Hey

Hey Guys!

How is Thankgiving going?

The final is coming and I am sure all of your guys will do well!

See you guys on Thursday!

April

where to go from here

Hey guys,

with the voice final coming up and the semester quickly ending, i guess i'm just looking to what role singing will have in my future. it's so easy in college to find a way to practice, but since i'll be graduating at the end of the semester i'm worried that this is the end of my singing. of course i now have the foundations to sing well (or at least i know what the foundations should be lol), but no where to sing!! so perhaps i will now be a more technically sound shower singer.

devin

Hey all

Hey Guys!

I went the see Gianni Schicchi last night. It is awesome!!!

Travis is awesome!

I was really impressed by the performance.

Usually we sing our songs during the class and actually never get a chance to hear Travis sing.

It is a great musical drama!

Have a nice thanksgiving! :)

Low Notes

Hey everyone,

So I've been practicing for the dress rehearsal Thursday (eek!), and I'm still really uncertain about my low notes. I know Travis said not to think about it and just to sing, and I've been trying to follow that advice, but so far, it's not working out that well. Does anyone have advice on singing notes that they think are out of their range?

See you all Thursday!

Vowels

I wanted to learn to sing because I saw the passion great singers exuded when they performed. But as I've learned to sing I've learned that unrestricted passion is not always correlated with a good sound. What I've found to work is flowing from clear vowel sound to another clear vowel sound and holding that sound. The practice is definitily difficult and a lot different from what I believed singing to be but it establishes a nice vibrato and produces the most pleasing music.

Tomatis

So I've been trying to listen more carefully to when I sing.
I've been playing around. When I cover my left ear, it sounds different than when I cover my right ear. I can't seem to hear as well when my right ear is covered, and i used to notice that even before the reading and I thought I just had bad hearing in my left ear or was better with my right ear. But it seems to make sense, unless it doesn't and I really am deaf in that ear. I've also been trying to pay attention to the other pitches that come out of different pitches that the singers aim for.

Singing!

I was at the Maroon 5, One Republic, and Bruno Mars concert in San Diego on Saturday, Oct 16th. First off, I love Bruno Mars... His voice amazes me, and before Saturday night, I had only ever heard the recordings from youtube etc. But when he got on and sang, it sounded just as great! I was so excited about this especially with all the stylistic and/or correctional auto-tuning. He has a slight rasp, which seems like it is because he invokes a rasp for stylistic purposes, but has maybe done that improperly or not with the more appropriate technique with the false vocal folds. Other than that he sings fluidly/smoothly as we have been learning with our exercises. It is really noticeable when he breaks from the fluidity of phrases, and it serves a more stylistic purpose.
....
and his dancing makes me happy.

hey all

After the class on last Thursday, I became so hesitant to use my voice. I went to the football game on Saturday and I tried not to scream even at the moment of touch down.

Anyway, I am so excited to practice the new song I pick.

See you guys on Thursday!

April

Postino for free!

Hey all,

I found a free offer for the Opera Postino. I heard there's a really famous vocalist.

Tickets are expensive, but they have a screening for free this weekend! Check it out!

http://www.laopera.com/offers/screening/

Kavinee

Sound vs. Diction

Hey everyone!

As I was practicing for our Midterm tomorrow, I kept running into a conflict between pronouncing the words the way I wanted to and getting the best sound out. Like we discussed in class, we should be focusing on the best sound, but I've had to break a habit of focusing on diction to do that. Thankfully, by the time I was done practicing today, I feel like I had achieved that to an extent. Hopefully that will show tomorrow.

See you all then!
Eric

P.S. in case any of you would be interested in hearing an acapella version of the song I'm singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9vqlnm84E

Hey

So I went to MUSE concert last Sunday night and plan to write a concert review about them.

This week I asked a native speaker to improve my diction, since English is not my first language. Hopefully this helps.

Anyway, I will see you guys tomorrow!!!

Relaxation

So, it kind of struck me today that music is very simple. All the things that we think of during our average day--homework, what to eat for lunch, girls (or boys)--just distract us from that simplicity. I've found that I have had the best sound when I focus on the music and relax. Everything just seems to come much easier

wallpaper & fool's gold

Hey!

so i was at the troubadour on thursday night for Wallpaper and Fool's Gold.. it was pretty fun. i noticed how wallpaper gets up very close to the mic and pretty much eats it. i don't particularly like their sound except for more party type situations. and i'm not sure i can really tell what they actually sound like, because auto-tone?tune? takes over everything now. but what i could catch of actually human voice was nothing amazingly good, but entertaining. i'm not sure if it's just the concert environment, but everything was more shouted and forced, to the point where veins were showing and it seemed like a lot of tension was building up.
Fool's Gold was better, although their songs were literally 10 minutes or longer each, mostly instrumental. nice groove though, and when they did sing, there seemed to be tension in their faces... i'm not sure if that was just a face for emotion or if that tension was actually there in the tongue or jaw. either way, it was really fun, and i was quite deaf after.

Hey

Hey everyone!

I'm so glad that I finally figured out how to use this blog!

I feel like everyone has been getting sick recently, and unfortunately I think I am starting to get the flu too. Would you sing when you are sick? Obviously not when you have a soar throat, but how about like a runny nose and coughs? Is it okay as long as you know you're using the right way to sing?

See you all in class later!

Best,

Kavinee

Yeah!! I got the invitation finally!!!!

Hey Guys! How is everything going?

When I practice, I found out that I have problem with the transition from chest voice to head voice. Do you guys have any helpful hints or do you guys have the same problem as I do?

I will see you guys on Thursday!

Have a great day!

April

Two Different Voices

Hey everyone,

So I've been noticing that I sound really different - like two different people - when I sing low notes and when I sing high notes. I'm a soprano and the high notes come easier to me than the low ones, but I feel like I don't sound like myself talking with either. When I sing high notes, I feel like I sound like I did in high school choir - you know, soft and shaky. And then when I sing low notes (according to my roommate, who took MPVA 141 with me), I sound like I'm talking more. But not in my regular voice. Anyway, I keep thinking about how we're supposed to sound like ourselves talking when we sing. And I practice reading the lyrics before singing. Only I still don't think I sound like me, the way I sounded naturally, before choir. Anyone have the same problem / advice?

i am finally on the blog!!! woohoo! i'm also upset that i didn't sign on earlier since i LOVE bruno mars (gotta support the hawaiian boy!)

i'm going to blog about a relatively obvious topic: the influence of pop music on voice. as part of an a cappella group, i often feel that the need to follow the rules of good and healthy singing are not as important, especially because a lot of a cappella is replicating sounds and encompassing the feeling of the music with only voices. even when you listen to mainstream pop artists, you find that very few, if any, of them follow the rules of good singing themselves. now i know that this is a stylistic choice made by the artists, record labels, and consumers which does not necessarily need to be carried forth into the more classical styles of voice training, but i find myself so used to these bad habits that i can't shake them. even if i do work on fostering good habits when singing less contemporary pieces/showtunes/what we work on in class, i can't carry these sounds/ideas forward when i'm singing for myself. is there a specific place and time for singing with these rules, or should we always use them no matter what we're singing?

PLEASE LOOK AT THIS TONIGHT... i wish..

Bruno Mars is performing at The Grove tomorrow (Friday sept 17) at 5:30pm... for FREE.
So.... if anyone LOVES LOVES LOVES him... let me know.
email is querns@usc.edu

i'm guessing no one will get this before then. but it's worth a shot.

singing and football

So, my blog for this week is on breath support and vocal placement. As I'm sure everyone knows, there was a football game on saturday (we won! yay!). Beinging in the marching band, I have to yell and scream A LOT. Everyone always ends up losing their voice by the end of the day, but I don't. This was not any different on saturday. I attribute this success to the way I breathe and where I place my sound. I always make sure to breath from my diaphragm, because not only is it more comfortable, but I can scream for longer :). In terms of vocal placement, I make sure that when I scream I'm not really screaming so much as singing the note that I want to scream. I place it in my higher register (which is more comfortable for me) and in my mask (the nose/mouth area of your face). This lets the note ring out loudly and does not hurt my voice. I never would have thought that my 18 years of singing would help me be a better Trojan football fan :)

Bieber Fever

This isn't actually about JB except that I was ALMOST going to go to his performance tonight for the VMAs (for FREE!!).
Has anyone or DOES anyone have bieber fever...?
It's really interesting. I've heard him talk - on youtube - before and it definitely sounds the same as when he sings, just with a different pitch. And I remember we talked about how it is basically like talking at a different pitch.. kind of.
But I've heard that from a lot of people too.

I found it super helpful when I sang in class to practice the awkwardly long talking before singing concept. When I was in church this morning, I noticed that some of the choir members sang fluidly, and some had my same problem, so I was excited that I am able to catch these things and hopefully better my singing. I'm singing at church tonight, so I'm definitely going to practice the smoothness/flow of phrases...not words.

Also, during some announcements, I noticed how strange it sounded when one man was talking very choppily - like we talked about in class.. where you understand the words, but not the sentences or phrases.

Singing is making me aware of all kinds of things!
and it's only the 3rd week...

Vowels + Cracking!

Hey guys,

After reading this week's section, I realized how subtle yet crucial it is to be conscious of how we sing vowels. This was especially clear to me during the All Hail A Cappella concert, when there was an ethereal difference between groups who focused on uniting the vowel sounds and those who did not. While all groups sounded great, having a united style of diction and vowels added an overwhelming warmth to the overall sound.
(p.s. Travis, do you think those of us who went to this can write a concert review on it?)

On a completely different note:
Has anyone else had issues with their voice cracking unpleasantly during completely conspicuous parts of a song? Sometimes I sing for my campus ministry and this usually happens to me towards the end of a set when my vocal folds get worn out. This wasn't a problem when I sang with the Sirens, since we focused mostly on blending and using our head voice, but when it comes to blasting solos and getting the crowd pumped up... using just my head voice won't cut it. Any advice?

See you all in class!
- Erin -

Reading/ Hey

Hey everyone,

I just finished rereading the chapter on breathing. It just reminds me of how there is so much that goes into singing, that I never realized before taking the 141 course. I'm so excited for this class, and everyone seems really cool.. hopefully we all become friends and such.

I sing at the university catholic center on sundays, and it is amazing to be able to get up there and sort of "perform" for people. It isn't a performance in that we should be singing for the church/religion/etc, but then it kind of is a performance in the way that a performance is partially about connecting with one another.

Anyway, as it relates to breathing, I find that if I'm singing in the car (by myself), I am perfectly fine, but the minute I have to sing in front of people, my breathing gets crazy, and things just don't come out right. And it was especially difficult the other day, because I had a cough and those just don't mix so well.

ok, see you in class