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My childhood friend Britt just wrote, though he isn't aware that I am the same kid he used to hang out with long ago.. he's asking if I knew the family of Stembridges from SC who later moved to GA. He said someone forwarded my contact info, but I didn't recognize the man's name.
Aug. 14th, 2006
My first vocal lesson
Aug. 14th, 2006 11:02 pmAfter work I drove to Tucker and met with Thressa for my first vocal lesson. She's the lead alto at St. Mark and sings professionally in addition to teaching piano and voice. Her solo on Sunday during Broadway brought me to tears.. it was so beautiful.
Anyway, we met at her studio and started by finding my range, which was about two and a half octaves with the highest being the Gb above middle C (Gb5?). She said most altos don't like singing that high.
This definition implies that the upper end of my current range is actually Mezzo-soprano. It's a little harder to sing the high Gb right now - G is loud and powerful but my vocal muscles aren't developed enough to easily jump from say C5 to Gb5 and back. But then I can't easily jump from C4 to G4 either right now.
A few weeks ago Lucy told me that with time and practice most singers can extend their ranges by two or three notes. I remember her saying I could almost sing second soprano, and this is prior to formal vocal instruction. Something else I found last night is that a singer with thicker vocal cords named Adam Lopez is able to sing C#8 (that is Mariah Carey territory!). So with time hopefully I can raise my usable upper range a few notes.
I'm not so interested in working in the treble/baritone area but Thressa wanted to see what my actual range was, so we went down the scale a little. She actually sings as low or lower than I could go (She says she can sing first bass, treble, alto and soprano), knowing that (and hearing some of it first hand) made me feel a little more comfortable going further down in my range. We're going to focus on the treble clef, though she said it would be good to learn a little of the bass clef too.
She led me through warm up excersizes and then we looked at breathing. We spent half of the lesson on that alone. She said that breathing properly not only lets me sing longer refrains, but greatly improves the tonal quality of my voice. I shudder to think about two performances with TFTD a year ago where my voice went to hell after the first few songs from poor breathing and straining from not hearing myself. One nice thing about classical/broadway is there aren't so many words to fit in. I was never any good at spitting out several lines of a verse in a few short seconds anyway.
I digress. Before finishing she walked through a brief lesson on sight reading. I'm beginning to pick out notes on the staff when sight reading, but I'm basically clueless about understanding time signature and rhythm.
Her initial criticism is that I'm very tense.. I have to learn to loosen up and relax.
Next week she'll have training materials I can take home and work on. Plus she'll be there to help a little during choir practice too.
Maybe there's hope for my squawk-box yet.
Anyway, we met at her studio and started by finding my range, which was about two and a half octaves with the highest being the Gb above middle C (Gb5?). She said most altos don't like singing that high.
This definition implies that the upper end of my current range is actually Mezzo-soprano. It's a little harder to sing the high Gb right now - G is loud and powerful but my vocal muscles aren't developed enough to easily jump from say C5 to Gb5 and back. But then I can't easily jump from C4 to G4 either right now.
A few weeks ago Lucy told me that with time and practice most singers can extend their ranges by two or three notes. I remember her saying I could almost sing second soprano, and this is prior to formal vocal instruction. Something else I found last night is that a singer with thicker vocal cords named Adam Lopez is able to sing C#8 (that is Mariah Carey territory!). So with time hopefully I can raise my usable upper range a few notes.
I'm not so interested in working in the treble/baritone area but Thressa wanted to see what my actual range was, so we went down the scale a little. She actually sings as low or lower than I could go (She says she can sing first bass, treble, alto and soprano), knowing that (and hearing some of it first hand) made me feel a little more comfortable going further down in my range. We're going to focus on the treble clef, though she said it would be good to learn a little of the bass clef too.
She led me through warm up excersizes and then we looked at breathing. We spent half of the lesson on that alone. She said that breathing properly not only lets me sing longer refrains, but greatly improves the tonal quality of my voice. I shudder to think about two performances with TFTD a year ago where my voice went to hell after the first few songs from poor breathing and straining from not hearing myself. One nice thing about classical/broadway is there aren't so many words to fit in. I was never any good at spitting out several lines of a verse in a few short seconds anyway.
I digress. Before finishing she walked through a brief lesson on sight reading. I'm beginning to pick out notes on the staff when sight reading, but I'm basically clueless about understanding time signature and rhythm.
Her initial criticism is that I'm very tense.. I have to learn to loosen up and relax.
Next week she'll have training materials I can take home and work on. Plus she'll be there to help a little during choir practice too.
Maybe there's hope for my squawk-box yet.