Your Everything.

Tonight Z and I sat down (or rather I stood, he sat) and I did my second attempt ever at voice recording.* Now, I record myself all the time. Z got me this cool little voice recorder, and I probably use it more than my laptop. But singing random lines while driving down the I-5 is a bit different than staring at a mic and feeling the squeeze of headphones against your head.

But there I was again standing as squarely as I could. Focusing on breathing. The whole experience isn't pleasant, but I want to be able to do it so I might as well start learning what it is I need to be learning. And I need to learn a lot. Like for one, how my body reacts to this particular type of pressure. And this is how it reacts: It balloons with air. Yep, all that deep breathing makes my insides hurt. Maybe that and the lack of food today, but I spent the entire song trying not to burp. Great, right?

(Also for the love of god eat something really substantial 90 minutes prior so your stomach doesn't grumble at random.)

This experience made some other things oh so clear like that I need to really learn how to breath. Breath properly. Breath properly for voice. When I'm in my lessons I do it right, but I don't do it well. So when I write myself into really long lines of lyrics and I need to access that ability, well, I should learn that ability.

Other strange things: I don't have a head cold, but there is something about how the headphones squeezed against my head felt *like* a head cold, and so my singing began to sound like I had a slight head cold. Not sure how to overcome that one.

And finally, I wasn't really ready to record tonight. I only know that now in retrospect. I had never really sat down with this music and assessed it for breathing and annunciation ability. I know now to do that. And then once I have that figured out I need to practice it, standing, with headphones squeezing against my ears and with the music in them low. To prepare to record I need to practice as if I was recording. I don't need to do this every time I practice music, but in the run up to actually recording a piece.

Well, onward!

*The last time I tried this was for my 12 Days of Christmas animation years ago and then ended in me more or less swearing I'd never try officially recording my voice again. Disaster. Totally demoralizing.