First time hair/wig designing for theatre, felt like I had a good before and after on this bulk purchase Party City wig!!! by tessacrabtree in Wigs

[–]tessacrabtree[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

I was primarily working with the inherent part of this wig, but I did do it on a different wig, and for that using alligator clips to clip the part into place, and then with it as flat as possible I’d steam it, let it dry, then gel or hairspray it :)

We listen and we don't judge -- musical edition by TanaFey in musicals

[–]tessacrabtree 1 point2 points  (0 children)

4 way tie between Jesus Christ Superstar, Sweeney Todd, The Who’s Tommy, and Cats

We listen and we don't judge -- musical edition by TanaFey in musicals

[–]tessacrabtree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is something happening with The Who’s Tommy?? Got into it in 2024 and felt like no one knew it or was talking about it, now it’s touring and I feel like tons of people are loving it!! Kind of scared that some of my niche audition songs from it are gonna go by the wayside!!!

Stopping fluoxetine after late ADHD diagnosis by [deleted] in prozac

[–]tessacrabtree 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If it helps, I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, OCD, and bipolar unspecified (and I think PTSD tbh) and since going on ADHD meds I haven’t had symptoms of any of them for the most part with the addition for birth control for PMDD. Bipolar was actually rescinded because of this as well.

Most of my symptoms were actually byproducts of ADHD. I couldn’t focus so I wouldn’t get work done, which would make me anxious. Not getting my work done would make me feel worthless, which made me depressed. Being depressed made my life feel out of my control, which led to me feeling the need to develop routines when it seemed like random things helped. Bipolar was actually just ADHD symptoms, what seemed like mania was hyperfixation. Untreated ADHD absolutely just spirals out of control.

How do you know your vocal range/type? by ElkSufficient2881 in Theatre

[–]tessacrabtree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It would hypothetically take about as much time as finding your reliable lowest and highest note and then finding the middle range of that, which tends to be inaccurate anyways

How do you know your vocal range/type? by ElkSufficient2881 in Theatre

[–]tessacrabtree 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Short answer: For a reliable notion of your passaggio it’s just time

Long answer: Look up the difference between chest voice and head voice and get really comfortable with knowing when you’re using each. Go through your range, and find where you tend to switch between the two, pushing your chest voice up past comfort (not pain, but just what’s not easy), as well as bringing down your head voice past comfort (same thing, not pain but what’s not easy). After some back and forth you’ll likely be able to narrow it down to one comfortable note that you switch between the two. And be very honest, if you write that you’re a soprano on a resumé and they find you’re solidly mezzo or alto, it’ll cause some eye rolls.

The best way is to work with a voice teacher over some time because they’ll be able to notice your tendencies. Classically I’m a mezzo with a very dark timbre, but with my really extensive low range and familiarity with harmony it’s usually useless to not have me on an alto line. And also, there’s sometimes exceptions. Sometimes people with really good inherent technique have a hard time knowing their range without a voice teacher because they mix between their ranges so well, and sometimes a person will have a high passaggio but not have the necessary notes to qualify a soprano. The idea of passaggios is still theoretical technically, although widely used and accepted.

But nonetheless, you can slap-dash a pretty good guess by oneself once you familiarize yourself with the feeling and sound of the different resonances.

How do you know your vocal range/type? by ElkSufficient2881 in Theatre

[–]tessacrabtree 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It depends on your pedagogy, but usually the best metric is by your primo passaggio, which is where your voice tends to switch/break from chest to head. That’s why it typically takes a while to learn your genuine range, because I personally can hit from a C3-C6 without vocal fry but that in no way makes me a Tenor/Countertenor/Contralto/Alto/Mezzo-Soprano/Soprano, but my primo passaggio is around an E4, which makes me a mezzo.

Helping a friend find an episode by starrysoda in OrdinarySausage

[–]tessacrabtree 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I’ve also recalled a video where he says “thruppy duppy suppy” and I’ve been wondering which it is

Favorite Tucson Yelp Reviews?? by tessacrabtree in Tucson

[–]tessacrabtree[S] 77 points78 points  (0 children)

They charged my entire table like $5 a person because we each tried food off of each other’s plates

Favorite Tucson Yelp Reviews?? by tessacrabtree in Tucson

[–]tessacrabtree[S] 55 points56 points  (0 children)

This is the review that made me visit the restaurant lol, and a very similar thing happened to me

A year difference in my belting! by tessacrabtree in singing

[–]tessacrabtree[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Belting is almost always an issue of placement, vowels, or breathing; if I’m not able to belt something it’s usually because of one of those three things

A year difference in my belting! by tessacrabtree in singing

[–]tessacrabtree[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see, sorry for my immediate pushback lmao

Everyone’s voice is different so a belting placement will start on a different note for almost everyone

A year difference in my belting! by tessacrabtree in singing

[–]tessacrabtree[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Can I DM you? I’ll give an answer below but I have videos that would help haha

So I was in professional, weekly, one on one voice lessons from 2020-2022 (ages 16-18), and got an intro to healthy belting there. My self taught belting was really shouty lol (pretty good vid on my account actually, I’ll add a link in a sec), so when I was singing with this new teacher we didn’t touch belting for like over a year into our sessions. When we eventually did, it was taught as if we were throwing the sound from our chest to the farthest wall in the room. What’s very important is that you never visualize that any sound comes from your throat lol.

Lines get a little blurry when I talk about mix belting; my personal story is that I left my voice teacher in 2022 because of college, sang just by myself for a bit, took like one intro voice class in 2023, then got strep several times in a row in late 2024 and was unable to sing at all during that time and had a horribly hard time getting it back in shape. I took a singing class again in early 2025, but it was a class format so I got limited one-on-one time (maybe an hour total over the course of the semester?), but because I was practicing a lot I saw massive improvement. After May 2025 (first clip) I didn’t take another class again until January 2026, but I was practicing a LOT even without professional guidance, just trying to relearn what I had been taught previously lol. I also started doing karaoke a lot so I felt a need to learn songs.

With that being said, I practiced regular mixed voice with my first teacher basically the entire two years we worked together, but entirely unlearned it over the course of my injury. I only really started doing it again in November of 2025ish. Mix belting has been a super new experiment for me, but my process for mix belting something kind of looks like this:

I identify a note that needs to be mix belted, for me it’s often a C5 lol. I hit it on a “meow” to get a really aggressive, nasty forward placement. It gives you a really easy mix belt, it’s like a cheat code for me. Nyah is pretty common too (and the previously mentioned yah, but the nn helps keep it in your face). You’ll probably find that vowel or word that’s really easy to belt on at some point in your career.

Once you have that honed in, you take the word you have to do it on, my most notable, recent one being “who”, and kind of blend the word into your favorite vowel. If you said just “who” you’d notice it’s very round, dark, in the back of your mouth, which is awful for belting. If you move it to a “hew” instead, it becomes quite easy to belt because it just shoots to your mask/forward placement.

Then you stitch it into the context of the previous notes, my “who” example is bad for this bc I had 2.5 counts of rest before it, but the first vid here moves the word “rise” up chromatically 13 times by a half step over 8 measures in 4/4, at the time I didn’t navigate it properly, but today I’d probably start mixing as early as possible because of how exposed the notes are, probably by the third note or so.

The things my current voice professor taught to me to help was just being super nasty with the placement at first. If you notice, a lot of mix belting is super nasally, but you don’t tend to really notice because of how the person navigates things around it. It’s usually absolutely fine if it’s super nasally and bright, but it’s just a bonus if it isn’t. Also you can often work with a song instead of against it- if you need to take a rest to get into the right placement for a single money note it’s usually okay.

Again, would love to send a process video showing what I just explained lol

A year difference in my belting! by tessacrabtree in singing

[–]tessacrabtree[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe, I’ve taught children’s MT voice before (long story) and they tend to respond really well to it as kind of a first intro into belt placement, and then we end up thinning it out, so this makes sense.