Linzi’s 4th session with Anne Neilson
Well I was right, I have relaxed more and I am more comfortable now with trying new things, which is a massive help! I done my homework from last time and I feel that ‘Mary Hamilton’ has improved more and more each week. I found it difficult to learn’ MacCrimmon’s Lament’, and to imitate the singing of Lizzie Higgins. Lizzie uses ornamentation that I’ve rarely come across before with singers….it would be found on the pipes, and it was great to hear a different way of using ornamentation and decoration while singing. I think I done quite a good job of imitating Lizzie’s style for my first time trying, although it would take a long time to be able to sing like that without thinking too much about it! Anne and I had a nice chat about various other ways to decorate and ornament a song, and I took quite a lot from that.
Anne had given me a song called ‘When I was Young’ to start work on, as I liked the sentiments of it, unfortunately I lost the recording of the tune, so I thought of others that may fit and I put the lyrics to the tune of ‘Still I Love Him’, it did fit quite well and I now have the actual tune to learn for next time. I sang ‘Rothesay O’ to Anne and I was far more confident singing that that I have been with any of the others so far, I suppose it was because it’s a funny song and I am comfortable with the language used. Anne said it was the first time she had heard any real power in my voice over the sessions (I must be coming out of my shell!) and that we should continue to work this song, I was quite pleased about that as I do like it. In general we have discovered that my confidence is quite low and my repertoire needs a bit of work to vary things more, and as Anne said if we can do anything for either of those it’s a success! I’ve taken so much from the first four sessions with Anne and I look forward to seeing what else I still have to learn and working on more new songs. The number of songs Anne knows amazes me, and she even taught Arran (my 8 year old son) a funny song which was lovely to see, she really has a song for everything!