Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/18/14

Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/18/14

**This was a Cindy-observed lesson**

Lesson Record:

• Because Amanda said she had a sore throat from over usage (most likely), I opted not to start right away with vocalizes. I went over breathing and the sitting posture that I mentioned with her last week, and checked to make sure that it wasn’t too rigid or that she was trying too hard. I went over the “shh” exercise with her while she was seated, checking to make sure that she started the exercise with a good breath. Her breathing still seemed a little stiff, so I decided to try the leaning forward thing that Cindy mentioned in class earlier that day, but I did a sort of small variation on it. I had her do a deep inhalation while she was leaning forward, making sure that she released the muscles in her back to allow for more air to come in. I had her do an extended “shh,” allowing her inhalation position to return gently to its original shape, and I tried to make sure that I didn’t tell her to “contract” to let her air out. I then had her sit up straight and do the same thing, telling her to have that same openness in her back that she had while leaning forward (because she had more breath capacity). Although her exhalation was a lot shorter, I told her it was normal for that to happen and to not force out more air than she needed to. 
• I wanted to do some lip trills with Amanda, but she really struggles with them. Cindy showed us an exercise where we take a piece of paper and sing against the edge enough to make the paper buzz, and this would serve as Amanda’s lip trill. We did this on a 54321 motion starting in E major (lower than usual, but I didn’t want to push Amanda’s voice too hard today). I made sure to tell her to be gentle and just let her pitches glide downward. Soon, I had her do a glide from 5 to 1, then 5 to 3 to 1 before returning to the 54321, using a swoop/glide motion to each note. 
• I had her sing lalalalala on 53421, using the same gliding motion as before. After a couple of these, I had Amanda stand because her posture started to get a little lazy and her breathing was a little low on energy. I then had her switch to [le] instead in hopes that it would add more focus to her tone. I reminded her of the feeling of anticipation to add more energy to her breath as well as adding more emphasis to the beginning consonant. 
• Again, I wanted a little more focus to her sound, so I had her sing short “bop” on the descending 54321. I told her to feel like she’s adding more height to the sound (I was really terrible at describing what I wanted here… whoops) and had her try singing it a couple of times to see if she understood what I meant. Then I told her to add the same “yawn” depth while maintaing the height, like we had an expansion in both the upward and downward directions. This didn’t really work though, because she sort of sounded the same each time she did it. 
• I tried a “yawn” glide on 5 to 1 in an attempt to reconnect her to her more open/“deep” sound because her tone was a little shallow for my taste. 
• Still wasn’t getting what I wanted, and I wanted her to have both her focused tone as well as her “open sound,” so I just sort of made up a 13-54321 on “li-ah.” Whenever I told her to have nice yawn space, she had a habit of bringing her chest and shoulders up really high, so I abandoned the idea of yawn-breathing and told her that all of the space should feel internal and that everything on the outside should be free to do as it pleases. I wanted Amanda to have her jaw in the same place as she articulates her vowels with her tongue, but she really struggled to make her [i] sound coherent and understandable. Her [a] was just fine, but I couldn’t figure out how to make her say it correctly, so I honestly just dropped it. 
• Moving on to her piece “Gravity” by Sarah Barielles, I had her sing through a little bit before stopping her. The main thing that I noticed was that her “jump” areas from low to high notes had improved from before because they weren’t as harsh, but when the jumps were particularly large, she had a habit of jumping up and “attacking” the higher note. She had loosened up considerably since last week. I was worried that I had taught her to push too hard with her singing, but it seemed to be better this time because she was trying to be gentler with her voice. I told her that I preferred this to last week because it was so much freer, rather than tight. I told her that on the jumps from low to high to sing the lower note with the intention of singing the higher note. 
• I had her sing the song on the “ng” in an attempt to focus her sound more. I told her to sing the song with that same sensation of “maskiness” that she got with the ng. I had her do the ng sound between each phrase. 
• For the higher notes in the chorus, I had her do a swooping motion to prevent an attack on the higher notes. I also had her do a couple of fake yawns so she wouldn’t loose the depth that I wanted her to have. I also had her sing the jump on “mao,” using the m sound to facilitate the sense of swoopiness. She told me she prefers the “ng” sound, so I told her to use that instead. 

Lesson Reactions:

• I honestly was pretty concerned about the tension in her voice after last week, but she had let go of that significantly for this week. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t feeling so great vocally, but her pushy sound almost went completely away. Maybe last week was just a fluke and I panicked over it.
• I want to figure out how to provide more depth/engagement in her singing; I feel like her sound is shallow and I can hear the tongue tension. I liked the idea that Cindy had to use consonant sounds that require the back of the tongue to release (g, ng, k, etc.) for her vocalizes to get her to release that. 
• I’m not exactly sure how to get her to use breath engagement and vocalize at the same time; it seems like I can only get her to do one at a time. 
• I definitely need to get her more energized for her singing, so maybe some dancing crazy or more focus on excitement/anticipation before her singing.