This blog is about my performance of Green finch and linnet bird on last Tuesday's student recital. I am satisfied with my performance in that I only messed up one word (that I'm sure no one noticed), all the notes and rythms were pretty much "spot on", and nothing happened that would make me think that the performance was a failure. On the other hand, I am my biggest critique. After my performance, I realized that there were some things I didn't do or think about that I will change before my next performance.

First off, I realized that I wasn't aware of my body positioning/stance at all. This scares me because I am usually very aware of placing my feet in the "fourth position" so that I appear professional to the audience. The second thing I will change with Green finch is opening up my jaw to get more of a "mush-mouthed" feel, especially for the i sound in Green. I think this came from watching the clip from the movie where Johanna sings this song. I was trying to emulate her pretty, 'little girl' sound (which she could do becuase she was miked) instead of embracing a more full, higher frequency sound that will cut through the air and come across more clear to the audience.

Other than those two things, I was pretty satisfied with my performance on Tuesday.

Finally, I'm back in the swing of things and beginning to practice on a more regular basis. I have been working a lot on O del mio dolce ardor and Take oh take those lips away. I realize that if I had worked just four or five more hours on this one before fall break I probably could have had it memorized a long time ago. However, there is nothing I can do about that now and it is finally pretty much memorized. Also, O del mio dolce ardor is coming along ok, but the German song (Fur musik) is still giving me fits. We'll see how that one goes...

Today I am singing Green finch and linnet bird on student recital and I am pretty excited about it. It is about time I sang this one on recital! lol. Unfortunately I am struggling with some flem this morning but hopefully things will get better this afternoon.

Also for warm ups I still enjoy doing lip buzzes on five note patterns going up by half steps and sing-ahs going up by half steps as well.

I am expecting to make a lot of progress in a little amount of time as the end of the semester is just around the corner!