voice lessons!

Forgot to tell you about my second voice lesson this morning . . .

I'm having lots of fun! My church choir director (Bill) offers lessons for free to his singers during the summer, which I think is really cool. (He doesn't have quite as much to keep him busy, and this way, he gets better singers!)

My first lesson, we found the four natural breaks in my voice, discovered I am naturally a first alto, (which I guess Bill already knew,) and also did some breathing and posture exercises.

Today, we started doing a little singing. Bill's helping me learn how to add more richness/color/depth/roundness to my sound. (My voice is naturally a "flute," which means it is a bit thinner than, say, an opera singer's, which would be called a "clarinet.") Today, I spent most of my lesson singing into the piano.

Meaning . . . he had the top of the grand piano open, I stood in the curve of the piano and sang one phrase at a time into the strings while he held up the damper pedal. This was really weird at first, but allowed me to better hear the sound of my own voice, and also the overtones (higher pitches) my voice was creating. (The sound alone made the strings of the piano vibrate. It was really stinking cool.) The more color in my voice, (and the rounder and taller I made my vowels,) the more overtones there were. It was really, really weird, but really, really cool. Super-difficult to explain, too -- hope it makes a little bit of sense!