Voice Lesson #9

I am writing this the day after voice lesson #9. I wanted to listen to the lesson once before commenting on it. It was good! I am definitely making progress! Last week was a very frustrating week for me, as far as practice goes. Sunday was great and Tuesday was good...every other day between lesson #8 and #9 was not very good in my opinion. I was just flat frustrated! I was having a lot of trouble staying in the head voice, because I would continually drop back into the chest voice. I was so frustrated that I found myself fussing at myself! hehe! We worked on this yesterday. If I want to keep in the head voice, I have to stay in the head voice, or at least allow very little chest voice to creep in on those lower notes. It's those bad habits still rearing their heads. Practice..or let's say, correct practice, will take care of that in time. And speaking of chest voice... I'm struggling with the passaggio area still, which again, is that middle voice area.. where the head and chest voice meet. It's a difficult area to manage. I feel as if I have little control of that area. I discussed this with my teacher yesterday, and we worked on this area a bit with repertoire. One song in particular has phrases that give me a lot of difficulty, so she told me to sing that as if I have never heard of head voice.. So I did.. it was a big, controlled chest voice sound. Big chest voice sounds are not a problem for me, but it's when I try to keep that passaggio area in the head voice, allowing even a small amount of chest voice in, that I get in trouble. Again, practice. The other thing is that I was hitting that F# with a good amount of ease, where as last week it was a problem. Yahooooo! I hit it well in my song and also in an exercise. As we were doing the exercise, we kept going up and up, and on the last scale my teacher said, that was the F#! I said, yeah??!! I was surprised because it felt so easy..I felt like I could've kept going! So, all in all, though I'm still having a hard time with staying in the head voice, I am accessing it much more easily and hitting some good notes. I also have to work on correct vowel shapes in the throat and with the tongue...they are still an issue, along with breath support, tension, and alignment. All of the these things are improving, but I still have a long way to go. All of these things have to become habit...they have to be as ingrained in me as much as the bad habits have been and are...and as the bad habits slowly disappear, the good habits will take over! Jesus is an awesome God! He is right there with me through the whole process. He knows I can't do this without Him, and He is very gracious with me! His Word says that "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"..Philippians 4:13....this is truth! I am blessed by Him to able to do this at all.. to take lessons, to have a brilliant teacher who cares and is patient, and to have an amazing husband who supports me in this endeavor, no matter what! I am thankful for the blessings and that includes the trials and difficulties, as well as all of the good stuff! Thank you, Jesus, I'm getting there!