Singing, singing and more singing…and some writing.
So, I (FINALLY) started singing lessons on Monday! I feel like all I do lately is sing and sleep (can’t complain!) The lesson was great, although 30 minutes doesn’t half fly by! Matt is such a good teacher-he’s really nice and very enthusiastic! We spent most of my first lesson looking at I Know Him So Well. I seem to be getting more and more of a mental block with it-I have no idea why! In the last Sing Live solo rehearsal I was so much more nervous than the first one and Richard picked up on it. I am now starting to fear the big notes so I get shakier the more I near them. I don’t know what the problem is-the notes aren’t BIG they’re just bigger and longer than the others. As Matt pointed out, they’re well within my range. It’s a bit of a relief to be having the lessons because I did feel much better after coming away. Matt’s given me all sorts of technical bits and pieces to think about just from the top of his head…it’s a lot to take in but at least it means I can get used to thinking about everything at once and hopefully it’ll all progress together naturally. I prefer his approach to learning one thing at a time because otherwise-where do you start?! It’s all going to take a lot of practise, but for now I’m mainly concentrating on breathing from my diapragm, resonance and keeping my head in one place!! lmao. I relaxed into singing the piece during our lesson and felt a lot better, however when I came to practise today it was a different matter! I know when I’m not relaxing and just letting the notes come, however I don’t seem capable of doing anything about it once I’ve noticed as yet-it’s all very random, I need more control.
Aside from that, of course, the Sing Live rehearsals have been continuing. Things are coming along well. Alan was our stand-in pianist the other day and he’s actually more involved in some of the other companies. North West (or is it Northern?) are doing the same concert as us in a couple of weeks and he’s been closely involved with them. He was very complimentary about how we were doing so I guess that’s a good sign! We’ve got a few pretty much off the book now-My Fair Lady and Spamalot, Starlight pretty much aswell…Chess is well on the way, as well as Wicked. We’ve been given a line of Defying Gravity back, which is nice-haha, whatever we can get…we all got a bit excited when that was mentioned because we thought we got to sing the whole thing, but no such luck. Having said that though, the ensemble really do sound good and I think they’ll do a cracking job of it. My main problem at the moment is not dancing along/miming to The Wizard and I and resisting filling in the big #GOOOOD NEEEEWS#’s in No One Mourns the Wicked…it’s probably just as well that I’m not allowed to sing those though, given that I haven’t got a hope in HELL of getting the notes lol! Tarzan is the big work in progress at the moment, it’s taken ages for us to get going on it so it’s been lingering there and we’ve started to think it’s worse than it is from our CDs I think! It’s actually really nice-we have to do all this jungle sound effecty stuff in the middle, which we had our first go at the other day and it was actually quite impressive I thought!
Other than singing…I have been trying to get back to writing my story for this contest but I am having severe trouble. I’ve written about 1000 of 4000 words now and I’m quite impressed with what I’ve written so far, however, I’m struggling with the plot from here on so it’s a case of sorting that out before I can actually write anymore-and boy oh boy is it confusing me. I’m trying to keep it simple because of the word count-but it’s so hard with writing on a fantasy/magical theme-I don’t know why I thought this was a good first project lol! But hey, hopefully something will come to me-at 5am or some ridiculous hour-my bodyclock is soo messed up at the mo!
The other news is that I have a job interview next week, well kind of, I actually have to do some tests and then they decide if I have an interview…but it’s nice to have something lined up work-wise, it’s starting to really bug me not having a job now, and make me worry!…Anyway, I’m going to wash my hair because I’m off out to the pub in a bit and then to the cinema, which will be nice!
Keep smiling!
Sarah x
