Emily C., Amanda H. Lesson Record/Reactions, 1/30/14

Emily C., Amanda H. Lesson Record/Reactions, 1/30/14

Lesson Transcript:

• We started the lesson with just a couple minutes of stretching and getting Amanda’s body into the correct posture for singing since she sometimes struggles with maintaining a good “singer’s stance.” We reached for the sky, went side to side, then flopped forward and slowly brought our bodies back up, leaving the neck/head for last. I had to do less corrections with her in this first stage, but throughout the lesson I had to remind her to keep her shoulders relaxed and her chest open. 
• I then decided to start out with the “shh” breathing exercise. She told me she practiced this one in front of a mirror, so I decided to expand on this a bit. Instead of just doing one “shh,” I had her do four short ones with mini good-breaths between each one and then on the fifth “shh,” we extended the length and took a nice quiet breath. I decided to point out to her how her shoulders sort of do this collapsing thing and bend inwards with her exhale. 
• I had her take her arms and lock her fingers together behind her back to open up her chest. I had her do a couple of the same breathing exercise, telling her to try and not move her chest/shoulders (and it’s particularly difficult to do that in that position anyways without showing any obvious movement). When she did it correctly, I asked her how she felt differently about that breath, and she told me that it was lower. I told her we want expansion in the ribcage, not in the shoulders or stomach area. 
• We moved on to vocalizes, going down on 54321, using the “mmm” hum, starting on F major, skipping around from A3 to E5 at highest. I tried telling her she had food in the back of her mouth and to add chewing for space. I didn’t like the sound of that however; it sounded too tense, like she was constricting, so I switched to [le], going down on the same scale and using the same range. Throughout the exercise, I made sure to point out the places where her breathing was collapsing or gasp-like. I also told her to utilize a yawn motion throughout the exercises. I switched to using [me], adding more swoop because her sound was still stiff, but it was getting better. 
• Next, we did a [li le la lo lu] on 53421, using a “circle” motion with our hands, bouncing on every other note. I told her that every time the pitch goes back up, we want that bounce and we can use the consonant sound to add momentum to the breath and to the tone, in a swoop-like motion. This exercise worked really well for her, and the application that we took for this into her piece that she’s working on made it really easy for her to add more musicality and technique to her piece. 
• We did the Oren Brown “fake it until you make it” yawn exercise for a bit to loosen up whenever she got close to being tight. 
• Moving on to her piece “Gravity” by Sarah Barielles, I could tell she worked on the things that I pointed out to her in our last lesson. However, the sound was still slightly robotic and was at times disjunct. Her breathing was good in the first page of the music, but when she got to areas where her notes were extended, she got a little more gasp and her chest began to collapse more. 
• The main thing that I wanted for her to do with her piece was to add more linearity to her phrases by using her breath and by using her consonants to provide her with momentum in her sound. There were some parts where she had to make an upward jump, so I told her to use the “bounce” we did in the [li le la lo lu] exercise to help propel her upward. She also had a tendency to breath in weird places, so I told her to use the “shhh” exercise and the short but good breathing during the rests in-between the phrases. 
• I told her to practice speaking the words to her piece in a sincere manner; the lyrics are so emotional, and it’s not showing in her singing, so I told her to read it out loud and highlight the words that are most important in each line of text. These “highlighted” words could not only add more “soul” to her singing, but it could provide her with more momentum. I also told her that on the longer notes, she needs to crescendo into the next parts of the section so her singing isn’t so stagnant. 

Lesson Reactions:

• I think this lesson went really well overall; Amanda really does pay attention to what I say, and it shows up in her singing. She still has some old breathing habits that we’re going to have to fix, but it’s mostly just pointing it out to her. When she’s paying attention to her breathing, her technique is much better and her throat opens up. 
• I’m definitely not going to be doing the “mmm” exercise with her again, unless it’s on a different scale (not 54321) because it made her really tense, and I didn’t like the abrasive sound that came out when I told her to do it. 
• The swooping exercises work much better than yawn. I think I like that term better and the results that come from my use of it. It encourages breath support without Amanda knowing either. 
• I liked the pacing of this lesson; I left more time for working on her piece, and I could use that time to apply the vocalizes that we did to her singing. 
• I think I’m getting better at noticing several things at once, but I still tend to get sort of side-tracked and focus on fixing one thing at a time. Practice is definitely making this much easier for me, though.