A wonderful journal

Folks, Callie's journal was reflective of a great shift for her this week. She practiced very thoughtfully and carefully, since she couldn't sing too much due to a sore throat. The progress she made on her piece (her very first one in French) was demonstrable, and I thought it would be useful to share with all of you her journal for the week. This might help all of you re-evaluate how you use your practice time. Thanks, Callie, for allowing me to share it. And brava on your wonderful work!

I think the most interesting part of my warm up in the video was the ‘Ha ah le loo oo oo ooo ooo oo oo jah’ exercise. Hearing the difference between when my voice was flipping up to the higher oo’s versus when I was thinking more legato. The sound was just all together bigger, and it surprised me how differently it sounded, because at first the higher oo’s were actually softer and less full.

I’ve noticed in my practice that the sections of the music I have the most difficulty with are the sections that have continuous eighth notes. I’ve been working on my rhythm with them, because for some reason I always want to hold some out longer than others. Normally the third one, I try to hold out longer. It’s also at those places that I accidentally slow down during practice, because I am trying to fit in the words where they should be, and getting used to tying certain words together as they should be.

I finally found some videos on Mai on YouTube by typing in Hahn, and I think it’s interesting because I was working on text this week, and it sounds to me as if this girl is singing it incorrectly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tljIZBmUMU It sounds like a lot of her vowels are different than what I’ve been learning

I worked slowly at first just listening to the recording of how to pronounce the words, and going over them in my head. I then spoke through the text, and then spoke through it on rhythm. and then sang through it slowly at first. The first page came easiest, and the text got harder for me on the second page, I had to slow down even more until I could pick up the speed and keep it even. I also realized while doing this, that the reason I was having difficulty with the rhythm in measures 9 and 10 was probably because I knew something was wrong. I was not singing the Bb to Db correctly and so my intervals were off until I heard Ksusha double it in the piano.

Another part that has been more difficult for me is on the last page ‘y trouve parmi ses douleurs’. I can clap and count the rhythm fine, but for some reason when I am singing it I have been wanting to hold out the Db on ‘parmi’ instead of the Bb on ‘ses’ which is the actual dotted eighth note that should be being held out, and then that throws off my ability to get the words right. So I worked on correcting that, because every time it happened out of habit, or if I wasn’t paying attention to it, I would sit down and sing through it correctly a few times.