Dear Matthew,
Oh, do I know your pain!:)
I must tell you that I have had that very same problem with my current voice teacher, and I continue to have "arguments" with her about it at times. What we see as merely trying to understand, the teacher sees as being overly analytical of what we're being taught.
There's only one way that I've been able to progress in this situation. I have made a strong effort to experiment with the things I take from lessons, mainly because I can often discover what I couldn't in a half-hour session(that's a lot of pressure to perform!). Plus, I can even begin to move beyond those things and improve upon them myself. The only drawback is that my teacher sometimes sees this as trying to steal her job or something because she thinks I think about it too much. But that's just effective practicing! You can't ever hope to get anywhere with lessons if you don't fit your teacher's concepts into your own pattern of comprehension. After all, we're not our teachers!
Be brave. Unless you need to find another teacher, you should do whatever you must to trigger that mechanism inside your voice, so you'll start feeling the sensations of what you're learning and not just memorizing the words. Good luck!
Lisa Hart, mezzo-soprano Stephen F. Austin State University ________________________________________________________________________
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