Date: February 28
Student:April A.
Brief overview of lesson: I began the lesson by asking her how she's been warming up her lately. She said that she had been humming in the morning, or sometimes she'll do the yawning thing. She said that she hasn't really warmed up her voice before church or institute. But she'll sing lightly along with the radio in the mornings while trying to make sure her body is upright. I told her that that was a great start and that we would be learning some new vocalizes to help with warm-ups.
I then had her fold over into forward fold, while checking to make sure that her head was released, even when she came back up. I then was talking to her while she did some more repetitions and said, "So when we sing our body is active, but we have a sense of openness and release so that the sound can come when we provide the air and allow the air to carry the sound. So that's what we are going to think about today--maintaining an openness in our body."
"I think we remember talking about breathing from our hoo-hah. So I just want to clarify that we don't actually have lungs down there, but we feel an openness in our body. So our abs aren't tightening; we want to release our abs."
She then chimed in and said, "Well you have to release your abs in order to push out our diaphragm."
"We won't necessarily be doing that, because our diaphragm works by itself. Our brain can't actually control it, so we just let that happen. It's a process that happens no matter what. So I just want you to maintain and feel that openness in your body and feel that you're released but ready."
"So while you're singing today I want you to have an attitude. Not a bad attitude, but an attitude of happiness and alertness."
She replied, "Okay, I got that. Also at work, I speak on the radio sometimes for my job, and they said that I've been doing much better, and they feel like I'm sitting up and speaking from my diaphragm. So voice lessons have been affecting the way I talk on the radio."
"That's great. And when we are speaking in that healthy place it will be less taxing on our voice, and it carries better, and has a more pleasant timbre or sound."
"Yeah definitely."
"That's great, I'm glad you've noticed a difference."
"So we're just going to chat a little bit about the time we did warm-ups in class. How did you feel about that?"
"It was okay."
"You were nervous of course, which is understandable, but how did you feel about the progress you made?"
"Umm, I could definitely tell that I felt more comfortable trying higher notes. I sometimes forget to talk like a baby, but I talk to my fish like that everyday. But I definitely see that I've made progress. It may not be much compared to other people, but I feel much more comfortable singing, and feel less freaked out about it."
"That's great! It's important to remember that not everyone progresses in their voice very quickly. It's a process. So I think a goal we can have for the remainder of our lessons is to find a little bit of success at each lesson. Which is a great goal, because you know that you can achieve that. You found just a little bit of success in class in front of scary people, right? So you can do this."
Vocalizes: "So we're going to start and do some more yawning. I want you to stretch as you're yawning....how does that feel in your jaw?"
"My jaw is usually pretty loose, except for when I just wake up."
"Okay, let's try sighing from high to low and start really light on top like our child-like voice and then let it travel down."
She did quite a few, and I could see that she'd been practicing that child-like voice and tapping into her head voice. I stopped her and said that she was doing a great job, but now I wanted her to try to maintain the openness in her body and breath. We began again sighing again and about 5 more sighs. I was really happy to hear that she had been practicing that.
"Okay, that was great April, I can hear a lot of progress. So now I want to do the chewy hum. We've done this before. So we're going to be moving our cheeks, our lips, and our teeth. Before we start this can I have you stand over here in the corner where I can see you? Also let's move your feet so they are more like shoulder-width apart--this will give you more balance and a sense that you're more grounded. So I want you to feel balanced, happy and alert."
She said, "Okay."
"Okay wait, time-out. I want to do a different warm-up before this. Do you remember how you were saying 'it's so fluffy!'?"
"Yeah, it's the only thing I could think to say that is kid-like."
"Okay, so I want you to say that and then we'll add on a descending sigh. I won't play the piano so you can choose you're own pitches."
I then showed her a model of what I wanted. She tried it, and I could tell there was some squeezing of the larynx. So I said, "Okay, this next time I want you to maintain the openness in your body."
"How can...I don't understand. I think that I'm feeling openness, so what do you mean? How can you tell that I'm not? Cause you keep saying that."
"Okay, so in class Cindy said something about our larynx rising. And our larynx is just a part of our anatomy that houses the vocal folds. And sometimes when it raises it can mean that there is some tension. So I want you to release that tension, while maintaining that alertness and feeling more openness. You'll feel that openness in your lower back, and in your abdominals that wrap all the way around you. Let's fix your shoulders. Raise your shoulders, push (not a good word choice, next time I will use bring them back) them back like a toaster, and push them back down. And I also want you to have your head balanced. I will tell you this real quickly: we have a joint between our ears called the A-O joint, this is where our head rests on our skeleton. So if you put your fingers in your ears, you can feel that looseness. Do you feel that?"
"Yeah. Kind of."
"Okay, let's go to the mirror real quick."
"But my shoulders are always tense, cause I have lots of knots there."
"That's fine, we can still find some release. So I want you to stand there so you can see yourself in the mirror and so that I can also see you. So I want you to take a look at your body and memorize that picture. Now I want you to close your eyes while I tell you a few things about your body and how it works. Put your fingers between your ears-imagine that looseness. Okay how do feel with your head balanced on your body?"
"Better."
"Okay now take a look in the mirror, do you see a difference?"
"Umm...kind of."
"Okay, well I'll tell you what difference I see. Before your head was jutted a little forward (I went and moved her head to where it was before to show her) now it is more balanced. Do you see that?"
"Yeah."
"Does it feel more loose?"
"Yes. That definitely feels different."
"Okay so that's how we want our head to be balanced all day long because our skeleton is what actually bears the weight of our body. And a lot of us get into the habit of using our muscles to hold our bodies up, but it's really our skeleton that serves that function. In our next lesson we can talk more about our skeleton and how it works. But as of right now I can already tell that you're more upright and you feel more balanced in your body. That's a great stance for your feet because they aren't so close together that you'll fall over. Can you feel that more openness in your body already?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so let's go back to your spot and we'll try that exercise again." I modeled it for her again, but changed the downward sigh to an [u] 8531. I began her on D5 while only playing the D. And it was much more released/not squeezed in the larynx. She matched every pitch too!
I said to her, "That was so great! I really liked how you had that highness in your voice and it was light, and then you came down. That was perfect. You matched every single one of those notes. Good job, April! Let's try another one."
We tried another on C5 and B4 both sounded great, and had some real release.
I stopped her and asked, "How does that feel to you?"
"Good."
"Does it feel effortful or..?"
She interrupted me and said, "It feels natural."
"That's great. That's exactly what we want."
We tried another one E5 and then did some more descending repetitions. I was really happy with each one that we tried. They were released, and she matched pitch. HOORAY!
"Okay that was fantastic! So what else do babies say?"
"My little sister used to say 'bananas don't talk'."
"Okay, let's say that now, and then we'll do a 54321 pattern."
I started her on C5. This time it wasn't as released as the exercise before so I stopped to ask her if she felt like it was flowing freely. She said yeah. So then I told her to feel like she wasn't thinking about singing, but talking like she's doing right now.
We tried it again on B4, this time she didn't match pitch. I stopped her and said, "Did you notice that time it was as high?"
"Yes."
"Okay let's try this one more time."
She did it again, and this time she got about half of the pitches. I said, "Okay, that was better, but it wasn't quite there. Let's try it again a little lower." I started her again on A4. She stopped for a second to adjust her posture cause she noticed that she needed to free it up.
Then I played it starting at G4. She stopped me and said that she needed to try it higher. So I said, okay, and moved it up to D5. She didn't match the pitch, but I wanted to see if she could self-correct, so I did about three more repetitions moving downwards, and on the last one she finally matched the pitch. I told her that I liked that last time the best, because she had the child-like voice before, and then maintained it coming down. I told her we could work more on this at our next lesson, and then moved on to the chewy hum. I told her, "So we'll be doing the chewy hum, but I want you to maintain the speech-like place while doing this."
I started at A4. while she was doing it I said "light" to redirect her.
We tried it again and she seemed to be having a better time matching the pitch. I then asked her to try to feel the looseness of the yawn jaw during this next time. She tried it, and then I asked her if it felt better or worse. She replied that it wasn't bad tight, but that because she was moving it so strangely, it felt tighter. I took note that this probably meant that she had tension there still, and that we'd try working on it at our next lesson.
"Okay so we tried a vocalize in class where we said 'Who are you?' (8531), let's try that. I want you to say 'Hey mom!' and then sing 'who are you?" (8531)."
She stopped and took a minute to readjust her posture again. During this I took the opportunity to remind her to feel the looseness of the a-o joint. I even asked her to put her fingers between her ears while we sang this. While I said that I also saw that her chin was up, so I walked over and helped her position it parallel to the floor. I asked, "Does that feel more natural?"
She answered, "Yeah."
She matched some, however they weren't as good as our first warm-up. After one that she clearly didn't match, I said, "So you can hear that that one didn't match the pitch, but that's okay, I felt like you were trying to let it happen in our body. I felt that openness and I could see it. Sometimes notes don't come out for me, and for everyone. But at least you were preparing yourself and your body. So that in itself is a success."
I then moved on to ABCD "Th[i]" 54321. She did one or two. I said, "Okay on that last one it was good at the beginning, cause you matched the first two notes, but we didn't quite match the last three. Let's try that again. Stay in that child-like voice, and then when we get to the last note I want you to almost speak it."
"Oh so you don't want me to sing at all?"
"Well, singing is only prolonged speaking. But imagine that you are speaking not singing."
"Do you feel tight in your body?"
"Do I look tight?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, let me start over."
"Try doing a forward fold making sure that your lower back and neck are released, and then come back up slowly."
"My body hurts."
"That's okay, mine hurts too. And when we perform and sing, our bodies will hardly ever be feeling great. So it's important to find that release when we're tight, so we can learn how to sing everyday."
We tried two repetitions, and they matched pitch more accurately. I stopped her and said, "I feel like your body is much more released. How do you feel?"
She said, "Yeah. It is easier and more natural."
We tried it again on A4 and G4. They were really released and matched pitch. I stopped her on the G4 repetition and said that that one was my favorite one she had done so far, because it was so released, and because she thought the pitch, and let it flow out. I could see that she was starting to trust it much more.
"So was it better than the "it's so fluffy I'm gonna die"?"
"Well, out of this exercise that repetition was my favorite. But you had some great success with that warm-up where you were really released, and maintained the openness."
"Okay."
I asked her if she brought her music today, she replied that she forgot to bring it. I looked in my backpack and realized that I forgot my music, so I decided instead of working on a song, It would be best to practice learning how to read music so that she could apply that knowledge to learning her music. I pulled up some simple music on the internet that was mostly scalar, and I asked some questions like "So can you tell me which notes are which on the piano?", "Can you tell me where those notes on the piano match up with the music?" She told me the notes on the piano (white keys) in a slow manner, but didn't have the knowledge to match them to the music, however she said that she could see the pattern on the music, and could follow along with the music to read during church and stuff. We practiced that for about five minutes. So I tried to make a correlation between the piano and the music. I only told her where middle C was, and then had her try playing the melody. She did a pretty good job going slowly and I could she was really trying to make connections between the two. That took up the rest of our lesson. I explained to her that learning to read music was an important part of voice lessons because it helped her learn how to become a better musician. I told her that my goal for her was for her to learn how to successfully read/play the melody from the song that I assigned to her on the piano. That way she would be able to practice it on her own.
We then made 3 take-aways.
I also told her that one of our long-term goals has been to implement the "think-let-trust" into her singing, and I told her that I was really proud of her effort to instill that in her singing, and that she had some really great moments with that concept today.
Assessment of student: I think overall, April has a much better awareness of her body than my other student who has done more singing. She seems to be grasping onto concepts quickly and earnestly while trying to practice them. I am really happy with the progress I saw with her this lesson not only in pitch matching but in her ability to self-correct her posture without me saying anything. I am really proud of her! And her willingness to practice and discover her own voice.
Goals for future implementation: 535153515351 [u]. Dove sound. I want to have her sit at the edge of the piano bench and lay forward while having her head released. This might give her something else to do and distract her.
How will you modify your teaching based off of what you learned from the lesson? Sometimes in the lesson I would ask her to be in that "speech-like place". What I meant was child-like voice, but I realize that those are two very different things. I will make sure to clarify in this next lesson and say "child-like voice", because she has associated her speech-like voice with her chest voice, and not her head voice. I think that when I went over two things very quickly in the anatomy it was much more effective and produced better results than when I spent a whole lesson doing that with my other student. I am going to address little things in "body-mapping" every lesson, instead of overwhelming them.
Questions for Cindy: What else can I do to in vocalizes that would set her up for success at pitch matching?
Takeaways for the student:
1. Get balanced.
2. Be loose.
3. Practice reading music.
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