One of the side benefits of taking singing lessons is that you start noticing new things in the music you listen to. That can happen even with songs you’ve already listened to dozens of times. Sometime during last week, it occurred to me as I was listening to All night, all day, by Lawrence Brownlee. There’s a part in the song where he sings with the UH falsetto-sound, I used during my lessons. Or, at least, it seemed to me! 😄
My idea here was to use this fragment of the piece to practice falsetto myself. I know by experience, that making a practice session or routine more fun or interesting always pays off. My goal was to make the practice time more entertaining. To add one more reason to look forward to it. This one is not in German, but hopefully, it will help me with the other songs!
Below you can listen to the exact part of the song (2:10). I highly encourage you to listen to the full song, though!
Lawrence Brownlee is a leggero tenor (ie. has the highest male range within the tenor register). Actually, in the song above, he even sings a high E at the end (although it sounds more like a falsetto). In any case, he can sing that same note (and even one more, and F), in full voice. He’s also one of my favorite tenors!
The Eighth Week of Practice
This week I didn’t have a singing lesson (my teacher was sick). I had the opportunity to practice every day with the vocalization routine. As I had already anticipated, it made it easier to get to practice. Most days, after finishing the routine I practiced one of the songs we’re studying. This week I focused on Morgen, by Richard Strauss.
Even though my register hasn’t expanded a lot, I feel like I can sing better in the medium register than before. One thing that surprised me a lot for weeks now is the huge difference I find in the high register among the different vowels. It’s not so black and white as I thought: I might be able to sing a high G with an ‘I’ vowel, but not yet with an ‘A’ sound. And that’s perfectly fine!
Audio Recordings
Here’s a falsetto vocalization using a part of All night all day (lowered a minor third!):
And this is my latest version of Morgen, by Richard Strauss (recorded on November 24th, 2021 – piano by Mandee Madrid-Sikich):
That’s all for now! 😊
