improvement!!

I had my third vocal lesson on Wednesday.

For the past two weeks, I had been trying my best to improve my singing. I kept diary only about music. I wrote each day about what I felt with my body, throat, mouth, face, lyrics, melody, pitch, color of voice, diaphragm etc. , what I found new, what I realized something was wrong or correct..... everything. Sometimes I recorded my singing experiments. I would say, "this time, I will care about only breathing." then sang some phrase and listened to it later, and another time I would say in the beginning of the recording, "this time I would care about only relaxing my jaw." and recorded singing and listened to it later so that I can compare which way was successful and which way was not.

I practiced breathing using my diaphragm as much as possible as I relaxed the other parts of my body. I did it on the street, on the train, on the bed..... everywhere. For the first week or so, I couldn't get how to do it. My breathing was always shallow and I didn't know which part I should have used.... or anything. But one day, one time, my body responded to my will somehow, I thought, "Is that it?" and I tried to do the same way again and again, and wrote down what I intended to do at that time to the music diary.

One time, I was totally stuck. Then I thought, "OK, this time, I forget everything! I won't care how high or low the note is, weather or not my pitch is precise or something. I will sing a song!!" And recorded some phrase. Surprisingly it somehow worked.

On Wednesday, on my way to my teacher's, I was wavering. I was not confident, I expected I could have been worse than the last lesson. On the other hand, I felt I was stronger in some ways. I started to think that I had to be tough. "I'm going to perform before my loving teacher. I should totally rely on her. I have my music. I should show her what I've been trying in the past two weeks. Naoko, you will be OK! Having time with such a wonderful musician should be fun!"

Then...... I buzzed my teacher's door bell.

And it went..... well!! My teacher said to me I improved a lot especially with breathing! We worked on Bach duet piece. It was amazing. She has a magic. Every part was difficult and touch to deal with until then. She solved every problem, language, melody, breathing, flow of music, how to use my energy efficiently, and everything. It totally changed. There were moments I felt so comfortable with singing that day. I was very very happy with that.

She suggested me several new things. I have to work on these things and really want to improve myself more. It's really tough to change yourself, the way you have been doing it for so long. You have to deceive yourself somehow, mesmerize yourself to adopt new ways. My body respond in a wrong way every time and I get down..... I know it's tough but some bright lights wait for me and I will enjoy music more and more if I could achieve it.



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This has a following story. I was so happy right after the lesson and I was so hopeful next day on my way to the choir rehearsal. I expected I would sing better using things I got in the previous day. But it went bad! I couldn't sing well at all! I was so disappointed with myself. Then I realized that I hadn't learned about the pieces well enough and got nervous about the pitch, notes, and pronunciation..... Then I started to have a sore throat again Thursday night and it didn't go away on Friday..... It's Saturday today and I can't practice my singing but I can at least practice breathing, pronunciation, and language or anything other than singing, right? You can't do anything in one day. I'll continue to do my best!