You're always on my mind...
Well...
I had another one of those again... yeah... those voice lessons that totally change the entire way I've gone about singing. Finally I've moved into that space where I can really sing totally free and "uncontrolled." Even though I learned how to deal with it quite well over the summer, dealing with it and getting like 90% free is NOT what I want. It's that total freedom of letting all my chest and mouth and everything truely freed up, and just letting the natural sound come out, that I'm singing with and can only sing with for the rest of my life now. Albeit it does hurt my range, but I know that as I free up everything up to my G/Ab, within the next month and what not we can again work on totally freeing up everything above that, which will lead me to completely uncharted territories, as I've never totally sang anything above a G free before.
The warmer sound it creates is something I need to remember and hold onto, although I'll have to speak with Marty about if that is still what I should be working with for choral singing, as it might be a bit too bright. I also need to remember that I CAN'T CAN'T CAN'T sing anything below like a middle F above a mezzo forte at best... and as it goes below C a mezzo piano, or else it just forces me to sing a darker harsher sound that does not translate into a smooth flow into my middle ranged voice.
The best thing about my current position, is that the death place where I used to totally hold my voice, around the E to F# range, is totally free and I'm really able to slide through that at will. Which, when looking at things practically, is much more important then having really solid high B's, because you'll sing E's to F#'s WAY more often then I ever will a B... still... I know the B's and C's will come though... I just don't even know how to correctly approach that with a free tone yet, so I won't even try.
Another thing I've known but was only reinforced this lesson, was that the key to really unlocking my natural voice is through the "emotion" of the tone, not through thinking about the correct placement of the tone I'm producing. When I stop thinking about technique, my technique is there for me... and that's where occasionally I'll screw myself over. I'll start thinking about the placement, and, ironically, I will hold and "control" my voice, which leads to improper technique. It's interesting how the way to find correct placement is not to think about it at all.
Regardless, I'm happy to again have something I have noticed and can really work on mastering. I kinda felt lost the past couple of weeks, because I didn't totally like what I was doing, but I didn't know what I was doing that I didn't like. I always go through those phases with my voice... I get a grasp on a problem, I work on really fixing it, I fix it and really like what my voice does, I don't like what my voice does, I figure out the problem, work on it... and it's an endless circle. It works though, and it's quite fulfilling except for those like two week segments when I don't like my voice at all, but don't know why I don't.
Ah well, my first voice entry this year. Of course there will be 10000 more to come, haha. It's what I think about 80% or more of the day. Always haunting me... in a good way.