Untitled #29

Uhg.... I'm so glad that I had spring break but I am also very glad that it is over.  I will be honest.  I really didn't focus much of my time on my vocal repertoire.  When I wasn't working at Dairy Queen, I was practicing for my piano midterm and working on my conducting project.  Like I mentioned in my last post, I have been feeling very overwhelmed.  I am pleased to say that after break got over, I felt very accomplished.  Before break, I didn't know any of my major or minor cadences and I felt totally lost when it came to conducting my piece.  I didn't even know where to begin to work with any of it.  Now, I feel quite confident about my piano final :)  I learned all my major and minor cadences (with the help of Amanda! Couldn't have done it without her!), most of my major scales and my piano repertoire has come a long ways since the week before.  As for my conducting...I don't know exactly what happened there...but for some reason I am not as afraid as I was before.  It's like the ideas just dawned on me Sunday night.  All last week I had been agonizing over my score trying to pull something out of nothing and finally the night before school was supposed to start, something clicked.  I wouldn't say I am completely confident with it, but at least I have a better idea of what I'm doing and what I want to do with my music.  I'll just keep truckin along:)  This has nothing to do with voice lessons though so I will just tell you what I actually did work on for my vocal repertoire.  I want you to know that I had full intentions of working more on Non so Piu Cosa Son, but I didn't.  Last week, I focused mostly on Aus Meinen Grossen Schmentzen simply because it is a short song and mentally less daunting to tackle.  The biggest obstacle I came across was wanting to let my voice go too heavy.  It was hard not to let it drop into my chest voice and keep control of it.  When I came to the lower parts I lost support a lot of the time and my vibrato would get super loose it felt like.  I wasn't so sure that was a healthy thing.  I didn't want it to get to throaty and dark so I tried making it a little brighter and focusing the sound more forward.  I definitively got the sound you would have expected.  It was brighter and skinnier, but I didn't like it for the song.  The song is dark and kind of sad.  Is it supposed to sound that way in the voice or should the voice be skinny and more forward anyways?  Or is there a mixture of both??? I feel like there is a certain sound I should have that isn't too much of either one.  I feel like there is a happy medium to be achieved but I'm not quite sure what that is.  The vocalist in the recording I am listening to has a very heavy voice.  I like how she sounds and I have been trying to replicate it in a way that is my own but I'm not sure if I can pull it off like she can.  I don't even know if what she is doing is vocally possible or healthy for me.  Maybe I can, I just haven't uncovered that potential of my voice yet...maybe I never will...