Voice Journal Spring 2017 Mar 14-20

Mar 14
Midterm went better than I feared, not as well as I hoped. Abigail said I was okay; she was unhappy that I felt so negative about it. The big thing which happened was she bobbled a chord and I not only kept going, I was singing the right notes when she came back in. She said i kept the last night in tune as well.

What helped more than anything was Brady's advice earlier in the morning. He said he went through the same thing, that learning new techniques makes your quality nosedive and then after a while you get better than you were before.
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Mar 15-16
No real singing. Utterly exhausted and overwhelmed.
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Mar 17
Have rewritten the chorus and coda for Enemy Lines, and have recorded it, which necessitated a couple hours' work to learn it and get a take. When I turned the keyboard down and sang softly, I sounded MUCH more like myself. I practiced aiming my voice at the resonating spot and discovered something interesting when I also practiced singing "ah" as the syllable for words with the letter i. The resonating spot for that is higher up on the roof of my mouth, not exactly over my front teeth but just above my jawbone--and I stay in tune better there. Will be singing all week as I work on getting the song finished and recorded, and I hope to have a clean copy ready for school after the break.
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Mar 18
Working on Enemy Lines and I think I can sing the flat sev in the Gm–yesterday I was singing the tonic instead. So it’s natural minor in the melody but harmonic minor in the accompaniment… and before I came back to school, I never would have understood it.

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Hands got sore, had to stop, but I like it a LOT. It’s more fun to sing than the original now.

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Mar 20

Still changing chords on Enemy Lines. It’s rather astonishing. I’ll try recording later.

My favorite thing is the rising phrase that states the anguish of the whole thing: you’re all dug in behind enemy lines and I can’t get back to you… The rising phrase naturally leads to rising volume. The whole thing just plays together beautifully. I’m very proud of it! My Inner Self has done really very well, indeed!

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Had to stop because my hands hurt.