Sing low…

…sweet chariot?  Heh.

I’ve been having trouble with all the low notes for this show, at some point I’m fairly sure I’m having to hit an F below middle C. That’s pretty low. I can hit the note but I was having trouble giving it any oomph, which it needs, even with a mic for anyone to hear it when you’re mixed with other voices. (How did I end up with these notes?? I’m a soprano goddamit!) Anyway, we figured out that I’m not used to using the thicker parts of my vocal chords. I’m fine  with my ‘thin folds’ – that quite controlled sound that you might also think of as ‘head voice’ but I’m not great at ‘chest voice’ and I have difficulty blending them in my middle range.

My teacher and I came up with the following solutions:

• Glottal stop:Putting a glottal in at the start of my vowels for low notes helps me get the resistance I need.
• Think like a bass: If I imagine I’m a guy about to sing “Old man river” apparently that’s enough of a mental trick to get my chords in the right place!
• Relax the back of my tongue. For reasons known only to itself, it’s trying to help me too much. When I relax it I have more space and room to really let the sound bloom.

It was a really fun lesson. I’m not going to have to work on this stuff a whole lot, because there aren’t going to be many occasions when I need to sing this low, but it’s good to know how to do it.

We also looked at keeping some of that chest voice and blending –  trying to bring more ’tilt’ into the larynx as you move up your range. I’m not so awesome at it but I can do it. (You might also think of this as how to learn ‘belt’ – totally different sound for notes I would normally sing in full head voice.)

It’s awesome how many ways you can sing the same notes! And the way I sing them is different from the way someone else will! Humans make cool noises. 🙂

I also had two auditions this weekend just been. One for Die Fledermaus, and one for PLT’s Christmas show. I sang Voi che sapete for Fledermaus and it was fine. I really needed to be warmed up more though. I stayed in bed longer than I should have that morning. The Christmas show I ended up doing ‘Ding dong merrily on high’. That’s the one with the really long Glooooooria in it. The one that keeps going even when you think it has stopped! Got into the Christmas show, waiting to hear about Fledermaus. Aiming for chorus but with understudy hopes for a smaller role.

Rehearsal for our show tonight – we open next week yikes! Here’s a link to what it is in case you don’t already know: http://www.iticket.co.nz/events/2009/dec/a-great-face-for-radio-2/

In other news I can’t stop singing harmony lines. I’ve always liked singing along to things on the radio a third above as it’s the easy one. But now I want to sing all of the harmonies! All the time! Especially sevenths! I’ve gone harmonically crazy!