On February 10 2012, I decided to enter the WVU Faculty Staff Talent Show and sing a couple of songs for a lark. I made the mistake of scheduling myself to teach a half day workshop and an hour long webinar that day - my voice was shattered by evening.
For the performance itself, I found myself facing a bank of bright lights and the audience was totally dark. This was NOT the way the room had been set up for rehearsal 2 days earlier. Everyone else's video introduction played - they had technical errors with mine. I should have stopped singing after one song (at least it would have been over with sooner).
We only had 10 contestants and I did not make it into the top 5. Only the top 3 got prize baskets. When the college student judges emailed me feedback 3 weeks later, I deleted the email without opening it and emptied the trash.
Instead of signing up for a singing/performance class with my buddies at Irish Week, I decided to stick with the Set Dance class instead. I will still join them for song circle in the evenings (maybe not EVERY evening) and sing one song if I get a turn. But that will not be a performance, rather a sharing in a community of singers as opposed to performing for an invisible audience and a table full of judges.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Breaking in a new Voice Teacher
At some point, I will talk about last year's adventures in voice lessons. Right now, I am really pleased with my voice teacher from this semester and want to rave about her. Emily is a senior voice student at West Virginia University and carries herself quite professionally. She had a survey for me to complete on the first day of class to gather info about me and gave me an information sheet that provided her contact details and policies. She is always on time for our lessons (unless the PRT makes her 5 minutes late which is rare). She provided typed up vocal exercises in addition to my song and allows me to digitally record our sessions. I might link to sound bites of the weirder stuff later on.
The song I am working on this semester is All Through the Night. I plan to ask one of my friends if she can help me learn a verse or two of it in Welsh (Cymraeg). I have the lyrics, even a phonetic transcription by someone else. I have the melody down cold now. I love to sing in Irish (Gaelige) and I took a 1 hour workshop in Scottish mouth music from Rhiannon Giddens last summer at Vocal Week. I'm now ready to go p-celtic in addition to my bits of q-celtic.
Some of the fun stuff we do doing our lessons is that I will walk around the room while I am doing a vocal exercise or singing my song. It appears that I need to be distracted from thinking too much about singing. I overanalyze or I get tense or both. She said that sometimes only my hands appear to get tense - that I would make lobster claw shapes with them.
In an early lesson, I would bob my head to different positions for the different notes. Remediation? I had to sing the exercise with my back and head against a wall so that I could feel my head trying to move. Goal? Sing without head bobbing like a robin.
Now, if I can just avoid catching a cold or bronchitis at this weekend's Irish ceili, I'll be set to finish up the semester! I even plan to take a few lessons over the summer to be ready for Augusta's Irish Week and Vocal Week. No lesson this week as Emily has her senior recital on our usual lesson day.
The song I am working on this semester is All Through the Night. I plan to ask one of my friends if she can help me learn a verse or two of it in Welsh (Cymraeg). I have the lyrics, even a phonetic transcription by someone else. I have the melody down cold now. I love to sing in Irish (Gaelige) and I took a 1 hour workshop in Scottish mouth music from Rhiannon Giddens last summer at Vocal Week. I'm now ready to go p-celtic in addition to my bits of q-celtic.
Some of the fun stuff we do doing our lessons is that I will walk around the room while I am doing a vocal exercise or singing my song. It appears that I need to be distracted from thinking too much about singing. I overanalyze or I get tense or both. She said that sometimes only my hands appear to get tense - that I would make lobster claw shapes with them.
In an early lesson, I would bob my head to different positions for the different notes. Remediation? I had to sing the exercise with my back and head against a wall so that I could feel my head trying to move. Goal? Sing without head bobbing like a robin.
Now, if I can just avoid catching a cold or bronchitis at this weekend's Irish ceili, I'll be set to finish up the semester! I even plan to take a few lessons over the summer to be ready for Augusta's Irish Week and Vocal Week. No lesson this week as Emily has her senior recital on our usual lesson day.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Long ago and not so far away
A little about me...
I started singing in Irish in 1998 after taking Bridget Fitzgerald's Irish Language and Song class at the Augusta Heritage Workshops' Irish Week. Actually I sang for fun for the first time at Irish Week the summer before that - it was 4am and a bunch of us were drinking Jameson's Irish Whiskey on the back porch of Halliehurst in the dark, taking turns singing songs. Back in those days, the back porch was dark late at night and provided great atmosphere for a song session. Or was it the Jameson's?
I took Bridget's class mainly to learn some Irish and was willing to tolerate the singing - I had decided that Bridget was "a hoot and a holler" and that it might be fun to sit in an air-conditioned class all day instead of sweating out sets in the Davis and Elkins College Dance Pavilion.
Anyway, I learned one verse of one song and more importantly, I fell in love with singing. In 1967, my grade school teacher listened to each of us sing a solo for her at her desk. I ended up sorted into the non-singer house ... or at least that is how my young ears and tender ego interpreted it at the time. I internalized this mis-classification for the next zillion years. I'm in recovery now - this blog will be the journal of my singing adventures past, current, and future.
I started singing in Irish in 1998 after taking Bridget Fitzgerald's Irish Language and Song class at the Augusta Heritage Workshops' Irish Week. Actually I sang for fun for the first time at Irish Week the summer before that - it was 4am and a bunch of us were drinking Jameson's Irish Whiskey on the back porch of Halliehurst in the dark, taking turns singing songs. Back in those days, the back porch was dark late at night and provided great atmosphere for a song session. Or was it the Jameson's?
I took Bridget's class mainly to learn some Irish and was willing to tolerate the singing - I had decided that Bridget was "a hoot and a holler" and that it might be fun to sit in an air-conditioned class all day instead of sweating out sets in the Davis and Elkins College Dance Pavilion.
Anyway, I learned one verse of one song and more importantly, I fell in love with singing. In 1967, my grade school teacher listened to each of us sing a solo for her at her desk. I ended up sorted into the non-singer house ... or at least that is how my young ears and tender ego interpreted it at the time. I internalized this mis-classification for the next zillion years. I'm in recovery now - this blog will be the journal of my singing adventures past, current, and future.
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