More excitement

A few interesting things happened today. Both my students showed up on time for their lessons, which were very productive. In fact, I had a real breakthrough with my older student who can’t develop her voix mixte. I hadn’t seen her for two weeks and she told me that she’s been singing along to Christmas carols in the car in her chest voice, exactly what I had told her not to do, and loving it, and so I had her do the warmup exercises in any old register she wanted, and as I sat at the piano playing scales and arpeggios I had a revelation. I proceeded to tell her about a former student who thought he was a baritone but who had a really limited range that just couldn’t be stretched in either direction. After nine lessons I asked him to sing the Italian Baroque piece he had been working on in his falsetto, and from that point on proceeded to train him as a countertenor.

My present student’s case is the complete opposite. She has a well-developed chest voice and no mixed voice. She can sing incredibly low and still get a decent sound. As I sat at the piano stroking my chin with my fingers, it occurred to me that she is really a tenor, not a soprano or an alto at all. We shouldn’t be trying to get her to make a sound in a register which has atrophied, but instead we should be working to develop her strengths.

I presented this idea to her, and she was overjoyed. Mind you, this does not solve all her problems. She still has a lot of vocal issues to sort out, and the techniques I was trying to teach her earlier in the term still apply to singing in this other register. It just means that she will enjoy what she is doing more and I will be less frustrated with my inability to “fix” her.

After her lesson we were standing in the hallway outside my office, chatting, and I suddenly heard someone very loudly going “Shh! Shh!” I turned around just in time to see Dick Wad’s head disappear back into the classroom and hear titters and laughter coming from therein. How was I supposed to know Dick Wad was giving an exam? Would it not have been more adult and less rude of him to say, “Excuse me, would you please keep it down? I’m giving an exam.” than to stick his head out the door and shush me?

This bout of excitement was followed up by a trip to the luthier who is building Hubby’s new guitar. He’s all excited. It’s going to have seven strings instead of the usual six, and it’s made out of gorgeous wood. Very nice.

Now I am headed out to hear Miss Piano’s college choir perform their end-of-term concert. Later, dudes.

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