Group 3
Welcome to the NEW TWO WEEK INTENSIVE on tonebase!
Improving your Lyricism (feat Chopin)
Post your progress with videos and written commentary on how things are going for you!
- Course Period: June 26 - July 10th
- Class Size: ALL are welcome!
- Optional check-In via Zoom: July 2nd at 11am PT
- ZOOM MEETING Recording!
- https://youtu.be/Fl-ExGT9aZY
Assignment #1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQpw6fZBOlE
- Pick a short piece (Mazurka, Nocturne, Prelude) or excerpt of a longer piece (Ballade, Polonaise, Scherzo, Sonata, Concerto). Focus on lyrical/slow sections.
- Learn bass carefully, labelling all chords and cadences.
- SING melodic line. Practice singing until your voice can identify the melody instantly.
- Submit a video: playing the Bass while singing the Soprano.
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Assignment #2
https://youtu.be/ri2UD1z8sKE?si=w36XWzqb_rao3RAu
-Label all breathing points with an apostrophe between phrase markings. Practice deep breaths between significant points or use a regular breath for phrase changes.
-Sing Bass notes of all chords while playing Soprano melody.
-Submit a video: playing hands together (performance).
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Ok, things I already learned:
- Solfege needs time. I tried and wrote it underneath, but to read it, sing in right pitch AND play the bass was too much. But I enjoyed trying it
- Really had a hard time to get the pitch of the arpeggio plus descending 5th in the last run. singing is really difficult
- Chopin has bigger lungs than I do.... whoaaaah, some phrases are looooong
- After 20 minutes my voice develops from dying turkey to improv theatre opera singer
Nice experience haha
And I'd like to "breathe" already on the deep sol-note befor the theme repetition (3 notes earlier). Also practiced that, but did wrong in the recording. But my breath mark is there ;)-
Dagmar i love your beautiful and powerful voice. What a range you got! Nice idea to do a warmup! Hard to hit those high notes otherwise. I moved everything down by a whole octave down, but then it feels different.
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Dagmar Great job!
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Dagmar Lovely!
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Dagmar Great singing, Dagmar! Quite a big range in this one! Yes, Chopin has very big lungs :P
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Dagmar great singing!
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A really late submission here.
I haven't sing in decades - so this is particularly hard! Few things i learn 1) It's so different singing out loud vs singing in my head/humming. 2) Even reviewing my own singing, i realize i chopped so many long phrases. 3) need to conserve breath for longer phrases, and need more time to take a deeper before Louder sections.
Very helpful assignments!
Reviewing my own singing, i realize i tend to “die too soon” (eg. decrecendo too early before the real end of the phrase). Something to improve on.
I had sung it in the original octave, but the A4 was just too high for me. Singing it an octave lower gives a very different feel due to the color. Which makes me realize depending on the color of the voice (and the where it lands within the range of the singer), the phrasing might change to suits the singer.
not sure why the link says private-- it was viewable a few hours ago. Maybe this link might work? https://youtu.be/rc9HodhZ3s8
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Lc I know exactly what you mean when you say singing out loud is quite different than how we hear it in our head! This was a very interesting experiment with me. But, you totally nail the dynamic range and phrasing that you are aiming for when you sing!
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Lc That was really beautiful! Love how you maintain your dynamics in the singing and left hand.
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Lc oh lovely :)
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Lc So nice to hear you sing! And very fun that we are doing the same piece :) Looking forward to hear your progress threw the ballade.
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Lc wonderful that both singing and playing are so expressive!
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Sindre Skarelven Thanks! I learnt so much from listening to yours. Good luck with the next assignment on singing the bass. I'm tripping left and right.
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Lc good work on Op. 52 so far - this is a very tough piece to capture in the voice and takes a lot of practice. A few details about the 16ths in theme 1: (1) they need to be significantly lighter in tone (think of feathers floating in breezes of varying speeds), (2) rubato at 1:12 is nice - do this kind of thing at least once more, (3) 16ths timing needs to change each time they are played to keep them fresh/different. You have a good sense of the LH chords, in the second phrase (repeat of theme 1, 0:59), you start exactly right in the colour and softness, but then you soon grow into louder and more espressivo sound: good! Just keep the espressivo to a subtler level so this phrase sounds loftier and upward in its relationship to the first. Could you post a video of the first 7 bars?
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Jarred Dunn thank you for crystal clear feedback. I'll try singing again with those in mind.
Here's the first 7 bars.
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Here a practice video. I hope I got the right idea. This is not so easy
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Andrea Buckland lovely playing and very secure singing! And a good idea to play the bass note, I will try that, too. Because I can't find the pitch only with my voice, that's too overwhelming
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Dagmar danke, liebe Dagmar!
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Andrea Buckland Sounds so beautiful!
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Andrea Buckland I love how you sing this!
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Andrea Buckland Thank you so much for showing me how to do this!
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Andrea Buckland You have a lovely singing voice. And, this is an impressive job at a very difficult task!
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Tammy Gail Starr Natalie Peh Vidhya Bashyam Thank you, my dear friends! After this TWI we can form a virtual choir here on Tonebase! :)
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Andrea Buckland Well done, Andrea! I will forever think of your beautiful singing when listening to this nocturne.
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Andrea Buckland Yes this is the right idea and it is also not so easy! But your singing sounds exactly as I hoped in lyrical sense - we need more focus and breath support to sustain the same bass tone when playing a melody because the changing tones pull on our focus. But when playing "normally" our ears remain attuned to the bass line developing along with the melody, at times we feel crescendo even when the piano cannot make one and this intensifies our relationship to lyricism and colour. Your melody playing is much better and more natural when singing bass. Next video - could you try adding more colour and lyricism to your bass notes?
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