessarily doing a whole lot. The book recommends spending between twenty and thirty minutes per lesson in the Passive Wave, but I find that I am under this number daily (maybe 15 minutes or so per lesson). The program has been helping my listening and in general I have noticed that I am gaining between 2 and 5 new words per lesson at this point. This may not seem like a whole lot, but percentage wise 5 words over the course of about a one and a half minute segment is rather significant. There are also other words in the course of the lessons that I do not know and do not necessarily pick up through just the Passive Wave, but I am sure that I will pick these up during the course of the Active Wave. More importantly than the vocabulary, arguably, is that I pick up new grammatical rules, structures and some colloquialisms as I am going through these lessons and am finding myself retaining some of the work on tenses that they present during the course of my listening and reading.
I do not necessarily have a great measure of how well I can speak the language at this point, although I seem to have an easier time staying in French when talking with my friend and I generally have a certain level of comfort in my conversation that I did not necessarily have a couple of months ago. I think I mentioned earlier that I have changed my learning plan for my languages. I have progressed to a more realistic plan of spending all of my time with one language until I have learned it to a level that I consider fluent, which I will describe eventually to the public, and then move on. I believe that I can reach this level in most languages I am working on in a year and thus I still will be well within my goal of ten languages by the time I am forty. My progression through languages has also changed based on my needs for my intended profession. The order is thus:
Currently I am sitting in the library listening to France Bleu Isere out of Lyon and they are currently playing a French version of the Frank Sinatra hit "My Way." It actually sounds very nice in French, although lacks a certain swagger that Frank had when singing this. In listening to the radio I have noticed that I am understanding quite a bit of the words, although they are not necessarily completely making sense in my brain (natural listening) and the pace is still a little fast for me. I have to research some exercise to improve my listening to a more natural level. A large part of this I think needs to be approached by simple immersion (i.e. listening to French radio, watching French TV and movies, etc.). I find that the most annoying and challenging thing about immersion for me is that the only way I can access French radio when driving, which admittedly is how I spend most of my waking hours, is through my Palm Pre which has horrible battery life, especially when using streaming apps. I suppose that my solution to this will have to be podcasts. In keeping with the immersion concept, I have changed much of my computer, internet and GPS to French in recent weeks. Truthfully, I don't even notice that most of them are in French, which I take as being a good thing.
I have been working my way through Assimil and Michel Thomas during my studies and have been keeping a pretty steady pace throughout the last month and a half or so. I only recently started the MT and only do one track a day, so I am only at about lesson eleven or twelve and ultimately the amount of material covered is relatively small. For the most part, however, I am using MT as a reinforcement so I am okay with the slow pace I am taking on it. At my current rate it will take me about three months to get through the course and then I will move on to the vocabulary booster and then the advanced course. In Assimil I am currently on about lesson 33, so nearly one-third of the way through the Passive Wave. I find that I am learning quite a bit from the Passive Wave without necessarily doing a whole lot. The book recommends spending between twenty and thirty minutes per lesson in the Passive Wave, but I find that I am under this number daily (maybe 15 minutes or so per lesson). The program has been helping my listening and in general I have noticed that I am gaining between 2 and 5 new words per lesson at this point. This may not seem like a whole lot, but percentage wise 5 words over the course of about a one and a half minute segment is rather significant. There are also other words in the course of the lessons that I do not know and do not necessarily pick up through just the Passive Wave, but I am sure that I will pick these up during the course of the Active Wave. More importantly than the vocabulary, arguably, is that I pick up new grammatical rules, structures and some colloquialisms as I am going through these lessons and am finding myself retaining some of the work on tenses that they present during the course of my listening and reading.
I do not necessarily have a great measure of how well I can speak the language at this point, although I seem to have an easier time staying in French when talking with my friend and I generally have a certain level of comfort in my conversation that I did not necessarily have a couple of months ago. I think I mentioned earlier that I have changed my learning plan for my languages. I have progressed to a more realistic plan of spending all of my time with one language until I have learned it to a level that I consider fluent, which I will describe eventually to the public, and then move on. I believe that I can reach this level in most languages I am working on in a year and thus I still will be well within my goal of ten languages by the time I am forty. My progression through languages has also changed based on my needs for my intended profession. The order is thus:
- French
- German
- Italian
- Spanish
- Russian
- Czech
- Swedish
- Portuguese
- Arabic
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)