First I started with the laying on
the floor exercise, with knees bent.
I instructed that the arch in between his lower back and the floor
should be minimal, but not completely gone. He thought it should be like a crunch, with tense abs, and I
told him that instead I wanted it very relaxed. I told him to put his arms out as if he was dead. I tried to explain the concept of
tilting the pelvis away from the body in order to lengthen the spine, but after
a couple of tries explaining it in different words, I don’t think he really
understood. I also told him to
lengthen his neck, in a slight chin tucking position, but nothing too extreme. The point is to make your neck in a
straight line all the way from the bottom of the spine up.
I
had him breath in for three, out for three while in that position. I asked him to notice that his lower
back is pushing into the floor a bit, and he didn’t feel that sensation at all,
and he asked if he was doing it wrong.
I rephrased, saying that his body should expand from all sides. Sides, back, and stomach are all
expanding. I told him that what
helps me is that I pretend I’m breathing out of my butt. (I want to come up
with a less crude way to say that, perhaps next time I’ll say that there are
nostrils on his lower back.). It’s
as if the whole lower half of the body is expanding to bring in air. He then asked if what I meant was that
the stomach should go out and the chest should be a little tighter. I rephrased by saying that the chest
should be relaxed in breathing, while the lower body is more active in
breathing. The chest should be
free, but breath isn’t happening in the chest. It feels like expanding like a balloon.
Then
I had him stand up, and asked him to maintain the same feeling of the spine
being in one line. I also told him
that I like to imagine that there is a string attached to the crown of my head,
and my whole body is dangling from it.
My head is perfectly level above my shoulders, and the spine is in line
below it. At this point, his
shoulders seemed to look a bit tense, and I wondered whether I gave him too
much instruction at once. So I
told him about the toaster concept.
The shoulders are a bit back, but they are just resting inside the
toaster. I asked him if this new posture
felt totally weird, and he said it felt totally
weird. But I assured him that
there was just an adjustment period.
I told him to not feel pressure to be stiff. But that probably wasn’t the best way to say that.
So
then we moved to breathing exercises standing up. I told him to keep the sense of liftedness when he breathes,
especially when he exhales. Trying
to prevent collapsing on the exhale.
We want to keep what we have while we breathe. I had him breathe in for 3 and out for 3, and while he was
doing that, I asked him if he could still feel the expansion in his back, butt,
sides, and front. He said that he
felt it a little bit. I said he
could think about all breath energy happening below the level of the rib cage,
and the chest being still and relaxed.
Slight rising and falling of the chest is fine, but that shouldn’t be
the main place breath happens. I
explained the idea of the diaphragm to him, but he already knew all that
because he took human anatomy.
Another
breathing exercise: sniff in for 3 counts and breathe out of the nose for 3 counts. I switched up the numbers to 4 and 4,
etc. I instructed him to get to
full capacity and then completely empty by the end. I wasn’t sure if that was a good instruction. I heard a lot of tension in the sniff,
because it was a very noisy sniff.
I used the analogy of sniffing something from your fridge that you are
not sure if it’s still good or not.
You wouldn’t just take in a huge noisy whiff, it would be a silent, but
thorough intake of air. Then we
continued, it was a lot quieter.
We switched it up to 5 & 5, 3 & 6. I mentioned that when we switched these numbers around, the
strategy has to change, because you have to save air for the longer
number. I asked him to do this on
his own while he was walking to school, and told him it might be a good
activity for breath awareness.
Then
we moved to some speaking exercises with [ni ne na no nu] His voice was in the gravelly range
vocal , so I asked him to pretend that he was asking a question, in attempts to
get the pitch range a bit higher.
Then I asked him to pretend that he was yelling to his mom across the
house and say the same vowels. At
first he didn’t really sound to much different, so I told him that the person
he was talking to wasn’t far away enough, and he agreed. So I challenged him to compare it to
real life, and he told me that he wasn’t as loud as I was in real life. That gave me some good context to
understand hi better. I told him
that I don’t want “singer” Gavin, I want the real Gavin.
We continued the same exercise by adding
connectivity to the [ni ne na no nu].
Then we added pitch (starting on Eb3), and just had him sing it the same
way he spoke it. It was
interesting to note that I could tell when “singer Gavin” had engaged, because
his head starts to move with each syllable and pitch change. That head problem came into play when
pitch came into play. So I
reminded that he’s still just talking, but it happens to be one pitch. I switched pitches around in the range
of C3-G3 in random intervals. The
longer the exercise went, the more inclined he was to return to his head
jerking state.
I
then mentioned how singing is something that we think of as something postured,
and different than our true selves, and that’s what I hope to get rid of. However, he said that he didn’t feel
that way… so I guess he’s already a perfect student haha. I just tried to conclude with the fact
that speaking and singing should be very connected.
Then
we transitioned to falsetto exercises.
I asked him to do a falsetto sigh.
I used the analogy of an old lady being shocked at something
inappropriate (totally came up with that on my own haha). His first couple sighs were really quick
and it seemed that he would scoop up to the pitch, and then go down quickly to
the vocal fry. I told him to not
worry about pitch at all, just start where he wanted to. He was still pretty short, so I asked
him to change his sigh to a sigh of relief rather than a quick sigh because I
asked him to. That improved it a
lot. In general it seems that
Gavin does better if I do the first couple tries with him. I had to instruct him to keep his
shoulders relaxed when sighing.
I
reminded him of the breathing exercises we worked on earlier, and the
projection we worked on with [ni ne na no nu], and keeping the sigh
released. He said, “Holy crap,
that’s a lot of remember.” hahaha, that’s how I feel in my lessons. At the end of the lesson, I tried to
add pitch again, and we did [ho] downward 5 note scales, starting on Bb3. The habit of scooping up to the pitch
occurred again, so I reminded that the 5 note scales should sound and feel like
the sigh. (He was emphasizing
every note.) Another way I
explained was that the 5 note scale is one big thing, not actually 5
notes. When I reminded before the
scale that it was one big thing, his sound changed quite a bit. In listening back, I noticed that some
attempts were better than others, and I wonder I should have pointed out which
attempt I liked to him… He still
has the habit of moving his head when the notes changed, and I explained to him
that when any muscle is used to change pitch other than the ones inside the
larynx, something is up. That was
the end of the lesson, and so I asked him to practice the breathing and posture
on his way to school, and trying some sigh exercises in the shower in the
morning. I also asked him to try
some 5 note scales on any note while looking at himself in a mirror to check
for head movement.
Lesson Reaction
This lesson went much better than our last. Here are some things I would like to
improve upon from listening back to this lesson:
- I say “like” quite often. I want to sound more professional, so I’m going to be more
aware of when I say that.
- I notice that I do have the tendency to move quite
fast. I need to talk less,
listen more.
- I want to be more attentive to which attempts that he does
I like. I want to be more
pro-active in asking him to look for the attempts that he liked the best as
well. Perhaps before I start an exercise, I ask him to pick which of the next
attempts he likes the best.
- I wish I understood how to choose which problems to point
out, and which ones to stay silent on.
Next lesson I hope to work on:
- improving his scoopy onset. I want each note to be light and released when it begins, or
he doesn’t have a chance.
- helping him keep the larynx down. I need to come up with some exercises
that will assist in that.
- Helping him not move his head to change pitch.
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