Halfway Through!

I am about halfway through my Kickstarter campaign at this point and I have reached 34% of my goal!  This is great news!  The unfortunate news is that I seem to have stagnated in my fund raising.  For this reason, I am starting my blog post this month with a plea to my readership; please consider helping me reach my goal.  If everyone can simply pledge $10 I will easily make my goal in time.  That is the price of only 2 lattes!  So, please help me attain my goal!

Click here to jump to my Kickstarter page!

In other news, I have a benefit event for the Cadenza Workshop that I am singing at the Saturday in Buffalo, NY.  On this program I am singing one aria and one duet with the program director, which is slightly intimidating.  I have prepared well, but I am going through some vocal difficulties which may be due to allergies.  Regardless I will do my best and give it my all.

A couple of weeks after this event, I have a recital on June 29 back home in Rochester.  This was originally going to be a fund raiser, but due to some conflicts that is no longer the case; the recital will function as a thank you to all those who have donated to my Kickstarter, which ends the night prior to the recital.  CD's will be available of this recital and can be reserved by donating $25 to the Kickstarter campaign.

Immediately following the holiday in July, I will begin my two programs for this summer.  I am a little overwhelmed with the amount of music I have had to learn, but I feel like I am in a good place and will be well prepared by the time I get to my first program on July 7.

Spanish is coming along slowly; I am attempting to get more consistent about working on the language including listening to a Spanish Pandora station.  I am not sure how much this actively helps me, but it does reinforce the things I do know when I am consciously paying attention to them.  I have noticed that I am beginning to understand more spoken and written word in Spanish, and I give LingQ all the credit for enabling that to happen.  For such a simple, and somewhat controversial system, it really does produce measurable results in language learning in a relatively short amount of time.  I suggest everyone check it out!

Thank you to all of you who have donated thus far to my Kickstarter campaign!  Your support is much appreciated.  Again I beg everyone else to please pledge to enable me to get my singing career off the ground, $10 from everyone will make my goal achievable.

It's working!

Let's start with the more interesting and important information.  This summer I am participating in two programs.  One is in Loch Sheldrake, NY singing in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and the other is in Buffalo, NY singing scenes from Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia.  Both of these programs are a blessing to me.  After an overall disappointing audition season, these were my last two chances to obtain gigs for the summer.  The program in Buffalo, which is called Cadenza Workshop, was discovered almost by accident through a show I was doing with Rochester Lyric Opera.  The other program, Opera Advantage, is run by Nico and Carol Castel, whom I have worked with before when I was in Spoleto, Italy.  There are points both interesting, amusing, and a little scary with all of this happening so quickly and unexpectedly.  First, both of these operas that I am going to be working on are based on plays by Beaumarchais, although I am performing them out of order.  Barbiere should be before Le Nozze, but I suppose I get to see the characters as "mature" people prior to their youth.  The scary thing about these is that I have about a month to learn and memorize both of them.  Additionally, I need to raise some money to cover expenses for these programs.  I am currently trying to plan a benefit recital to accomplish this goal and will provide more information as it comes along.

Along the same line as the preceding paragraph, I had my best audition to date yesterday.  I auditioned for Syracuse Opera yesterday and changed my daily routine for audition days quite a bit.  The results were much better than I anticipated.  I used to find myself with little to do, so I would arrive quite early (1-2 hours to be exact) and wait around for my time to come.  Yesterday, I instead chose to hang out at my cousin's house until about 2 hours before my audition.  I then took the 40 minute subway to my audition place, grabbed a quick lunch at Subway (probably wasn't good practice to have the onions, but I love them so...), used the practice room I reserved (brilliant idea!) to warm up, and walked next door to my audition where I only had to wait for about 20 minutes.  My audition began as they all do, the awkward entrance and introduction of the first piece, which was Alfredo's aria from La Traviata.  After I sang this fairly well the two auditors conversed a little and actually asked me to sing a second piece!  This may not seem like a big deal, but I haven't been asked for a second piece since I switched to tenor, so this was quite momentous to me.  They asked for Sam's aria from Susannah and I sang that pretty well also.  Some major things that I noticed in this audition apart from the second selection being requested were this:  My voice and technique have finally become strong enough and stable enough that I no longer crack or shank high notes, despite nerves.  I still have an involuntary finger or leg twitch that accompanies high notes, but the notes themselves are secure.  Also, I am able to do more of what I want through intent from both a technical and musical perspective, and I feel I am beginning to make music instead of simply singing words and pitches.  My physicality may still be lacking, but I like to think that I am making up for this with how I am treating the text.  I don't prescribe to the gesture for every line business anyways.  I'm more of a fan of the one or two meaningful gestures during the course of a piece idea.  Overall, regardless of the results, this was a successful audition.

Spanish...  There is something about this language that I just do not have the motivation to learn it consistently.  My LingQ account has lapsed again due to nonpayment, but that doesn't really hurt my feelings, especially with all I have to learn in the next month.  On the plus side, during my drive to NYC Sunday and the drive home last night, I listened to Spanish radio as long as I could pick up the station and I managed to find a singer whom I like, Hector Acosta "El Torito."  I am currently listening to an album of his on Spotify, actually.  I also still listen to Catholic radio on my phone at work in Spanish and speak what I can with my friends who speak.  So I am still improving, it is just a very slow pace.  Many people want me to perfect my Spanish because of the practicality of it in today's world in the U.S.  Perhaps that is why I don't really care that much about learning it.  In terms of my own career, there is very little music that I sing that requires Spanish.  I'd rather spend my time beefing up my Italian, German, or French.  I would rather learn Russian and I will be come 2014.  Hopefully come August I will be able to get back into LingQ for Spanish and make a push to get myself to a somewhat respectable level of Spanish before the year is out.  I learned French in 8 months; given my current level of Spanish, I should be able to get to a similar level in 4 months.

Forward motion

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post.  I have not been necessarily too busy to write, but I have had other things going on that took importance over writing last month.  Additionally, on the language study side of the blog I ran into a rather large roadblock that took most of the last two months away from me.  More on that later, because I want to begin with the more exciting things that have been going on vocally in my life.

It always amuses me when things from two different areas of life come together.  This has been the case over the last few years of me re-training my voice.  I wen to a Christian college and a common expression on campus was "God's will, God's time."  I've always liked the phrase as it give some perspective to the fact that our plans for our life are ultimately not our own, but God's.  This has taught me much about patience in the last decade or so since I came back to my Christian faith.  Anyway, early on when I began to study with JRL he said to me that when my coordination was there, the high notes would come "very fast."  In my pride, I had assumed that since I had already been studying singing for ten years, this "very fast" meant only a couple of years at most.  As the two year marked went by, I became slightly discouraged, but remembered my college days and gave up my own timeline for that of God's.  Now, as I near in on almost four years of study with Ron, I have finally had the experience he was talking about.  In the last two months I have gone from struggling with notes just above the staff to singing comfortably (in a practice room) up to at least E-flat above high C on a daily basis, even when sick!

The key to vocal development, which so many of my peers seem to miss out on, is that it takes time and patience.  I have family members and friends who consistently inform me that I need to start a career in case this singing thing doesn't work out.  I've never given this any real thought or merit because I have known for a long time now that I am a singer and my career will be in singing.  I am not in a rush to make this career happen, because I know it will happen when I am ready for it to happen.  I have already seen this beginning this year.  A couple of weeks ago I made my professional debut with a local company, and I am of the belief that work leads to more work.  In addition, I have two auditions coming up in a few weeks which I am very optimistic about because of this new found security I have in my voice.  If nothing else, I am sure that I will be able to at least learn and sing through one or two roles this summer with the Kashu-do studio.  I am moving forward and already beginning to look forward to next season's auditions.

Now, the language side of things.  It occurs to me that Spanish is a large stumbling block for me.  It's not that the language is terribly difficult or anything like that.  It is just a demoralizing language for me because of my time spent with it in high school.  I did not have the money available at the beginning of this year to go buy the materials I usually use for language learning.  So, due to this and the fact that I have a pretty solid foundation in Spanish, I have decided to only use LingQ for my Spanish learning.  It has been a very slow process, but I am beginning now to really focus more.  I picked up French in about eight months and I am hoping to be able to do something similar with Spanish.  I would like to get my known words level in Spanish higher than in French, as this was not something I accomplished with German.  We shall see what happens.

Nearing the end of the year of German!

As I move through the midway point of December, I have successfully increased my intensity with my German studies.  I am up over 3300 words known at this point, and may have a shot at 4000 by the end of the month if I can keep up the pace.  I find German flowing through my brain a little bit easier and I am thinking about trying to get to one of the last meetups for the German group here in town to test my level.  

My singing has had ups and downs this month.  I sang for a number of events at church that ranged from going really well to me struggling with similar issues that I did in my auditions.  I am currently succumbing to the cold that generally marks the end of the holiday season and, with the exception of a family funeral I am singing tomorrow, have placed myself on vocal rest so that I can make it through the Christmas mass schedule next week.  My final blog post of the year will be a review of the last year and a preview to the coming year's plans.  Have a blessed Christmas!

Challenges and Excitements

It begins this week.  On Friday, I have my first YAP audition of the year.  This audition is for Ohio Light Opera.  I am both anxious and excited about this audition.  Anxious because of my last audition experience and because I have to have a monologue prepared, which is a new thing for me.  Excited because I feel like I have a lot to offer and that this year will be the year my career starts.  It has been a challenging last couple of weeks and I have realized some things that I didn't think were going to be such a problem when I started the audition process this year.

I have been denied auditions to a number of programs.  To date I have been denied auditions for 56% of the applications I have submitted, with 31% of programs having not yet responded one way or the other.  While I cannot say for certain what the reason is behind this, I believe it is due to a lack of experience.  When I was younger I was told that there were two ways to start a career in this field:

1.)  Go to grad school and make connections through the school's teachers.
2.)  Go straight into YAP's out of undergrad and make your own connections.

In that I was tired of schooling after undergrad I choose to take route 2.  The problem though, is that I also went through a technical change which led to a reclassification of my voice and three years without any stage credits.  So now, I am going to have to travel a very narrow path this year it seems, which may end up including a pay-to-sing opportunity, rather than a true YAP.  Ultimately I have faith in my process and in divine providence that I will be successful in attaining my goals.

My German is still progressing slowly but surely.  I have adopted a more intensive reading approach based on Dr. Arguelles' method of focusing on texts in which the percentage of unknown words is kept low so that you can focus on them and really ingrain them in your brain faster.  There is obvious upside and downside to this.  The upside was already mentioned; it is easier to get words to stick in your memory because you only need to focus on maybe five words instead of 20 or 30.  The downside is that it slows down the process considerably.  At this point my goal is to add approximately 10 new words to my known words total.  This may seem trivial but over the course of a month, that ends up being about 2,000 words if I am consistent with my five day work plan.  This will put me right about the same amount of known words as I have in French, which gives me a pretty good handle on the language.  I was hoping to be able to do more with German than I did with French since I had an extra four months, but with my wedding and auditions this year it just wasn't possible to spread myself out anymore.

After the wedding...

The past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind.  On the eighth of October I got married and thusly have not had much time to devote to anything else.  I just got back into practicing both vocally and linguistically this week.  On the vocal side of things I did make a couple of recordings prior to the wedding and posted them to youtube for the sake of my upcoming auditions for various YAPs (young artist programs).

I never did get around to putting subtitles on the second clip.  Hopefully I will do that soon.  In coming back to practicing after about two weeks I am encountering some strange veil over my voice whilst singing.  I am not sure if this is sign of an oncoming illness, or just some minor entropy from not singing in a while.  Interestingly, I did not lose any of my range, the quality is just different and my endurance seems to have backtracked a bit.

Linguistically I have had a pleasant experience coming back after two weeks.  I have found that a number of things have solidified themselves and I am working around the language more easily than I did prior to the wedding.  At this point, if I work every day I can finish Assimil on January 2, 2013.  I don't know if I will work the two extra days, or stick to my plan of moving on to Spanish on January 1.  I am quite excited with how my German is progressing, even if I am not at the level I was hoping to be by this point of the year.

I'm getting married in a week! Also, my first tenor audition!

I'm getting married in a week.  Therefore I have done very little with German over the past couple of weeks.  I still continue to speak when I get together with Ernest, however I have not studied anything actively over the last two weeks.  I even let my LingQ account lapse until after the wedding so I can save as much money as possible.  I plan to get back on track after the wedding with German and make a big final push over the last couple of months.

About this time of year I let the cat out of the bag regarding the language I am going to next pursue.  I am running into a similar problem that I ran into toward the end of last year with French.  I plan to move on to my next language, but I feel drawn to sticking with German and really solidifying everything and continue working on German until I reach fluency.  On the other hand, I like moving on to something new so that I don't get bored.  It appears that my German will be at a solid B1 level by the end of the year, maybe B2 if I work effectively.  Truthfully that's sufficient for what I need currently, and is a high enough level where I can move on and not really risk losing what I have done.  That being said, my next planned language of study for next year is:  Spanish!

I studied Spanish in high school for three years and continued to speak Spanish for a while in college with some friends.  However, I have not actively spoken or studied Spanish in about eight years.  Also, since I have already worked in French and Italian I have a solid base in the language.  Therefore I am not a beginner, however I am still going to start from the beginning of my process and see what I can do.  It has been predicted by Ernest and other polyglots I know that Spanish will quickly become my best language because of the background I already have, and because of the easy exposure to Spanish in American culture.  I tend to agree and would love to be able to make it to fluency in the next year, beginning in January.  My goal at the beginning is always to attain fluency in a year, then I modify as the year progresses.  Next month I will give my review of my German year and assess how I have progressed.

I sang my first audition as a tenor on Saturday and it was a bit of a train wreck.  Just about everything that could have gone wrong during my audition did.  It started with flipping verses for about eight measures and proceeded to forgetting words, blanking out completely, and shanking high notes.  Fortunately this was a small local company which shouldn't have any effect on me elsewhere.  On the plus side, I did go into the audition very comfortable and confident, which I did not anticipate.  I was using this audition as a sort of practice experience to prepare myself for the more important auditions coming up in the next couple of months.  I need to go back and take a look at my repertoire to make sure I have it all memorized properly and securely so that my nerves don't steal my words again.  The audition experience provided me with the setup for a night of beating myself up, however sleeping does wonders for the soul and the mind and I have been much better since waking.  I have to take a week off from serious practice time to prepare and experience my wedding, and then I will be back in the swing of preparation again when I return next week.

Persistance means progress

I'm a week late in writing this because I have been busy preparing for auditions and my wedding.  I currently am dealing with being frustrated with my singing, which is always a great place to be in a month before auditions.  I realized however after comparing clips from practice sessions a month ago to more current sessions that I have indeed made considerable progress in the last month.  In discussing this with JRL when I last saw him, he made mention that I probably get frustrated because I get to a plateau of sorts after about a month of work on my own.  Upon my comparison I can say that this is unequivocally the case.  It is not that I cease to improve, but that the work becomes more difficult as I reach a higher level in my singing.  I feel well-prepared going into this audition season and am very excited about the prospect of finally get out and singing again!

I have been doing well with my German as of late as well.  I have progressed well into the active wave of Assimil and am making better progress in LingQ as time goes on.  I still have a lot of work to do to reach my goal in LingQ of knowing at least 7,000 words by the end of December, but if I can continue on the trajectory I am currently on, I think I will make it.  I have found a challenge in the active wave of Assimil that I also ran into with French.  As the lessons progress I seem to get more and more things incorrect.  I figure that this is not a big deal, since for me the more important thing is the input and output, not the exactness of my answers.  I'm learning even in making corrections to what I originally write.  I see now the value some people find in going back and doing the active wave multiple times, although I would worry that at some point it becomes a thoughtless exercise rather than an active process.  Perhaps with ample time in between repetitions this can be avoided.

The Busy Season is Arriving

Now that the tumult of my Schicchi preparation has died down I am back to the normal grind.  I am now looking towards audition season, my first as a tenor.  Currently my first audition looks as though it is going to be in late October.  I am both excited and nervous about this first year of auditions.  I do not feel that I am completely ready vocally to be putting myself out there yet, but I am trusting in the guidance of JRL.  He thinks I am ready, and experience tells me that outside ears know my actual level better than I do.  I still have approximately two months until my first audition with which I hope to really solidify some pesky spots both in my voice and in my repertoire.  For those with inquiring minds, my planned audition repertoire this year is as follows:

De' miei bollenti spiriti from La Traviata by Verdi

Firenze com'é un albero fiorito from Gianni Schicchi by Puccini

Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön from Die Zauberflöte by Mozart

Ah! fuyez, douce image from Manon by Massenett

It's about the way people is made from Susannah by Floyd

The next two months entail a lot of work for me, specifically with Rinuccio and Des Grieux.  I really need to make sure that I have all of the Bb4's in those two pieces solid.  In addition to musical preparations, I am also about to begin working with an acting coach to help build my, admittedly undertrained acting skills.  I am hoping that these things will aid me in getting into a program my first year out and give me some tangible validation that I can bring back for all of my long time doubters in my home area.

My German studies have been a little hit or miss as of late.  Erring mostly on the side of miss.  I have done a better job of picking up the work this week and have begun to do more listening and attempting to speak and write a little bit more in German.  This week I joined a meetup group for German in Rochester.  I am going to go to my first meetup this Sunday with the goal of speaking in German the entire time I am there.

In other news I am getting married in the beginning of October which ultimately means my langauge studies will probably take another hit then.  Hopefully, I can find away to keep plugging away and achieve my goal of having a larger vocabulary in German than I do in French.  At this point my French vocabulary is about 56% larger than my German vocabulary.

The First Test

I am ill today due to allergies and figure I should try to write this while I have a spare minute. I have been prepring my first tenor role for the past few weeks and I must say that I have been enjoying the process. I am singing Rinuccio from Gianni Schicchi in August. This is my first real test of how my progress as a tenor is coming along. I feel confident about my prospects based on my work thus far. I have already learned the role and am now trying to memorize it. I don't necessarily need to memorize it for this project, but it's a good habit to get into. Unfortunately I am not able to practice today because of the post-nasal drip onto my vocal folds in the last twenty-four hours. Hopefully I will be able to get back into it tomorrow.


German is progressing decently. I am now working my way through Assimil which is a much more subconscious process than Michel Thomas was. With Assimil, it is truly a case of trusting the process and being patient. I do find that listening is getting easier as I progress through Assimil, and I look forward to continuing to advance in the coming weeks and months.

Strength is coming!

There's not a whole lot to report on the language front this time around.  I am still plugging away and making progress daily.  There have not been any new big breakthroughs.  The only noteworthy thing is that I will be finish MT before my next post, which means I will then go back to Assimil.

My vocal studies are where the more interesting things have been happening lately.  A couple of weeks ago at church I was singing at the 8:30 mass and went for a G4 which I can normally hit in a rough way that early in the morning.  This time around, however everything happened the way it was supposed to:  the F turned on the [o] vowel and then the [a] vowel turned ideally on the G producing a nice, easy, free flowing pitch.  I took this accomplishment to mean that I have begun to build significant strength through my passaggio so that these acoustical things can happen correctly and automatically.  The second thing happened to me this past evening at a rehearsal for an ecumenical choir concert that I am participating in.  We had just finished rehearsing a men's choir piece which took the tenors up to an Ab4.  I sang this easily the few times we went through it without giving it much thought.  As we were going back to join up with the rest of the choir one of the other tenors made a remark to me that I was "one of those high tenors that sings that Pavarotti high C."  I laughed and answered that I was working on it.  It amused me because a year ago at this concert I was told be one of these singers that I was a "2nd tenor" and now after a year of work on my part I am being told that I am a "high tenor."  Ultimately these people are amateur singers and their thoughts on my vocal classification have little merit in my life.  It is nice however to see that my work is paying dividends.

I have come to realize over the course of my vocal studies that things happen at a slower pace for me in this medium than they did when I was a saxophonist.  Luckily I have learned to be patient and trust that the process will get me to my end goal eventually.  When I started down this path as a singer I did not realize how hard I was going to have to work to attain my dreams.  Everything else I had ever done in music came easily.  Now, though I have broken through so man apparent glass ceilings that I have very little that can stand in my way.  I had a goal set in front of me by JRL at my last lesson that by this time next year I need to have a workable C5 so I can work on Faust and Rodolfo.  I take these challenges very seriously and am closing in now an my B4, just a half step away from the famed "Pavarotti high C."  If my voice continues along the path it is currently on I anticipate not only reaching the goal of a workable high C, but hope to achieve it earlier than the date set forward by my teacher.

This fall I am going to be auditioning for a few summer programs and possibly one or two programs for the following year.  The following fall my sights are set on the MONCA competition.  This especially is a lofty goal, but I am confident that my work ethic and faith will see me through.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back from the abyss

I had a rough week last week in German.  I was very busy at work and very tired when I wasn't busy, so I was not able to do much.  Life is a little bit easier this week though and I have got back into my routine, thankfully.  The advantage with French was that I had a base in the language prior to my intensive work.  While I am not progress at the same rate in German, I do still have somewhat of a base in the language due to being a native English speaker.  There are a vast number of German words which change pronunciation from English very predictably, which makes learning those words vastly easier than a language that doesn't share common roots.

In general, it is said that the more languages you know the easier it is to learn more.  I see this more and more as I progress through languages.  Not only do your methods of learning become more efficient, but the shared vocabulary among the world's languages provides a wonderful base to springboard off of.

I just barely crossed over the 1,000 word mark on LingQ and hope to add about 500 words to that total this week.  The difficult thing about LingQ at this point in my learning is that there are so many words I don't know that I get easily frustrated at how long it takes to get through one story, so I end up only doing one story a day, which does not help my word count.

In other news, I am finally going to get down for a lesson on the 17th of this month.  It has been a long while since my last lesson and I am anxious to see how my progress measures up.  I find myself often frustrated that I am not progressing at a faster pace, but constantly have to remind myself that quality takes time and that if I trust the process it will work for me.  There have been great steps forward in the last few weeks with certain "problem" arias falling into place and feeling comfortable as well as new arias beginning to show signs of growth as well.  Hopefully this will continue into my lesson and I can continue to grow towards being YAP audition ready in the fall, which is my goal.

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.

A Response

Today, I read a blog post by my teacher, JRL, which dealt with faith.  I found this post to be very poignant, and to a certain extent I felt like it was directed towards me.  With out going to much into the specifics of the situation, my last lesson with Ron was a challenging one for me, and I sense for him as well.  I came out of the lesson questioning whether I had the ability to make this all consuming dream of mine a reality.  Ultimately, my faith in myself got the better of me and a reaffirmed myself to my work ethic and the knowledge that my own perseverance has won out in the past and will ultimately win out again.  It seems to me that things always must become more difficult before they get easier.  Such is the case currently as I am struggling mightily with my voice.  

Things I thought I had finally overcome  have come back and new struggles have accompanied them.  This is particularly disconcerting as I am singing in a recital in less then ten days, and  I feel that I will not be as well prepared technically as I felt I was going to be originally.  The difficult aspect of this situation is that I am presented with two choices:  1.)  Allow myself to go back to what I was doing prior to my lesson so that I can get through the recital, or 2.)  Work as hard as possible with these "new" concepts that I have been struggling with and hope for the best when I get to the recital.  Ultimately the choice is an easy one to make.  Option number one serves a solely selfish purpose and does not benefit me in the least, or my audience.  Option number two, while considerably more difficult at the moment will be more subservient to my final goal and a step in the right direction, even if my current level is mediocre.  In general, one must always move with forward progress, even if it feels backwards at the time.  

In his post, Ron talks about the time it takes for a singer to develop their instrument.  In fact, this is a common theme in Ron's writing which more singers need to hear.  The truth of my situation is that I am in no rush to get out and perform, outside of the fact that I really dislike my day job.  My main goal is to become a complete singer who can be the best at his art.  At 27 I am still on the  young side of this business, but I am beginning to feel some pressure as young artist program age limits are beginning to creep nearer.  However, if I develop my instrument completely, I can still forge a career without the help of these stepping stones.  

The Kashu-do mantra that heads Ron's blog is the perfect statement about my life and my path in music throughout my musical life.  I believe wholeheartedly that I will make it as a singer, and even though I have faced many tribulations in this field already my faith, patience and hard work have always paid dividends in the long run and will continue to do so into the future.

Mid October

I am nearing the end of my intensive time with French and can say that I am very happy with where I am.  I am understanding the vast majority of what I read now and will try and do a reading test from a newspaper before the year is over.  My listening is still a bit behind everything else, especially when listening to the radio, however I have begun to work intensively on my reading and listening abilities so hopefully they will both come up in level before the end of the year.

To increase my levels in those two areas I have begun to use LingQ almost exclusively. I even upgraded from the free version so that I could use the program more effectively.  I have to admit that I find it to be very helpful.  I love the concept of extensive/intensive listening and reading, but it is very difficult to read when having to flip back and forth from a book to a dictionary.  LingQ eliminates this by having a pop-up dictionary always present.  I have talked about LingQ before so I do not want to spend much time here on it except to tell you all to try it out.  As much as I liked the idea of using it for free, I do not feel that one gets the full benefit of the program until you upgrade to a pay version (and come on, it is only ten dollars a month!).

I am currently on the train on the way home from NYC, where I had a lesson with JRL.  Today's lesson was a very frustrating one for both of us I am sure.  Lessons like the one I had today are huge tests of courage and perseverance.  I have gone through a range of emotions in the six and a half hours since my lesson and have landed on a huge desire to get into a practice room and work.  It may be perseverance, or it may be ego, however I cannot have another lesson go by like this one did.  So I will spend the next month fixing my issues and come back better than I was today.

The largest frustration to me is that I spent the last two months working very hard and came in today feeling pretty good about myself.  Unfortunately during those two months I seemed to have regressed on a certain bad habit that I honestly was not paying as much attention to in the time between lessons as I was other technical things.  It would appear that I overdid to the point of misunderstanding a certain idea I was given last time and now I must go back and fix those issues which were not plaguing me at my lesson but came back with a vengeance today.  If this teaches one anything, it should be that we must always be vigilant!  Complacency can only lead to disaster.

End of September/Beginning of October

It has been a bit since I last wrote here.  Some good things have happened on both the language and singing fronts, as well as some discouraging things.  In my language work I have begun reading Les Fables de la Fontaine which are mostly on my level.  I find that the hard thing with reading is that though I know the words I'm reading, I often miss the actual context of the story.  I figure that this is similar to listening comprehension and the practice will ultimately make things clearer as well as fill in the holes in my vocabulary.  I have unfortunately been rather lax in my other forms of study.  I have recently picked back up on Michel Thomas, but as of yet have not gotten back into my Assimil work in about two weeks.  I have every intention of working on it again tonight though!

In other news, I feel that I am to the point now where I can actually begin to call myself a tenor.  For the last month and a half or so I have been working on the Duke's arias from Rigoletto by Verdi.  These arias have stretched me and almost forced my voice to work in a different way than it has in the past.  In the last couple of days my Bb4 has really come into its own and the B4 is not far behind.  I am looking forward to the few weeks, during which time I am hoping to have a few lessons, some coachings and even participate in a recital (my first as a tenor)!

The only discouraging part of my singing life currently has been this week.  My voice has been feeling different this week and certain things that were relatively secure before are not this week, while other things that were not present before are now starting to present themselves.  I assume that this is just some of the growing pains in the process and am not terribly worried by them though.  I'm hoping to get back into being slightly more regular with my updates here, but with the holidays quickly approaching we'll see what the reality of that is.