Student: Stephanie J.
Date of Lesson: 2/5/14
Brief Overview of lesson: I began our lesson with asking Stephanie how the exercises I gave her from last time went, and how she felt her progress was coming on the take-aways I had given her. She said, "Fine. I sort of paid attention to my breathing, and sort of forgot about it. I tried to notice it for a week during my runs." I then tried to get more information from her so I asked, "What did you notice the first time you tried to evaluate your breath?" She replied, "It was easy to notice when I was doing it incorrectly and then fix it easily cause we had done it before, and then I tried to hum in the morning and then talking a little bit before I left for school." I told her that I realized that we had talked about warming the voice up before we begin our day, but that I hadn't really given her any specific exercises. So I said that I would make sure to demonstrate some for her.
We then began by releasing our bodies. We first tried to release our necks by doing a forward fold, while breathing free and easy and swinging back and forth. We then rolled up one vertebrae at a time with the neck being the last thing to come up. I told her that we stretch and release unwanted tension so that when we sing our bodies aren't in the way of the sound. We tried some flat back too, and I think that helped her find the right line of the neck and head. We also leaned to each side with our arms over our heads to stretch the obliques which I could tell were tight from our last lesson because she's been really focused on running and engaging her core.
Once we were finished releasing the neck and stomach muscles, Stephanie began to yawn, and she apologized for yawning. I told her not to apologize because yawning is an excellent tool for releasing the jaw before we begin to vocalize. She then said to me "That's one thing that I've noticed since I stopped doing voice lessons is that when I sing in the car on the way to Bountiful by the time I get there my jaw is killing me. I didn't think I was doing anything too strenuous, but I guess I need to pay more attention to that."
So we pretended to yawn while stretching. I told her that if she felt a sigh coming on to let it happen and relish in that feeling.
Vocalizes: Once she looked like she was released I asked her to start sighing. I modeled a sigh from high to low. She chimed in and joined me. We did quite a few repetitions, and I realized that she was matching my pitch. I stopped her and told her that she didn't have to make the same sound that I was making, but to think of sighing and just let the sigh come.
Next I tried to generate a genuine response from her. I asked her to be really surprised and say, "Who?!" I had quite a few genuine and easy speech repetitions from her, so I switched the word to "Wow!" I told her this time I want you to be SO surprised. After a few repetitions I felt like she finally gave in to the idea and I received some genuine responses.
We then began doing some lip buzzes on a 54321 beginning on C5 and sequencing down a few repetitions and then moving randomly up the scaled. In the practice room it sounded to me like they were a little pressed, so I asked her to feel like these lip buzzes were as easy as the yawns were (Now that I listened to the recording I can hear some tongue tension in them, and I think that's what I might have been hearing.) I told her that it sounded as if the lip buzzes were coming easier, but that we needed to have more energy in the body. I reiterated that being released is not the same as being released. We continued with some more repetitions, although this time I asked her to pretend to hula-hoop. I noticed that she was looking at the keyboard so I wanted to find a way to distract her. The last few repetitions seemed easy and free so I moved on to the chewy hum.
I first modeled the chew hum for her. I told her that it was like a hum but we pretend to chew while we do it. We did some repetitions starting on A4 once again sequencing down and then moving randomly up the keyboard. After three tries I stopped her because I noticed that she was only moving her lips. I instructed her to make sure that she gets her cheeks into it. This time it was much more exaggerated.
"Thee" was our next warm-up on a 8531. I told her that the "th" came before the [i]. She said that she understood. We did two repetitions when I realized that it there was some breathiness in the sound, thinking that she might be hyper-adducting, I told her to switch to "me" cause I thought the voiced consonant might help avoid the breathiness of the tone. (Now that I listen back to the recording I think she is hyper-adducting because the sound seemed pressed even after this instruction, and a little rigid rather than just flowing out). During these repetitions it sounded really controlled so I asked her to make the sound as ugly as she could. She asked me "Like do you mean off key? Or weak?" and I said, "No, just an ugly sound." We tried a few after that and it seemed a little better. I wanted to try an exercise where she wasn't trying to make something sound pretty so I moved on to a "Nah nah nah nah nah" 54321. After 5 or so repetitions we returned to the "me" 8531 exercise to find a happy medium. I told her this time I wanted her to find a happy medium between the ugly sound and the sound she was making before. I instructed her to do this because I wanted to find a better placement and ease in eliciting the notes (although now I look back I realize I could have done this in a more effective way like asking her to do it in a speech-like manner). I noticed that during these exercises her larynx was rising, so I stopped the exercise and tried to do something that would give her a sensation of having the larynx low.
We did some "Hee hee, hah hah" breaths that were low and not involving clavicular breathing before trying a "me" 8531. It sounded easier and as if she was just eliciting and letting the sound fall out.
I stopped her and asked her to turn around to do the next few repetitions. They sounded like she was approaching them from the top and it was much more released. I told her "that sounds great, it's much easier now. Let's switch to a different word 'please'." We continued with "please" on a 87654321. She did really well with eliciting pitch, even though I played the descending scales terribly, her voice still followed along with the sound that she was hearing from the piano.
We stopped after about 6 repetitions and I asked her, "Did you notice any vocalize that helped you? or that felt easier?" She replied, "Maybe, I think so yeah. Cause I wasn't worried about the pitch, but I was more worried about my body. Or being scared about how high the pitch was going. Because when I see what pitch you are playing I sometimes focus too much on that." I said, "You'll find that when you're singing and not looking at the piano those high notes will seem much easier and they'll just fall out without you thinking about it."
I noticed that she needed more energy in her body, so I asked her to run like a football player in place and then sing "shape" 87654321. This exercise did not go very well because 1. I suck at playing descending octaves. and 2. I think that running in place like a football player did more harm than good in terms of tension in the neck and body. I will definitely throw that idea out of the bag.
I asked her, "Did you feel a difference in the energy in your body?" She said, "Kind of, I guess. I just feel really tired after work." I told her "If you didn't feel a difference than feel free to tell me." She said, "okay."
Next we looked through some songbooks she brought with her. One of the books was a book of Katherine Jenkins arrangements. We looked through "Laudaute Dominum", a version of "I will always love you", and "Granada". Stephanie told me that she had already sung the Whitney Houston tune, and that she was looking for something different so we decided that we liked the Spanish feel of "Granada" and chose that one to work on in our future lessons. I thought that it looked fun, but also challenging enough for her goal to learn to read music better. The range was also a little bit challenging.
We ended the lesson by establishing three take-aways (listed below).
Assessment of student: I realized that I used some language that didn't mean the same thing to Stephanie as it did to me. When I used the word "ugly" she thought weak or out of tune. So I need to be more specific by saying something like, "I want you to try not listening to yourself and just let the sound come out and don't worry how it sounds." After listening to the lesson I realize that Stephanie needs some exercises to release some tongue tension.
Goals for future implementation: I would like to find a way address the tongue tension problem. Maybe try the "ng" tongue posture, or sticking her tongue out as far as she can, or evening holding on the the tongue while trying to phonate.
How will you modify your teaching based off of what you learned from the lesson? Use different vocabulary and be more specific (again) with my praise.
Questions for Cindy: I feel like I oftentimes ask specific questions, but I only get kind of muddy answers like "maybe" or "I don't know". I even try repeating an exercise after asking the question to see if she can pinpoint what she is feeling and she still kind of gives me weird answers. I wonder if it's the teacher in her that she is trying to not give a specific answer because she's afraid of getting it "wrong". I'm not sure what to do...
Takeaways for the student:
1. Released not relaxed.
2. Don't try to make it sound pretty or listen to the sound so that you control it.
3. Think-let-trust in terms of pitch.
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