Practice Challenge week 2

This week's winner is Isabella Huerta.

Practice Session #1

Bella had a great first practice for the week spending 60 minutes learning the melody to her new song.  One of the things I'm discovering is that my students like to sing on loo, but it's actually one of my harder vowels to work with.  For compromise, I'm doing some singing on ee and working on improving the resonance of my oo even while I'm learning notes.  Also, Song to the Moon is not as new to me as Bella's song is for her, so I'll be doing some other things in this session as well, such as memorizing notes and rhythms and working memorized.  Also singing on solfege.  It's harder to memorize without words, but my visual memorization (remembering what the notes and rhythms look like) is getting better.  I also alternated playing and singing the melody.  Also compared similar sections checking rhythm and note changes.  Also listened to Renee Fleming once.  Then I worked notes for the last couple of lines of September, mostly playing and then buzzing.  Also some singing on solfege to solidify the tricky intervals.  Did a lot of buzzing to help the breath in the last phrase.  Solfege drill for notes top of 14 through page 15.  Also drilled on buzz (while playing the melody) on 14 to see how much I can get in one breath.  Also played the piano part a lot and drill my part against block chords to feel how it all goes to gather.

60 minutes.  Done.  Sometimes it's nice when students don't show up.

Practice session #2

Listening to the Gundula Janowitz recordings of September and Bein Schlafengehn on Spotify as I did other work.  11 minutes.

Bella's goal:  listen and pronounce worlds on rhythm
Bella's time:  36 minutes
Bells'a strategies:  clapping, speaking in rhythm

I'm working September today.  In addition to speaking the words in rhythm, I'm checking my IPA and translation so I'm getting the pronunciation exact and I'm memorizing the meaning as I work on the words.  I'm also working one section at a time and trying to memorize.  I also mixed in playing the melody while speaking.  This word drill stuff is great for when you can't make a lot of noise singing.
20 minutes took me up to  letter E., 2 more minutes between students working the first  measures after E, then played piano part from beginning for 5 more minutes.

20 more minutes working to letter B in Beim Schlafengehn focusing on words and rhythm.  Then a sing through of Im Abendrot, stopping to drill a few spots.  5 minutes

Today's total focused practice: 52
Total with listening: 62

I love these songs and I don't want to stop practicing, but life and stamina sometimes demand that.  I feel like I've made a lot of progress with these songs in this week's practice.  Even though I haven't done a lot of work on the breathing, being more certain on the notes, rhythms, and words has helped a lot and phrases I wasn't getting through last week are working this week.

A few days off  

Practicing was going great this week and then I didn't feel well and didn't do much of anything for a few days.  The good news is that the songs have still been going through my head, so I'm not totally ignoring them.

Practice session #3

Bella's goal:  sing words and notes together
Bella's time:  45 minutes
Bella's strategies:  working in sections

Because I went home sick on Wednesday, I didn't remember to grab any of the materials I needed for my practicing.  Consequently, I'm doing a modified version of this practice session and will repeat Bella's goals, times, and strategies for this session as my first day of practice for the next week.

Step 1: I did have my IPA and translations saved on the computer and I had access to multiple recordings both on CD and from online sources.  The first chunk of today's practice will be writing out the words to Im Abendrot as I listen.  That took about 6 minutes.
Step 2: Listen to the one section at a time (multiple times), trying to remember what the music looks like and working on memorizing the words.  Did a little bit of marking, but no full singing.  Worked on solidifying the memorization of the first two stanzas, letting the meanings of the words help me.  30 minutes.
Step 3: Just listening to this song over and over (different singer each time) as I do prep work for tomorrow's lessons.  40 minutes.

Total minutes for today:  76 (Only 36 minutes focused practice, but as I said, I'll get the rest done on the first day next week.)