Monday, September 7th 2009

Ah, how strange to watch someone grow up. I just watched a series of videos of Philippe Jaroussky, recorded at different stages of his singing career. You can hear how his voice has developed from the previous stage, and it's really interesting because had I not taken time to listen to his earlier recordings, I would have assumed that he has/had always been this good.
It is particularly obvious since he sings coloratura, so in the earlier stages, one can hear the "rough sketches" of the skill. It took a lot of skill to sing the pieces from "Carestini", but those were the first few pieces I heard him sing. Now that I think about it, he took many years to get to that level, about 10 years or so, of singing and voice lessons. This is surprisingly motivating!

I've been practising my singing almost every day now. Brushed up on my Vaccai, learnt the "runs and scale-passages" exercise which turned out to be surprisingly easy. Simple tune, too. I've got to get the speed up, so it's going to take lotsa practise to perfect it. Must... perfect... it..

Had tuition this morning. My teacher doesn't seem so weird now that I've known her for a few months. She's been pretty patient with me, but I've been putting in a lot of effort, too. We've arranged to have two sessions per week, starting next week. I feel pretty good about myself because she just gave me my TYS back, marked, and I didn't do badly at all, for the latest papers she marked.

I studied SOVA for an hour, then I treated myself to two hours out of the house. To my surprise, Dad didn't really demand to know the reason for which I was going out. He did ask briefly, but I didn't give a straight answer. I just told him I wanted to get out of the house, so he gave me $10 and asked to buy two Polar chicken pies home. So I skipped to "Cash Converters" and bought some stuff. I bought the French film "Amelie", and a "Mr. Bean" soundtrack. Despite being selfish, Mr. Bean is a pretty smart character, a happy-go-lucky figure.
I also bought another VCD called "Palindromes". I think it would be appropriate to wait until I'm alone at home to watch this, it's M18!