Fourth Week, Tired Yet?

 

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Only being four weeks in, you would think that there would not be any burn out yet. But I have experienced a hard crash in my motivation, especially after the hurricane and needing to get back into the focus of things again. I find myself already losing energy across this week and slowing down. This week would be the first week that most of my classes would have test. So this week was tiring and I think I allowed myself to drag emotional throughout the week.

I found myself not enjoying these activities like I normally do, and I think I went into this week emotional drained. This did not help my practice or my emotional battery. This week has been a little rough. I slacked on practicing and did not want to enjoy any music. Hopefully this was just a rough week and I will pull myself out of it after all of the tests and with the hurricane past us!

Last weeks singing lesson was interesting to say the least, but not interesting in the good way. I walked into my lesson a few minutes early  and my vocal professor expressed how all over the place she felt. She was still getting used to everything on campus. It is the fourth week and she just received her key and the piano was still not in tune.

We would start to do warmups and she would ask what we would be working on today. I told her that the only music we had reviewed together was Dead Mom from the Beetlejuice musical which was during our virtual lesson. She looked at me and then said, "No, we didn't have a virtual lesson." 

I was confused and told her that we had one last week before the hurricane hit. She would apologize stating that another student is also working on the same song and I look like three other students of hers at Southeastern. She would ask me my name again, ask what we talked about reviewing, and then start warming up again. 

This was a little devastating to say the least. I felt that I was just another student instead of an individual that she wants to get to know, but I also kept in mind that she is a new professor that needs time to adjust and get to know all her students.

We would start warming up and before completing them, she would grab a paper towel and ask me to stick out my tongue and hold it. She stated that my tongue was getting in the way and my sound would be more forward and louder without having to do anything but hold my tongue. I was pulling everything in my mouth back and becoming tight.

It was extremely weird, but I would hold my tongue and find myself fighting against my own tongue. As I would continue my warm ups, the higher I would go, the more my tongue wanted to go into the back of my throat. She would continue this and even have me hold my tongue throughout a new song she assigned me to help me feel what singing without a barrier will feel like.

She would assign me a song from Les Mis, In My Life. We talked previously last time that she wanted to work on my head voice with me and assigned this song since it is extremely high and in my upper range. She told me that I would be singing this song completely in head voice which is uncomfortable and a little upsetting for me. As much as I want to grow my head voice, I want to expand every aspect of my voice as well, but I understand we need to work one thing at a time. 

She would let me listen to the song before having me hold my tongue and playing my notes as I sang along for the first time. Leaving with with the homework of learning the rest of the song throughout the week

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Guitar practice this week was challenging! I had the strum pattern down but I still could not get my left hand to move across the strings fast enough to play a full song. I would find myself getting caught up trying to find the next chord and ultimately just panicking before placing my hands somewhere on the strings.

My guitar professor was extremely impressed this week! I walked in, sat down, and then he asked me what I have been working on. I said I had the strum pattern down for Brown Eyed Girl but I was rushing and failing at the chords. 

He would ask me to show him what I meant, and like normal, it started off great with the first chord but as soon as I would move my fingers I would be back to panicking. I would keep strumming through it, maybe getting two out of five of the chords correct as I strummed. Therefore, he would ask me to close my eyes and just allow my fingers to feel the strings. He would then ask me to find each chord with my eyes closed, and surprisingly, I did it! I was hesitant but I found all the chords even with my eyes closed. This demonstrated that I knew where the chords were but I needed to trust myself that I could find them.

He would also give me tips this lesson on exercises I could do to help improve just finding the chords and then moving across the strings. I would slide to different string or simply look at the strings as I would move. All these little excersies was what my lesson made up. It was a simple but very effective lesson because he was able to target exactly what I was struggling with.

Guitar is still easier and harder than I thought it would be! 

This week has been a rollercoaster of tiring and exciting at all the same time. I learned this week that I cannot put all my expectations on the music staff because they are people with many students as well. But, I also learned that I want and crave a personal connection with my teacher. I want someone who tells me that they want to see me succeed and someone who wants to get to know me.

    - Emma Peppo