Weekly post, Tanner Doyle

 Personal: This week's lesson with Thomas was effective. We began with by discussing and deciding on what repetoire I will actually sing this semester. I have a few song cycles that I'm preparing, potentially for a senior recital, So I'm going to start this semester by doing about half of each one that I would want to sing. After that we sung "It all fades away" from Bridges of Madison County. We started with this one mostly because it's the one I know the best. The hardest part was making some decisions about vowels. I was trying to sing it with a darker vowel that ended up losing its forward focus. Then, We talked about "warm downs". Between work school and rehearsals i sing a lot, so he taught me how to use straw phonation to massage my vocal folds after a long day of singing.


Collegial: I was really impressed with Garret Andrew's performance of "Someone Like You". From his body language it seemed like he was pretty nervous in the beginning. As he started singing, I really loved the natural resonance of his voice. I also thought that his sense of dynamics and phrasing in the song was very sensitive! Although many parts of this song repeated, he was aware of where the big moments were, and the emotional weight of the words he was saying. The only thing I found myself wanting more of was that beautiful baritone resonance. I think a little more breath under a focused vowel will help augment the natural beauty of his voice. Overall, a moving performance!

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