This week was my worst week of practicing this semester, but I still managed to have some good breakthroughs. Missing a few days also reaffirmed to me how important it is to find the target feelings I'm working on for my singing everyday.
As I am sure is no surprise to everyone who knows me, my biggest weakness when singing is overthinking. This semester I have made huge strides in focusing on the feeling of singing rather than the mechanics of what I want my vocal tract to do. I have found so much freedom in my exercises. This week in my lesson I realized that I haven't quite reached that same point in my repertoire-- especially when singing with the piano or the entire song through. In my practicing this weekend I focused on taking small chunks at a time and just getting used to focusing on the feeling. I've been working on singing with more space between my teeth/opening my mouth so I sang each section I'd created with a cork between my teeth so that I could memorize the feeling of an open mouth without having to think about it. Then I'd sing the same section without anything keeping my mouth open to check if I could retain the feeling. It felt so good! There was simultaneously more space in the upper half of my head and more focus to my sound/vowels. I realized how important it is for me and my brain to choose one feeling to really focus on BEFORE I start singing. Then I don't get distracted by trying to control everything, and can instead really experience the feeling of creating music.
I've also started to spend more time in my practicing on storytelling. This is another strategy that helps pull me out of the over-corrective part of my brain. Especially for "Batti, Batti," I have worked on speaking the text (both the Italian and the English translation) as a monologue so that I can explore the character and the emotion of each line. It's been a lot of fun and makes it even more fun to sing when I start to internalize what I'm saying instead of just knowing the translation.
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