First we started out with posture and breathing exercises. We both lay on the floor with our knees bent, instructing him to let his arms lay in a natural way, and having a small space in between the small of the back and the floor. If that was hard, he could move his feet closer to him. I mentioned that this is another posture exercise similar to the wall exercise we worked on last week. I asked him to think about taking the pelvis and pushing it away from the spine. It might feel like a pelvic thrust, but it should cause the lower back to come closer to the floor. I also asked him to lengthen his neck in a way that might cause some kind of chin tucking, but nothing extreme. I told him that I like to feel that the bottom of my spine to the top of my head is one easy straight line.
In
that position, we started to breath in for three and out for three. I asked him to focus on feeling
microexpansions in the lower back that push towards the floor, in addition to
the sides of the body. I asked him
to watch me as I showed him where the expansion would be for singing. I showed him that my stomach isn’t
going out a lot, but just a bit. I
told him that I noticed his stomach pouching out a bit last week, and that I
wanted to balance that out. We
tried purposefully to breath with just the stomach going out, and I pointed out
that some unnecessary tension could be felt in the chest and neck. So we tried a couple more breaths in
for three and out for three focusing on the lower back expansion. I asked him if he had any questions
about what were doing, and he said no, just that it was something he wasn’t
accustomed, and that not pouching the stomach was difficult to do.
So we transferred up to sitting in
the chair, just to try another approach.
So we did the exercise of leaning over in a sitting position to feel the
lower back expansion more easily.
I explained that it’s easier to feel because the stomach has nowhere to
go as it’s rested on the legs. I
told him that my stomach and chest was still expanding a little bit, because I
wasn’t trying to stop it. Trying
to stop it would make it tense, but focusing on lower back and sides will just
allow the emphasis to transfer naturally.
I explained the “don’t turn left” concept to him, and that I hopefully
will only tell what to do, not what not
to do.
I then talked about pretending to have
a string at the crown of the head, and that string pulls you up off your
legs. That didn’t seem to really
make sense to him… I noticed at this point that his shoulders seemed a lot more
open then they were last week.
We moved to another breathing
activity, this one where we sniffed in sharply for x number of counts, and out
for x number of counts (I switched it around each time) I kept messing up what numbers we were
doing, so I was making the exercise less effective. I asked him if he still felt the same lower back expansion
as he did when he was sitting, and he said that he didn’t. So we went back to the chair in the same
leaning over position we were in before.
We tried the same sniffing activity in that position, and slowly moved
up from leaning forward, focusing on trying to keep the same lower back
expansion as we slowly moved to a sitting position. He said that when he revisited the leaning over activity,
the lower back expansion improved.
So I told him that might be a good thing to practice, in order to become
accustomed to the lower expansion in all singing.
Then onto singing. We started out with some falsetto
sighs. I told him to start on any
pitch that he felt comfortable on, and start in falsetto. I noticed he stayed very nicely in his
falsetto range all the way down the sigh, which was good. So we quickly transitioned to speaking
[ni ne na no nu], projecting those syllables with the calling for mom idea, then
adding line to it. Then I had him
do the same thing on pitch (starting on Eb3). He did well to keep that speech like
quality in the singing, it really did sound like extended speech. I don’t think these exercises
were difficult to challenge him.
So I continued jumping around with that same exercise, sating in between
D3 and F3. I asked him to try thinking
of singing one big thing, rather than 5 notes. I don’t really know why I asked him this, I was grasping at
straws, because he was doing everything well. I continued to jump around in the area of C3 to G3. I asked him to check that lower back
expansion, and he said it got better once he remembered t be aware of it. So that was good. I explained that voice lessons is all
about having multiple elements that you have to remember all at once, so it’s
ok if your brain feels ver active, that’s good!
We then started some descending 5
note scales on [ni ne na no nu]. There was a point where his voice
refused to carry the speaking voice up any higher. Then I wasn’t sure what to do next, I felt really
stuck. Then Philip started to
explain what he really thought the problem was:
P: “I feel like when I get up in my falsetto, I can have a
lot of power behind what I’m singing, but I have to open it up, there is a
limit on what I’m speaking. I
don’t know.”
E: “Explain that a little more. So when you are in falsetto in order to get power you feel
you need to open up more?”
P: “Right. I
don’t know. I feel like sometimes
I do have that power, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes when I sing I feel like I have that oomph behind
the note.”
I did not know how to translate what he said into something
I understood, so I just moved onto another exercise, to try and get some ideas. I had him do a 5432123454321 exercise,
instructing him to stay light at the top and allow weight as he went down, but
bringing the light back on the way up.
We started on an [i] vowel on D4 and went up to F#4. At that pitch, he had to abruptly
switch to a light falsetto from the heavier sound he was using. I don’t want him to have to switch into
a lighter register all of the sudden.
I tried having him sing in his mind a whole step above the top note, and
then sing out loud the second note.
I mentioned that this is like dropping onto the top note of the
exercise. I also mentioned what I
try, which is putting my hand on the piano, and when it drops, that’s when I
start singing. He didn’t
understand what I meant by that, so we didn’t use it. I don’t think I explained the think the note exercise above
really well, because he didn’t understand really how to do it. But while we were doing that, I noticed
that his shoulders were a bit slumped, so I reminded him of the wall exercise. I realized that the think the top note
exercise wasn’t really helping him achieve a register mix, it was just
practicing falsetto over and over again.
His onsets were very shy, and I realize that it was because the exercise
was confusing and so he didn’t know his starting note.
So
I jumped to another exercise, because listening back, it was just still the
5432123454321 exercise on [o] this time.
We were singing high in his range (A4-D4), and he stopped because he
knew something wasn’t right, and I agreed, but I didn’t know what to do. So I got mad haha. Let me give a little transcription of
what he explained at this point:
P: Sometimes when I sing, especially a piece, like Alma del
Core, I feel comfortable singing it.
I feels a lot more controlled, and I feel like it’s all there. But I don’t if it’s because I’ve
practiced it properly, or if I just feel more comfortable singing a piece.
So I would like him to have that sense of preparedness on
any piece in any exercise.
So
the last thing I tried was having his breath before the exercise be that “dig”
breath that I’ve done in lessons.
I explained it that it quickly expanded everything low. But it didn’t really make any
difference.
I switched to [a] and tried telling him to pretend his
molars are opening up wide like he’s a python swallowing something huge. It might have helped a little bit, I
can’t tell.
I got frustrated, and I just stopped the lesson. It was lame.
Reaction
Philip is very aware of his problems, but I don’t know how
to fix them. So problems that he’s
aware of are:
- his throat is a bit closed
- he has to switch suddenly to a weak falsetto at a certain
pitch
- his soft palate is lowered
So for my next lesson, I want to have some helpful ideas for
these problems.
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