Overall, my teacher was pleased with the exercises I had prepared. We identified a few more things that I need to work on. After 15 years in Zamir I have become used to putting a "hairpin" on every note and I have got to stop doing that, developing a more even legato line. My breath support starts to taper at the end of notes and phrases, instead of staying strong. I also need to bring uniformity to my vowels, and make all of them a little brighter. I was aware of my trying to "clamp down" on my sound, which I think is the result of years of trying to figure out by myself how to "blend" with my choral section.
I was a lot less nervous than last week, and had much better pitch control. Yay. And I have already started showing improvement on my tendency to lift my chin and sternum. And as long as I'm blaming JJ for the negative aspects of my conditioning, I should give him credit: I did very well on the Italian pronunciation, the placement of the diphthongs, and the deferring of the consonants until the end of each note.
General negatives: I was disappointed with how tight my breathing felt tonight. My fault; I rushed from the JCDS curriculum night and I was physically full of stress. And I'm still out of vocal shape after not singing much over the summer.
But overall I'm already noticing some improvement, and an awareness of where my problems are. We're going to continue working through the exercise book, and in a few weeks we'll also start adding some Italian songs. I'm happy to spend the time fixing the technical aspects of my singing with exercises; this isn't a race to get me in front of an audience.
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