Steady one minute, Crumbling the next...

The point of focus, Mr. Lazar, is the correct area where I should be placing my voice. The Bel Canto method teaches that the voice should be forward, ie be resonating in the nasal cavity. This area should be more or less between your eyes for high notes, and just below your nose for lower notes past the natural break of the voice- at least that is how it is taught to me as a female soprano. I don't know if there is a difference with men or not.

This I can begin to do. But I feel overwhelmed time and time again by how dramatically I have to alter my point of view- it can be as simple as how I envision a phrase. Until recentely, I veiwed phrasing as lateral, kind of like a string player. Now I see that vocal phrasing must be different, at least for me, and it must be more like a straight line going out of my body climbing upwards and that I must pick up phrase B in the exact same position that I left phrase A. It really overwhelms me to think like this.

Well if that isn't enough to cry about on Tuesdays, I have found something new for Wednesdays. Today and next week I will have a two "workshops" on breathing where I will come to find that I breath all wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!!!! That I don't use my lower abdominals enough, I am not relaxing between breaths, I use my throat more than my abdominals... and so I cried in class. Yes, again! I felt like such a LOOSER because, for starters, I was with the other Korean girls (IV department, IV year) and of course they are all skinny and beautiful, so I feel like a looser next to them right off the bat. And then when we were supposed to feel each others abdomens and rib cages I felt even MORE stupid because with Ye Young, one can see and feel every single organ working in her body since her trunk must be only 15 inches in diamter... and then there's me. Tankish-Cello Dolly. Yes. And Irina told me so simply yesterday that "I could change that if I really wanted to" and I am thinking "sweety, have you seen my family tree?"