Sam Meredith Lesson Summary 1/28

I feel like I was well-prepared for my lesson today. I was warmed up and I feel like my practice has been becoming more effective recently. We started with a vocalize on the words 'guy' and 'lie.' I sang 5-tone descending and ascending scales, changing words with every other note. As I sang I had an open mouthed chew mechanism going that helped keep my jaw loose. We did a sequence where the first time I sang the pattern it was lower in a comfortable place in my range. Then, in the same breath, I sang the pattern a fifth higher, now in a place that was higher in my voice. It was difficult at first making the transition from low to high. The first time I started the second, higher scale it was not as good as the second time because it was always taking me a minute to adjust. Next we did a vocalize moving in thirds throughout the range of a sixth using the syllables [ne] and [ni]. At this point we made the chewing motion less exaggerated and it became more of a micro movement. At first there was too much change in the position of the jaw from one vowel to the other. Next we moved to some scales. I sang a nine-note scale on [i]. Cindy encouraged me to make the bottom note of the descending scale my goal rather than the top note of the ascending portion. She also counseled me to more fully expect the sound to be full and rich. After a few repetitions the higher notes just didn't feel as free as they needed to. So, Cindy had me pantomime the descending part of the scale as she played it. At this point I was supposed to imagine myself singing the fullest, most released high note I possibly could. Directly after she finished playing the descending scale, she played the ascending portion, this time with me singing. It really made a big difference. I think I'm going to use this exercise in the future when I need to practice songs with a lot of ascending lines. Next we did the pirate vocalize where we did the same pattern as we did with [ne, ni] except with the diphthong [ai]. The goal for me here was to have a minimal change in the position of my jaw from one vowel to the next. She then asked me to make the sound more pleasant. I tried to make my countenance a little brighter and it actually made a pretty big difference in the sound. I had a much more pleasing timbre when I had a more engaged expression. Next, we worked on some music. Today we worked on 'troppa briga a prender moglie.' We sang through it a little bit and then we stopped to fix some of my vowels. I have a lot of bright vowels in this song and other songs that come on higher notes in my range. She told me that I will be able to have a much easier and a much more pleasing sound on those notes if I allow my jaw to open more. She told me that my lower jaw can create healthy space in my mouth by not only moving downward, but also slightly back. It also helped a lot when I remembered to have that pleasant expression on my face. When I caught hold of those principles it was a lot easier to get to the high notes. We moved on to the allegro section. It was hard to sing it because it's so fast and I'm not as familiar with the text. We ended up singing it on 'bp.' It was easier to sing it that way because I didn't have the words messing me up, but there were still some intervals that I was having trouble with. To help me get the pitches down better I sang 'bp' in rhythm on a random pitch while Cindy played my part on the piano. Next we added the pitches back and it was a lot more easy to sing the pitches accurately after I had just listened to the melody and kept the rhythm with another random pitch. Next, I switched back and forth between the two patterns. She played the melody again. For some notes I just sang 'bp' on a random pitch, but then at random points within the passage I came in and sang the actual notes on 'bp.' I was surprised how well it went at that point. I think this will be a strategy that I will employ in the future in the practice room as a way to learn my pitches quickly and effectively.