The One Line Song

I’ve been taking singing lessons.   I asked Chelsea, my daughter’s music therapist, if she knew someone who I could contact about some instruction.   I was hoping she could help me out, because I know absolutely zero.  I like to sing and I’ll sing along to any song, even if I don’t know the words.   I’m sure my husband loves it when he’s in the car with me but he’s been polite enough to never complain.

As Chelsea was thinking about who she could refer me to, I began to tell her how I wanted to learn enough to sing casually and successfully, giving her some examples of how and when I liked to sing. It was at that point she said, “oh, you’re wanting help with ‘functional singing’, I can do that”.

We’ve had two lessons together so far and it’s been more than helpfully informative.   I don’t have a bad voice she said—which is good—I just need to learn how to use the voice I have.   She had me sing to her at the beginning of our first lesson and she said, “you sound like you’re scared”.   I wasn’t scared, but I agreed with her, I was sounding timid and constrained in what I was doing.    We worked on some warmups, drills and she gave me many pieces of advice on where your voice should come from, how to engage your diaphragm, bad habits singers get into and how to practice.    It was a lot for a first lesson but I was committed to practicing and we scheduled our next lesson for when we both returned from vacation in a month.

Yesterday we had our second lesson.   I showed her what I’d been working on by singing a bit for her and explained how I felt like singing was more natural and I could hold a tune more easily.   Then we started into our next lesson.  

She said we were going to work on one song, Moon River, because it had a lot of components to it that lent itself well to building voice skills.   Then, and this is the good part, we worked on the first line of the song for almost the whole hour.   We would try something and then she’d tell me how I could change what I was doing and we’d try again.    We even went into the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror to do some specific exercises.

My homework was to download two versions of the song from iTunes she though demonstrated good vocal style and listen as well as practice until we met next week.   Maybe next week if I’m making progress we’ll make it all the way through the song…

The Big Boy Update:  My son has picked up some children’s rhymes lately.   I’m guessing it’s from school because his neighborhood friends didn’t teach it to him.   We had a lot of playing in the back yard today and I heard him saying to them, “Keira, Keira, sitting in the tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”   Later I heard, “Rayan, Rayan, pumpkin pie, kissed the girls and made them cry…”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We got my daughter small plush versions of the dogs from the show, Paw Patrol when we were in Florida.  My daughter has been spending a lot of time playing imaginative games with the “pups” including having tea parties with them and her friend next door, Madison.