Music Major Mumblings

[collegeproblems]

Me trying to wake up this morning.

[deathekeyofawesome]

There's only a concert today and dead week ahead :)

[deathekeyofawesome]

So I suck at managing to organize my life in such a manner that I was able to write on here like I wanted to. I haven't had much time to enjoy my music finding or even practice as much as I wanted to. Regardless, I am having the time of my life. 24 credit hours of pure music, my kids in the Children's Choir are about to have their concert at a really amazing hall, I'm making money being the most musical waitress in the restaurant I work at, and I'm performing this Tuesday! A simple little French song by Debussy, Les Cloches, will be my debut in the vocal performance master class. Music education students have never had to do that until this year and I won't lie and say I'm not nervous.

You gain certain titles when people go ahead and assume what you sound like and what your abilities are.

Regardless, I'm wearing my "diva" red and gearing up for the stage handling my heels. 

Wish me luck!

[deathekeyofawesome]

...nope.

[soyouwenttoschoolforsinging]

When you look at a piece in mixed or compound meter

[soyouwenttoschoolforsinging]

When you know you just nailed a performance

[deathekeyofawesome]

Visit Original Link

So my vowels/flipped rs/breathing get a little weird sometimes, and my voice cracked at one point...and we were in a closet box of a room while this was recording so the quality shows everything; i.e., my advisor and director coming in through the squeaky door and making lots of noise sitting down. It's the first time I've sung this as a performance and I can't wait to perfect and perform it again!

But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming? (Malachai iii), Handel

Sung by Dea, September 25th, 2012

[deathekeyofawesome]

I don't even care that this is a Miley Cyrus song. It almost sounds gospel with them singing it, a prayer, a jubilation. The music just swells and what I'm always harping about: Passion. They sing with such conviction that it's just...beautiful. And I always have so much respect for anyone who can take four completely different voices and a pop song and turn it into something so meaningful and harmonically fabulous. I can just picture the 'amens!" and the tears. 

[deathekeyofawesome]

This just gave me the chills. This is such a feel-good song...a little sappy, but beautiful nonetheless.

[deathekeyofawesome]

This should be in every Opera syllabus. 

[lolsomeone-actually]

So. Tired.

[deathekeyofawesome]

And school hasn't even started yet! But I was just hired as a waitress and bartender and I've done twenty one hours in the past two days for training and doing my own tables and drinks. I'm so tired and it's only six...but I'm tempted to take a nap anyways.

[soyouwenttoschoolforsinging]

When someone mentions taking a year off

[deathekeyofawesome]

And yet, every other degree seems to be able to.

[deathekeyofawesome]

This girl has the purest, sweetest voice with a kick of power. She used to do these covers with Tyler Ward (who has his own music and plays for quite a few youtube voices) and looked like she was having fun and that they were mixing well together. Now she does covers with a variety of people and doesn't look like she enjoys it anymore. She doesn't jam with these people either. I don't know, I think when you start hating what you're doing you need to take a step back and remind yourself why you loved it in the first place.

Despite that, she did a beautiful job with this song. 

[deathekeyofawesome]

Well, okay. He's just all kinds of adorable. I don't think that either of these songs were meant for simple rhythm and guitar and voice, but despite that I think he does a good job building it up with his voice. When he's getting really into it he tends to push a little too far, he dances a little spastically, maybe to keep himself up? But it's a really chill mash up and I have to love him because he reminds me of Leonard on Big Bang Theory. Movements and all. 

[deathekeyofawesome]

So the beginning of this song is pretty obnoxious. I admire her though; she's a teenager in high school and she's already putting herself out there and taking criticism for her music. She writes her own piano and I love the vibrato she has. She also changes the song and makes it her own, which I actually like more than the original. And I loooove me some Jason Mraz. 

[deathekeyofawesome]

I just recently found this group through a cover they did of Demi Lovato's "Give Your Heart a Break". I honestly wasn't too impressed with it because they had a little bit of a pitch problem and their voices didn't seem to blend very well, but I never judge a group on merely one song so I clicked on this one. 

First of all, that room is awesomely decorated and I give huge props to whichever of them did it. Second of all, I love how they were in a circle because it gave us the opportunity to look at how they fed off of each other's passion. Because that's really the winner there, right? Passion. If you feel it, it shows in your voice. If you connect with what you're singing, you sing it all the better. And they were feeding off of each other's passion and growing in passion and their voices meshed beautifully and the song really touched me.

I don't pretend to be outwardly religious. I'm much more of a private person, believing that what I believe and what I hope for is between me and god. It's my relationship and I don't need to prove anything to anyone. Even still, I love these kinds of songs because it's a simple prayer of thanks and love. They wrote this song themselves and the simplicity of the acoustic accompaniment paired with the complexities of their voices was beautiful. 

[deathekeyofawesome]

I've been watching these guys since I was in high school. They've definitely grown in their musical prowess and I really admire their mashups. This would be such a great jam session song! They managed to create their own background accompaniment that doesn't change for either of the two songs (Though I have to admit, I think Bieber's songs with all his talk of credit cards and such are the stupidest) and their tonal centers are so tight. It's really hard to mix your timbre with someone else's, but these boys manage it just fine.

And they do this for fun. 

[deathekeyofawesome]

Classes start again in exactly 12 days.

That means I have 19 days to polish my summer-learned "But Who May Abide" before my voice lessons start up again. 

It means that in 12 days my life will again be a cycle of class-practice room-work-practice room-homework-practice room-class.

It means I can kiss my social life goodbye, since I'll be taking day and night classes and working two jobs.

It means once again the people I will be seeing are the divas and divos of Webster and maybe I'm a little excited to be surrounded by people as CRAZY as me but despite that I am not looking forward to those educational methods classes.

It's almost September, so that means three months or so until performances, juries, and candidacy! Gotta get into the practice rooms!

It also means 12 days until I start muttering languages to myself as I walk to class to prepare for my voice lessons or diction classes. And having non-music students stare as I walk by because they think I'm possessed or something. Thanks, Exorcist. 

I'm so excited!