It also does take courage to show your “before” pictures. It’s like someone who has lost a lot of weight and shows the various stages in the journey. (This is when I was size 22 … This is when I was size 14 … This is when I was size 10 … These are my abs before I began to work out, etc…)

Because the day-to-day changes — or even month-to-month, or year-to-year, as you have noted above — are so gradual and can seem so insignificant, it can cause someone to lose heart unless they are aware of the true nature of how it’s going to proceed.

I once heard the advice to compare myself to where I’ve been, not where I want to be, because I would feel en-couraged rather than dis-couraged. Your post goes a long way to help adjust the brain to that better way of looking at things.

I plan to come back and “study” this page, because it contains a lot of really great information. Thanks for being brave and sharing.

I totally agree with you about your first comment–stylistically it is much more correct. I had such a yen for early music at the time of the first recording, and you can really hear it. I also know that, even in an opera audition, I really shouldn’t add the Bb–it just felt too nice not to at the time! (God, I’m so cheesy–but you knew that.)

About the second part of your comment–over and over again in our friendship I am reminded that we are each at completely opposite ends of our fach. Our voices operate in such wildly different fashions, and the perspective you bring to the table really shows that–where I spent my vocal adolescence getting into the habit of straightening everything and had to spend years loosening it up, you’d acquired the opposite habit of forcing vibrato and having to remove the excess. In both our cases we were artificially making our voices do something they didn’t want. I think the truth for both of us is likely somewhere in the middle. As ever, the danger is in thinking in absolutes and trusting how it sounds rather than how it feels. I need to not think “every note needs to vibrate” but instead that the vocal mechanism seems to be relaxed. I had gotten into the habit of thinking vibrato=I must be doing it right! You’re totally right to point out that that isn’t always the case. When I do my audition recording, I’ll make it a point (if I have time) to try an “early music” recording where I let my voice err on the side of straight tone and a “Joan Sutherland” take where I let my voice err on the side of vibrato and I’ll pay strict attention to what it feels like when I do both and see which my voice seems to want to do. At the very least, it’ll be an interesting experiment!

About your last paragraph–here I just think you’re lying. An instrument as awesome as yours didn’t spring up overnight! Personally, I’d love to hear anything you have lying around from your days as a Broadway baby. As ever, thanks for being so thoughtful. I was telling Beth last week when she was here that I don’t know what I’d do without you two and Jenn to be my peers/mentors.

1) Sweet! I can hear that extra darkness because I know the context–within the next few weeks I’ll post one of the clips from 2004 and you’ll REALLY hear what I’m talking about. By the time the 2005 clip had been recorded it had gotten a lot better.

2) Isn’t that amazing? I listen to the gasping between phrases and I can’t believe I made myself work so hard for such a slender sound!

3) I can’t tell you how amazing it is to hear that. It is incredible to look back and realize just how many hours, how much breath, how much thought, and how much effort went into getting here. Anytime I start feeling sorry for myself or unaccomplished, I should reread that part of your comment and remember that it has been a ton of work, and it HAS paid off.

I f’love you and I cannot WAIT to hear your response post! I know that you’ll have an amazing perspective to bring to the table as always, but especially given events of late.

Also, I am ashamed to realize I have never heard you beatbox! Next time I’m in New York (and not running to an audition) we have to fix that!

First, of all the sounds, I actually hear it as the most early-music-esque — that straight-tone reeeeally works for the style and makes a lot of the ornaments incredibly interesting (and stylistically accurate) even if you didn’t know what you were doing with them. Singing it the way it is currently is great for opera auditions, but it sounds a lot more like a Joan Sutherland interpretation (don’t smack me for saying that, I just mean in terms of vibrato and the ending Bb run — I’ve used that one too and more than coach have said stylistically it just sucks) than truly early music. Might be worth it to record one version for opera apps and one for early music.

Second, I actually hear this as the most vocally honest, and this ties into the coaching I had with Don and the things he hears in my voice that I can only very occasionally hear in yours. I picked up on this because of the several comments you made in this post saying that every note or nearly every one has to have vibrato. This is why I decided several years ago, figuring that any straight tone I ever sang was the result of a poorly crafted voice and needed to be remedied. However, Don was telling me to let the voice blossom naturally — I’m forcing many notes to vibrate before they’re ready, and this causes an artificial extra wobble in the voice. I think this is why healthy coloratura almost feels like half-singing, because there’s literally not enough time for the voice to produce vibrato. So Don had me work the whole time on not forcing the vibration — in other words, some straight tone at the beginning of a note is NOT bad, it’s just a starting point. For example, on the last recording I think I hear it on the Eb of “fe-DEL” right before the close of the A section. The note is unstable because of a) passagio — needs more stretch, b) forced vibration. So, I actually love the first version because when the voice does vibrate, it’s because it’s good and ready. Again, I don’t hear it very often in your voice, but I think these three vocal examples show pretty well the differences.

I agree with Beth, you are truly awesome and brave to publish these. However, I don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about anyway; in no way did I EVER sound as completely lovely as you do in that first recording. The delicacy and sweetness with which you approach the music really shows how much you cared about it and how hard you worked to perfect what you could. Baby Doe next!

I f’love this idea and will contribute some recordings of my own, either here or on my own site, as soon as I pick some out and make some new recordings. Then I can join in you the Land of Courageous Overpoweringly Awesome Ladies.

I can say that I’ve done similar things with my beatboxing, comparing what I sounded like in my first days learning to what I sound like today. It’s eye-opening! Sometimes, though, you find little glimmers of something you lost along the way that you want to bring back and re-learn (for beatboxers, it could be old routines or forgotten sounds / rhythms).

-n.