As you may very well know, I am a singer, and more specifically, a classical singer. I enjoy other types of music and singing anything (I'm a rockstar in my car when the radio is on), but classical vocal repertoire is what suits my voice best. I have always loved classical music, whether I played it in orchestra or sang it in choir, but didn't realize I had the ability to sing it as a soloist until high school. I didn't think it was an option for me. Being an "opera singer" seemed so far-fetched and something that was beyond my reach until my high school choir director recommended that I take some voice lessons and make my natural ability to sing even better. At the end of my junior year of high school I started studying with Allison Swensen-Mitchell, a professor of voice and opera at Willamette University back in my hometown, and by the end of my senior year I had won districts for mezzo-soprano voice and got to sing at state! The rest, as they say, is history.
My love affair with singing grew to something more. Before, I just opened my mouth when I felt like singing along to the radio or a CD or when I felt like singing in general. The sound would come out, and I was told it was a good sound, but I was young, what did I know? I thought I would be a country or pop singer, I never thought I would one day desire to sing opera. When I started taking voice lessons, the sound that came out of my mouth was different. It was something special, and it opened my eyes to what could be if I stuck with it.
Taking voices lessons also opened up my eyes to the fact that singing is hard. Like, really hard. People don't realize how much thought and work goes into singing. The human body and voice is the instrument, just as much as a violin or piano or trumpet is an instrument. And just like any instrumentalist who practices technique, there is technique for the vocal instrument that must be practiced to the point where it is in the body and second nature. Now, I am an instrumentalist myself (I played violin for 12 years) and know that any instrument is hard to learn and hard to perfect, but as someone who has seen both sindes of the coin, I will say that being a vocalist can be a little trickier at times. If I am having a bad day, didn't get enough sleep, am stressed out, the weather changes, or it's that time of the month for me, my voice can do some weird things. It is verrry sensitive. Just like when you feel better when you exercise and eat healthy, the voice feels and sounds better when you take care of your body first. It's crazy. And slightly annoying.
It has now been about 6 years since I started working on vocal technique and taking lessons. In the broad sense, I have made a lot of progress. That's what should happen, of course, and as you get older, things get a little easier that weren't before because sometimes the voice just needs some time t mature a little more. There have also been a lot of small battles fought along the way. I've worked on my breath support (and still need to), posture, relaxing, forward placement, etc. etc. etc. My teacher at Millikin, Terry Stone, was the one who really re-worked my voice. It's not that my teachers before weren't good, because they were, it was just time for my voice to take another step, and in a direction that would be way more healthy. When I came to Millikin, I wasn't singing with my voice. As a young singer, it is hard to know what you are supposed to sound like because the voice will change as you grow, so we imitate what we hear others doing to a point. My voice was controlled and pulled back so it would sound older, but I honestly hardly realized I was doing it (I was also still under the impression that I should be a mezzo, even though I clearly had become a soprano a few years back and was in denial, haha).
So in my 2 1/2 years here at Millikin, my voice was revamped and reworked into a much lighter, brighter, forward resonating soprano, and singing is much easier because I don't get tired as quickly and because everything is much more lined up, it is eaiser to switch from low to high back down to low. But once my placement got better, there was still something more I needed to do (that's the thing with voice, you take 1 huge step forward but then you have to take 2 baby steps back to fix something else that comes up!): let go. I am an OCD type of person and type A personality, and I like having control over things. It makes me feel more relaxed. The ironic thing is that, in singing, more control means that your vocal folds and musculature in your throat can't relax, nor can the rest of your body. So for me, this has been very hard. It was now easier for me to get higher, but if I were to let go, my voice might crack because my muscles weren't used to that relaxed sensation. When your'e on stage, you don't want that to happen of course, because it can be a little embarrassing. After all, that is all you on stage. Singing makes one very vulnerable, and sharing that with people, even though I love to perform, is at times terrifying.
My last semester as a student I sang Poppea in Monteverdi's opera and also performed my senior recital. I was able to give myself a pep-talk and say, "Hanna, in order to become a better singer and eventually the singer you want to be, you start now by using your new voice and just trusting your body and letting go up top." I did this a little during Poppea, but there was a moment in the practice room a few weeks before my recital where something clicked. I was singing a beautiful, floaty Reynaldo Hahn piece, and when I made the switch up to my high register, I relaxed, let go, and my voice didn't crack. And what came out was thrilling! Not only did it sound amazing to me but it felt amazing, like my entire body was ringing. I was so overwhelmed that I started crying because after so much frustration I was finally getting somewhere. And though I didn't let go 100% during my recital, I was able to show that my voice was doing something different, and the audience could hear something different and more free than my voice had been before. That felt good.
That being said, the journey is far from over. I still want to have control, but it's easier for me to let go, and when I do, it feels amazing. I am continuing to work with my voice teacher and he gave me some pretty intense Bach pieces, one being a cantata with multiple movements. This is very good for me because it suits my new and improved voice but it also kicks my butt into singing even better. Working on it can be discouraging at times, because it's really hard, but I do love a challenge. Lately, I've been wondering what I will do next year and if I will go to graduate school yet. I've even thought, "what if I don't?"
Yesterday in my voice lesson, I was given a little sign that I'm doing what I was meant to do. Forget the fact that I've always loved singing and have had an ability to do it. Sometimes this whole opera singer thing still seems crazy and unattainable, especially since my voice still has so far to go. I was singing through the second movement in the cantata, a recitative, and Terry told me that not only did I have to relax on the way up, which I had finally been doing, but I had to relax on the way down. In the music, he was talking about a particular spot that was in my middle range. Nothing high and brilliant or exciting, but 2 notes right next to each other that I had to go back-and-forth from for a couple of beats in the phrase. We sang through the section again and finished the piece, and in true Terry form told me that not everything was good (he means that in the best way possible), but that tiny section with the back-and-forth notes in my mid-voice was what stood out. He said, "People would pay you to hear you sing like you did right there. It was gorgeous"
Then he mentioned the Oregon Bach Festival, and suddenly I had a flash singing this beautiful music at home in Oregon. And it's all because I relaxed, let go, and sang. It was a reminder to me that I am on the right path, and that no matter how difficult, challenging, and frustrating it may be, I love singing and voice lessons and learning this challenging music. I let go and got a glimpse of what my life could be like. No matter how insane and far-fetched this whole life-as-a-singer thing may be, I know that if I work hard, let go, and just sing, someone out there will want to hear it, and that makes everything so worthwhile.
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