Emily C., Ashli H., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/24/14

Emily C., Ashli H., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/24/14

Lesson Record:

• I started off the lesson is lip trills going down on 54321, starting F major, going down and then skipping up. I told her to start the trills before gently allowing the voice to join the lip trill. I told her to try and make the onset of the lip trills not like a horse, but “soft” (I demonstrated both for her). I noticed that her breathing was a little under-energized, so I had her do dog panting and gorilla grunts, but I had her do more dog panting because the gorilla thing wasn’t really working for her. I had her do panting before each 54321 lip trill. I told her to make the panting as low as possible, because she was using her ribs (?) more for the panting, so I told her to think lower, like just below her belly button. 
• After a bit, I noticed that her lip trills sounded shallow and tight, so while she was in the middle of doing one, I told her to freeze, open her mouth, and sing “ah” in the same position that she was in with the lip trills. We could both identify that it was too constricted, so I told her that the correct way to do lip trills is to have the same space/release as when we’re singing—the only difference is that the lips are closed for the trill. So I had her do an initial lip trill “like we’re singing,” sustaining the 5 briefly before going down on 54321 on “ah.” While we were doing this, I noticed that her jaw was tight (it is almost always), and she does much better when I have her put her hands on either side of her face because she has feedback from her hands when her jaw is tight (but I’d like to ween her off of that…). I told her that as soon as the lip trill was over, there was going to be complete release of the jaw (down and back), almost letting it fly open to make way for the vowel. 
• Her tone was getting a little swallowed, so I had her do the humming chews, followed by [e] (so the vocalize was “mmmmmmmmay”). I kept reminding her throughout the lesson to release the jaw, and I kept demonstrating to her that as soon as the vowel starts, the jaw needs to swing open. The “mm” sound was making her constricted and she was still struggling to let her jaw swing open, so I had her sing on “hnnnnnngggg” to start instead, starting with her jaw open for the “ng” so it’d already be released for the “ay” part. I told her to think of having the tongue in that same “ng” position as she moved to the “ay” vowel, so there was minimal movement in the jaw and only in the tongue (keeping the tongue fat). 
• She was getting really shallow now because of tongue tension (which has been accompanying her jaw tension this entire time), so I had her do some “huh” sounds before the exercises. Then I had her try some sounds of indecision instead because it seemed like she was trying too hard to get such a low pitch. I made sure to have her go from the primal sound to the exercise smoothly without a break between them. 
• Her jaw, no matter what I did, kept on locking into place; she had moments where they released, but they went right back. So I had her hold her tongue (with a tissue) out of her mouth and say “ae” as in “cat” on a few glides down on random pitches. This sort of forced her jaw to get out of the way/release so she could get her tongue out of her mouth. I then had her say the “ca” part of “cat” with her tongue still out, and then I added pitches 54321. After a while, she was thinking too much about the pitches, so I had her do a glide down from 5 to 1, telling her to start lighter and end heavier as she went from high to low. With her tongue out like this, she could feel the places where her tongue tried to tighten up and help when she got on higher pitches. 
• After she found some release, I let her let go of her tongue and we moved on to “la” on 135 glide to 1. Her tongue got tight almost immediately because it was depressing for the [a] vowel, so I switched her to [e]. Then her jaw got tight again. So I stopped her and we did some jaw massaging. I told her to frequently massage her jaw to help encourage release. 
• We did some “who are you” on 8531 because I thought it would be an easy exercise to keep a released jaw and work on accessing her higher voice. This however, also didn’t work because she tightened up right away again. So I had her do some tongue stretches/biting and release so she could feel would her jaw and tongue need to be like during singing. 
• After some time on this, we worked on [li le la lo lu] on 53421, and she did much better this time, especially when I told her to only use the tip of her tongue to articulate the consonant sounds, keeping everything else released. (Honestly, I think we stretched/released her tongue and jaw so much that they just got tired and they had to release.) Now, I decided to add some “huh” before the exercise to add some more depth to her sound because it was becoming shallow. But again, her jaw just barely started to tighten back up, so I had her do the tongue sticking out “huh” before the 53421, and this seemed to help. 
• We then started to work on her piece. I asked her what she personally thought she struggled with the most, and she said that the transition from high to low (making it smooth) was the most difficult for her. So I told her to do a simple glide on “ah,” going as slow as she needed (especially over the “bridge” area) downward because that’s how I learned how to make that smooth transition. 
• We went over the most difficult part of her piece (where it goes upward into some higher notes), and I had her go very slowly, using a hand motion to reiterate/remind her of jaw release on each vowel sound. I had her sing without jaw release and with jaw release, and she could immediately tell that it was easier and sounded a lot cleaner. I also had her move her jaw in really weird places (to the side and really exaggeratedly open) so she could see that she doesn’t need the jaw to close/be super tight in order to make a beautiful sound. 
• As she got higher, he had a tendency to tighten and force the chest voice up, so I told her to get hootier/lighter as she got higher, like having the voice of a nursery lady/Julia Child (the child voice doesn’t work very well for her because she constricts really badly). I told her to have swoop even though I know you (Cindy) don’t really like that term—but she releases when I remind her to do it and she doesn’t scoop. I also told her to make the notes as connected/smooth/legato as possible. 

Lesson Reactions:

• Overall, even though we focused mainly on releasing her jaw, I feel like this lesson was at least a little successful. By the end of the lesson, she was able to recognize clearly the benefits of jaw release vs. tension in the tone and ease of sound production. Now to just get her to become aware of when she’s doing it…
• I need to work on her “hooty”/higher voice with her and making it more released; she gets really tight, even when I recommend things like the child-like voice or sirens. 
• It’s also very difficult for me to get her to find depth in her tone; she gets very shallow very quickly with her vowels, but I’m attributing it to tongue and jaw tension because it alleviates itself in her (brief) moments of release. 
• I think I need to go through my vocalizes faster (like making 54321 go down fast, not slow) so she doesn’t have time to think about the pitches and constrict.