Sarah Boucher Lesson Summary 11/22

Sarah Boucher Lesson Summary 11/22

I came to my lesson without having time to do a lot of warm ups. I made sure to do some light warm ups like downward sighs and lip buzzes etc. I felt pretty warm but once I got to the lesson and sang a bit, a lot of tension crept in. I should have done more physical warmups like stretching, particularly my neck!

We worked on one of my Schumann pieces with my accompanist. We talked a lot about what Cindy helped me with in masterclass and Laurie noticed that a lot of my vowels are affected. I tend to pucker my lips on vowels that don't need it...ah I never noticed this before. So we worked a lot on speaking it and then singing it with the right amount of jaw movement. We moved on to one of my de Falla pieces and I realized that...I had myelinated some of my rhythms wrong!!!! Oh boy, stinkin' myelin. Anyways we got those straightened out! And did more unaffected speaking. Laurie had me watch my jaw in the mirror so that I could be mindful of any extraneous movement, or to stop myself when I was tempted to pucker my lips for no reason. After my accompanist left, we went back to the second Schumann and did similar things. Laurie had me just sing a section on o and that really helped relax my jaw and get my larynx low. She also had me try to hula hoop...which it turns out I really suck at so then she just had me pretend to hula hoop. When I pretended to hula hoop I was more grounded and it helped me to stop thinking about my jaw and just let it happen. The sound started to come out sounding more authentic towards the end of my lesson. I need to speak even more then I already do it practice this week. I also need to think more about vowels and watch myself in the mirror!