Singing versus Speaking

Another thing Amanda and I figured out in the first session is that I have not really been using my singing voice much recently. It felt really different to match her pitch as she got higher and I had to really "sing" versus kind of speaking/singing. I was in choir enough years to know the difference and recognize how different it felt when I sang properly. So the next day I walked my dog down a bike path in the woods and sang and sang and sang to work up my singing muscles again! It was lovely.

Musical Auditory Therapy

I asked a friend, Amanda, one of the musicians at my church, if she'd be willing to do some musical auditory therapy with me to help me regain some of my sorely missed music. Neither of us quite knows what we are doing, so we are exploring it together. We recorded part of our first session. We started out with me trying to match a single pitch at a time. She sang a note, and I tried to copy it. She gave me hand signals to tell me to go up or down, and when I was matching it. One cool thing was I came to recognize a sense of resonance in my head when the pitches matched! This is going to be a fascinating process, to say the least. Then I sang Jesus Loves Me; then we sang it together so I could match her pitch as we went. I can't really quite tell when I'm on pitch yet. I'm closer sooner on the first few notes above middle C; after about G it gets pretty fuzzy.

Another friend told me today that Amanda said she saw (heard) amazing progress just in one hour. WooHoo!! I'm not sure how often we will meet, but I will keep you all posted, for sure...

A Magical, Sacred, Holy CI Moment

This entry is actually from July 18, on my yahoo CI group--I keep forgetting to update this journal...sorry about that.

At my church, we celebrate the Eucharist each Wednesday noon. Sometimes the priest, who majored in french horn at Wheaton and is a phenomenal musician, will end the celebration with a familiar worship chorus. I usually sort of whisper/sing along. Today he sang, "Father, I Adore You..." I simply could not sing along with the melody, I ~had to sing harmony, which came out as the round. And I forgot to whisper. Ok, I was enjoying how it felt to sing and worship and I decided to sing how loud an ordinary shy person might. It was lovely. I was just lost in the music. Suddenly, as he approached the end of the third verse, I figured out that, to do this properly, I had to sing the last line after everyone else was done...all by myself. Pre-CI: no problem. Now.....? Eeeeeee. I often only mouth the words because I can't find the pitch. I decided it was my offering of worship, and many people who can HEAR can't sing on pitch...so I just sang on, singing the last line alone. I heard Fr. Jay say very softly, "Thank you." I opened my eyes and he had a big grin on his face. He proclaimed the closing blessing and dismissed those who have to leave and invited the rest of us to stay for our time of prayer.

I HAD to ask him...."So....was I on pitch?" The big grin came back and he said, "You were *dead on*!!!" WooHooo!!!! He understands how much I love music and how much I miss singing and he finds it amusing I know all these old choruses he's pulling out of his college days. I reminded him we both went to mainstream Protestant colleges at the same time! He laughed.

BUT I WAS ON PITCH!!!! Oh, it was a glorious feeling. I haven't had somebody give me that feedback in SOOO long, especially since my CI. And it was such a holy, beautiful moment, singing that last line, "How we love You." So I'm not sure if Fr. Jay's "Thank you" was to me or
to God--or BOTH. OK, probably God. He is the one who has brought me so far....in so many ways.

Yay, God!