Emily C., Ashli H., Lesson Record/Reactions, 1/21/14

Emily C., Ashli H., Lesson Record/Reactions, 1/21/14

General Information About the Student:

• Ashli is about my age, and she has a basic amount of previous singing experience. She took voice lessons about two years ago for a year but claims she never learned anything from them. She plays the violin and knows how to read music. She doesn’t mind being in front of an audience if she feels prepared—still gets nervous though. 
• The first thing I noticed about Ashli was her jaw tension; it’s very stiff, and I have a feeling it’s going to be something we’re going to have to work on consistently for the next couple of weeks. Her breathing is shallow, and her inhalation is slightly audible. 
• Her tone quality is slightly breathy and light. Her intonation can be a little off, but she recognizes when she’s not exactly on pitch. Her problems come when she tries to strain for her higher notes. I’m not quite sure how much vibrato she has; but from what I’ve managed to hear, it’s very little/almost non existent. She’s a hyper functional singer I think. 
• Again, I didn’t get much to the performance aspect of the lesson in this first session, but from what I could gather, Ashli can be a little stale as far as facial expression goes while singing (but that could’ve been nervousness), and she’s not very confident in her solo voice, so there isn’t very much stylistic independence. She said she enjoys singing alto pieces (because that’s where she’s most comfortable). 

Goals: She told me that she would like to extend her top range and obtain a “clearer tone.” 

Lesson Transcript: 

• I started off the lesson with having Ashli sing the “Happy Birthday Song” starting on C4. I observed that her tone get breathier as the song went up in pitch, and with the top note (C5), the pitch was under, but she recognized it. I think she’s a hyper-functional singer. Her tone was similar to Amanda’s. When she got to the top notes, she was definitely reaching for them, not coming at them from above; it was strange because there’s sort of a breathy straining for those notes. 
• Afterwards, I had her sit up straight in her seat, telling her to make sure that her back was released, her sternum up and chest open. She looked a little tense in the shoulders, so I had her do the shoulders up to the ears, pulled back, and then release them exercise a couple of times until she got the hang of keeping her upper body free from unnecessary tension but maintaing good posture. 
• I decided to try the lip trill with Ashli, just to see how she would handle it in comparison to Amanda, starting on E4 and going down on a five tone scale, jumping around from there to around B4 at the highest at random. I told her to not hold on to the breath; we’re not saving the air for anything. I also told her that inhalation of air should be effortless, that the air should be let in on its own. I didn’t like her harsh “onset” on these lip trills with her air, but her throat was less constricted than I expected. There were some moments when the trills were released enough, but I forgot to point them out to her (whoops). I think I’ll continue doing these with her in the future. 
• Moving on from here, I decided to move to “thee” going down on the same scales and on the same notes as the previous exercise. She was struggling to use the initial consonant sound, so I had her use “sh” instead, which seemed to work better with her. 
• Even so, I didn’t like the tense sound I was getting from her, so I moved on to a “yawn” exercise, using the same scale motions and range. I told her to say “yawn” with a lazy “m” chew at the end, not paying much head to the lower pitches, just the top pitch. I told her to remember that we want the same release of air/glide that we achieved with the lip trills in the beginning. (I noticed that I didn’t give her much time to prepare for the upcoming notes upon reviewing my recording. Whoops again.) Because I wasn’t getting the released yawn sound that I wanted from her, I started having her incorporate swoopy arm motions to the vocalize. 
• Once I got her to release a little with the yawn, I returned to the “thee” exercise from before, telling her to not worry about how it sounds, but how it feels. I only did this three times before stopping; she was going right back to her previous tensed/over abducting singing, and her jaw tension came back (after it was remedied with the yawn). 
• So, I had her do some jaw massages, telling her to let the mouth hang open effortlessly, not forcing it open. After a couple minutes, I had her sing on “thah” on the same five tone scales we were doing before, keeping the relaxed jaw, not allowing her to engage it at all, utilizing a yawn motion. I took her a little higher (up to a C5), telling her to make her sound “more yawn-like” the higher she went. 
• She was returning slowly again to her previous tensed state, I so switched modes (again) and had her do some more jaw relaxed exercises. In the movie The King’s Speech, there’s an exercise where you put your hands together, let your jaw hang open, and when you shake your hands to and away from you, your jaw is supposed to just open and close with just the motion of your body. She struggled slightly with this, so I encouraged her to do this little exercise for just a minute or two a day. 
• We returned to the “thah” exercise with the “dead” jaw, telling her to yawn more the higher we went, and to engage her cheeks a little more. We went to a D5 this time. I told her to be really ridiculous with her yawning. 
• Next, I decided to quickly test her range, using the same downward scale on “shah.” At C5, she started to get a tense, and you can hear the pitches as if they’re being pulled downward, and she’s fighting to pull them up against it (that’s a weird description, but it’s the best way I can word it). 
• I then asked her how her voice felt, and (surprisingly), she said her voice felt great. She said she didn’t feel any hoarseness, dryness, tension.
• I had her stand up and do some mild stretching (better late than never… another whoops), having her reach for the sky, bend her body lightly to the sides, some simple forward, side to side neck stretches. 
• I assigned her the song “A Change in Me” from the musical Beauty and the Beast, since that was the only song in my repertoire that had a decently small enough range and was simple enough to learn. I worry slightly for the extended notes, but I supposed we’ll get through that. 
• I assigned her the first two pages, telling her to sing it mostly on “la.” I noticed that on areas where she has to transition from chest to head voice, she struggled to pull her chest voice up, so I had her make more of a yawn motion the closer she gets to that transition area. I also had her speak in a Julia Child voice so she could get used to using her head voice. 

Reactions:

• I didn’t do so well in this lesson; I kept hearing the problems but I struggled to find vocalizes that would help her remedy the jaw tension. I think the swoopy speech and making her yawn helped in getting her to use her head voice though and coming from above the pitch, not below. 
• The lip trill worked decently with her; I think I’m going to try having Ashli use this a little more, but I told her not to do it too much on her own. She’s still a little tense, but when she does it right, I need to remember to point out to her what a certain one was better than the others.
• I talk a lot. I don’t give myself time to pause and actually think out the situation. 
• I just kept forgetting to recorrect her posture because I was so focused on getting her to release in the throat and jaw. Next time, I think I’m going to work on some breathing exercises with her, and that may help with the whole tension thing.
• I also should start the lesson with stretches, not stick it randomly in the middle. That was dumb of me. 
• I know for a fact that she’s a hyper-functional singer, so I’m going to go through the Oren Brown book and look for some good vocalizes to help release her tension.