3/10/2011 Sarah

Sarah's pitch memory is gaining ground and she can accurately imitate back the intervals of  a 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, ascending.  The 2nd is more difficult for her because of the smaller distance between the notes and we just today began an exploration of what a 1/2 step sounds like.  We also started working on rhythm, which she has no internal sense of.  We sang "Dona nobis pacem" together, myself next to her left side and tapping the rhythm on her back while she kept her eyes closed to limit her sensory input.  Felt like a Helen Keller moment...

3/2/2011 Sarah

Amazingly, Sarah is preparing for an audition as chorus for a local musical theater production.  She's done one production with them already but she's nervous about the audition because it's for a new director.  We are going to have an extra session this week to get her independant on her vocal line.  Aside from that pressure, a very good discussion today.  Practicing an octave glide with her on different vowels, but the same pitches.  I explained that she needed to find a way to differentiate between the color/vibration change that happens because of pitch change and the color change that happens because of vowel change - otherwise she would change the pitch when the word changed.  She understood, but then asked why it wasn't an issue in her speech.  It was a moment of brutal truth.  Her vowels in her speech are almost identical, giving her the characteristic deaf "slur" to her speech.  Her face changed when I told her, and then became strong with determination as I explained that this process would help her speech as well.