29 Januay, 2014: First performance of "I'm Here"

I was ill this week with my voice taking the brunt of it - being hoarse and very unreliable. Knowing this, I took an extra half hour before the lesson to rehearse my musical theatre solo, "I'm Here"from The Color Purple.

I began with a light and gentle warm up of lip trills to a simple major, starting from the bottom of my range and working my way up to the highest that was comfortable before descending back to the bottom. I repeated this a few times which helped to increase my range ever so slightly but my voice was still void of elacity.

I then sang the song through an octave lower than the original pitch, but even still on the higher notes (which weren't particularly high for tenor and baritone voices) my voice had a very crackly and raspy tone to it which is not natural for me. This first run through was really just to test the condition of my voice and if I could sing through the entire song without feeling strain - which to a fair degree I did, though it didn't always sound that way.

The second time I sang the song through, I tried to use hand gestures to communicate the lyrics of the song so that it would be more of a performance than a recital. I also experimented with slight changes to the melody to avoid certain notes which were either unobtainable due to my vocal condition or just did not sound in any way pleasing.

Considering my vocal health at the time, I feel my performance was a reasonable success. I remembered all the lyrics and made attempt to perform the song rather than just sing it. However, from the feedback I received from my tutor and classmates, I could have communicated with my eyes by not having them closed for so much of the performance. Also, on the last note, my voice was noticeably poorly as the crackly, raspy and battered sound returned.

Once my voice is back on form, I will be rehearsing and performing the song in a lower key than the original song, which is written for a female mezzo-soprano voice, rather than a whole octave lower, which at times was grating at the very bottom of my range.

Fantasia Barrino - American Idol alum and Grammy Award-winning artist who won a Theatre World Award for her portrayal of Celie on Broadway from 2007-2008 - performing a shortened version of "I'm Here" at the 61st Annual Tony Awards

In this lesson, I also realised a longstanding dream to play the violin. We rehearsed the Academy Award-winning song "Falling Slowly" from Once, which shares its title with the musical stage adaption. I had never really played a violin before and so it was difficult holding it comfortably whilst bowing. Initially I was also very timid in the way that I bowed so the sound wasn't being produced properly, however, I did produce audible and arguably pleasant sound. Furthermore, as I am not an experienced sight reader of music and as I didn't have the sheet music for the piece, I attempted to improvise melodies, which complimented the song when I got the bowing right every once in a while.

It was a great experience playing the violin and it is definately an instrument I will be practising on - I may even get my own soon, I love them that much.