Record, kind of.
I didn't actually press record for this lesson. I thought it was recording the whole time, but I guess not. OOPS! Anyway I'll do my best with what I've got.
I heard from Emma that Sam felt like our lessons were really formal and not fun. I wanted to make sure he was feeling comfortable in the lesson so we spent the first few minutes just talking and gossiping while we stretched and stuff. I don't need my students to have fun, but I want them to be able to have fun if that will help them learn and feel comfortable. Anyway after we talked for a while I asked Sam how he was feeling physically, if he was tight anywhere. He said no. He always says no. I'm wondering if he's really listening to his body, or if he's just a very released person naturally. Who knows?
Next we did some downward yawns with a stretch combo. His yawn was very light and healthy sounding. I asked him if the sound could start higher without pressing, and he tried again. His voice stayed light and effortless. Then we did some "Wow!"s. I encouraged him to move the wow higher and higher until it was in falsetto. It sounded really funny and I don't think Sam liked making that sound. I wonder if the "wow" thing is supposed to stay in mix... or maybe it just works better for women. Either way I didn't dwell on it long.
We did some [a] sliding up to [o] and back down to [a]. I felt like this step was making him push his voice up so I decided to just do descending [o] to [a]. We did a couple of these. I found the pitch he was going to naturally and then descended an octave, moving down by half step from there (starting on C4, ending on A3). Then I went back up (D4) and continued moving down by half step from there (to around Bb3).
We did some [ba ba ba ba]s I started him on a 54321 pattern. That was really easy so I wanted to throw something else in. I tried 13531, and that was still easy. I wanted to try something I've been working on myself for a while. It's 135875421. Sam could do it pretty well, but only if I played along with the piano. I couldn't do this in every key so it didn't work very well. I started just singing with him. We did that for a little while, and even though it wasn't perfect, we still had fun with it. No matter!
I wanted to show him how to connect natural, speech-like vowels to singing. We did one of my personal favorite exercises. You say "father" in a natural speaking voice. Then you elevate it into mix. You repeat "father" many times as you go through the registers, trying to make the vowels sound and feel the same. Once you carry "father" up into a light head voice, you sing it on 5432123454321. Sam did pretty well with this. He is not as sensitive to the sound of vowel distortion, but was catching on. The pattern was a little tricky for him, so I altered it to 54321. We repeated this exercises on "feather" and "fever." His [i] vowel is the most problematic. He tends to make it very nasally. I showed him what was happening by having him plug his nose as he sang. He was surprised at how different the sound was. I sang it with my nose plugged and although the sound changed a little, it didn't change as much. We tried some [bibibi]s to work on the [i] vowel. Every time I thought I was making progress with him, he would take a few steps back. I couldn't figure out quite what to do. I told him to plug his nose occasionally while singing so that he could assess what was happening. Other than that I had no useful advice.
We pulled out "Into the West." I'm really excited about this piece. I think Sam has the potential to sing it REALLY well although it is a little low for him.
At first he was straining for the low notes by lowering his larynx and ducking his head down. I told him all he had to do to sing those notes was not to what he was dong. We did some more [bi bi bi bi bi] 54321 and I showed him that he could sing much lower when he wasn't over thinking it and trying to force his voice lower. That helped a fair bit for Sam. We sang through the first section and then I started working on vowels in small chunks. We'd sing a phrase and I'd ask him to tell me what he heard. Often he would identify exactly that vowel or syllable or word that I thought was problematic! Go Sam! For the word "night" we stopped and spoke the word. Then we elevated it, and then we sang it, just like in the warm up. This worked really well until we got to the word "falling." It was really nasal and I couldn't get it out! It must be because of the [n] at the end of the word. I tried to have him speak it, but the nasal was in his speaking voice too. AAAH! I felt like I hit a brick wall. At this exact moment Sam got a phone call he had to take, so I ran from the room and found Cindy and asked her what to do. She said to use [p] because it can't be nasalized. I ran back and told sam. We did a few 54321 [pi pi pi pi pi]s but then we were out of time and he had to go. I told him to replace the word "falling" with "fapi," and if there were other nasal ings to do the same with those. I hope it helps!
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Well. I don't think Sam is practicing. I don't think he's really interested in improving, or else he doesn't trust what I'm telling him. But that's a problem for another blog. I felt pretty good about this lesson. We were definitely working at Sam's sweet spot. It was exciting! I hope he didn't feel discouraged. I think we did a lot of good things and hopefully he has the tools to really improve some aspects of his voice. The only problem is the nasality. I've never had a big problem with it so I don't know how to fix it! That will be a challenge. Advice Cindy?
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