When altos collapse.
10:08 p.m.
Drugs are good. Extra-strength acetaminophen made it possible for me to go to school this morning and teach a lesson to the girlfriend of my baritone drama major. She’s visiting him for a few weeks and he had spoken so highly of me (I just love this kid) that she wanted to meet with me. So I gave her an hour of my time (for which I will be remunerated, I was promised) and we had great success.
This girl has it all: she’s beautiful, has a very pretty voice, great stage presence, and must be really good in music theatre. She was concerned that she was losing her soprano register because she spends so much time “belting”. For those you who do not know, this means singing high in her chest voice. As you know from my previous posts on this subject, I do not approve of singing high in your chest voice as it puts an unnecessary strain on the voice.
So the first thing we did was smooth her transition from middle to head voice, and then we worked on finding a technique that will allow her to beef up her voix mixte so she doesn’t need to resort to belting. I think she really learned a few things and I hope she is able to incorporate them into what she already does. I was most insistent she learn how to keep her soft palate up as much as possible so as to increase the size of her pharynx. I just love that word. It sounds so professional.
After that I sat through a most interesting studio class. A violinist played a piece of unaccompanied Bach rather nicely, and then she was followed by all the singing students of my colleague. One of them fainted on stage. That was rather dramatic. One minute she was singing a Brahms song, and the next she was falling down in a heap. According to another girl, she tends to not eat when she’s nervous, which could account for low blood sugar etc. Anyway, there were six girls singing, all from the same teacher, and I was struck by how little technique any of them have. The best one, to be totally honest, is a pianist who is taking voice as a second instrument. All the rest were totally dullsville, well, that is until the alto collapsed on the stage.
Following this, Ed and I adjourned to the Captain for phò and sat and chatted about this, that and the other for a while. I was getting more and more sleepy, so after I got home I just went to bed for a few hours.
I would really have preferred to stay in this evening, but Hubby wanted to go see the new 007 movie, so I made an account with Cineplex and bought tickets online, only to have my browser crash as I was about to print them. I couldn’t return to the page for printing and we were getting a little panicky, so I phoned the cinema and the girl who answered told me I need only show my credit card to the guy at the cash, and all would be well. And it was.
The movie was loud and sensational, and was a series of chase scenes, one after another. It didn’t help with my headache. So now that I have dutifully updated my diary, I can go to bed.
<~~~ * ~~~>
