Last night: I spent another ~2.5 hours in the practice room. I went in with the intention of only doing 30 minutes, but next thing I knew it was past midnight by the time I left. Anyways, I spent a lot of time working on what we did in my lesson that day, trying to find release while working on the feeling of suspension. I got pretty frustrated about halfway through because I felt like I couldn't release into a fuller sound without my vibrato getting very beaty, but I tried really hard not to push with the breath and get impatient. I took a small break, and after listening to a recording from the MET with Kristine Opolais (whom I normally am not a huge fan of), something sympathetically released and I was able to sing
almost as freely as I had when I had auditioned for USC. It just took me 1.5 hours to get there.... What's also frustrating is that I feel like whenever I find this released singing, I don't know how or why it happened, so it feels like a lot of luck is involved, and that drives me crazy because I feel like I can't replicate it. But I guess the only thing I can do is try to recreate the circumstances in which that happened.
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Started out the day with sticky mucus.
- Lesson 2/7/17
- don't overfill with the breath; if anything, it helps if you feel only half full.
- "jaw recedes"
- listen to MET instagram Rusalka with Kristine Opalais; something about how open her sound is (even if it's a little breathy) helped me to open up
- watch tongue tip
- "nyam" get really chewy with it once you've figured things out
- really really fat tongue!
- "um yawning is a welcome change"
- "many" with yawn. (I actually loathe this exercise with a fiery passion.)
- "sob"
- watch that the pharynx above the mouth doesn't close up
- Be very very patient with the breath
- consistent breath flow
- After about an hour of warm up, I feel released; I just feel like my breath isn't as efficient (flow phonation) as it could be. Otherwise, I feel much more released than I did a couple days ago.
- leaning upper back against the wall helps
By the end of my practice session (~1 hr. 15 min) I felt like I had found release, but there was inefficient airflow, so it felt like I could only sing two measures at a time. I started experimenting with the suspension feelings before I had to leave.
I wonder if when you are feeling like the voice is free but you cannot identify exactly what happened, it is because when effort decreases there is a feeling of nothingness-not doing-that feels impossible to replicate. In those instances I often look for slight changes in sensation (particularly) and sound cues. For instance, there is a void where before there was a sense of something (not necessarily tension, but perhaps fullness). Often for me, the difference is not whether something feels tense and then not tense, but rather where and what kind of difference do I notice. The better I get at articulating that difference (gesturally or verbally) the easier it is for me to cue the right result.
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