Tuesday, again.

I have two students on Tuesday who are very similar in many ways. They’re both drama students in the same year with very little to no musical background, they both failed rudiments last spring, they’re both cute and blonde (one is blonder and one is cuter), they are both taking singing with me as an elective for the second year, and they’re both next to impossible to teach. They have winning personalities and really enjoy their lessons. But to be honest, I don’t really know how much either of them has learned.

The blonder one loves singing so much that she wants to pay me for extra lessons next term, so that she’ll get her allotted 45 minutes a week through the university and then another hour on another day. This would be fine and dandy with me (and I’m not saying no to the extra income), but she doesn’t even do the minimum required with the one lesson a week. We worked very hard her last lesson on getting her throat open and using her mixed voice instead of chest voice (this seems to be a recurring theme, doesn’t it?) to sing a particular Broadway song (Big $pender). Today she admitted that she hadn’t practised at all last week. Uh, excuse me, but you’re not going to get better if you don’t practise. She can’t do what I ask and has no ability to analyze and catalogue sensations to remember them. Also, she is rarely in tune. In other words, she is not a singer and should not even be considering it as a career (musical theatre, to be exact). However, I am too nice to tell her this, and I like her money.

The cuter one has a very pretty voice and can sing in tune if she puts her mind to it. I think she is the smarter of the two, but I won’t quantify that. She can’t seem to take her lessons seriously. It’s like pulling teeth to get her to stand still and stop fidgeting. I don’t think she practises either between lessons. In fact, neither she nor the blonder one have really improved at all since they started studying with me last year. I would like to give them more classical repertoire to work on (the blonder one did a French mélodie last spring and has asked for another), but they don’t seem to be interested in learning classical technique.

The funny thing is that I don’t dread their lessons as I do my Thursday soprano. These girls just sort of slide in and out of my memory while the other is the bane of my teaching existence. Funny that. Oh well.

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