Elizabeth T Gavin N Lesson Record/Reaction 2.28.14

Lesson Record/Reaction 2.28.14

The whole first 10 minutes didn’t record!  I don’t remember exactly what we did, but I remember, I was trying to get him to have a gentler onset to stop scooping….

So I’ll start from where I did record:

I was having him bobble head while singing an exercise, because he has a problem with tensing his neck and moving his head for each pitch.  Even when I wasn’t looking, I could tell when he had stop bobble heading, because his sound was much more pinched.  I told him to keep practicing that throughout the week. 

            Then we moved onto the Roger Quilter piece that I gave him last week.  He told me he hadn’t practiced it, but he listened to it a couple times.  I picked a phrase that went down, and then back up, so practice staying light at the top and getting more speaky at the bottom.  The triad that made up that phrase was a minor 7.  So I took the minor 7 chord and transposed it up and down, so he would get used to those intervals staying light at the top and heavy at the bottom note.  I had him first just sing that triad down and then back up on “shoes.”  Then I changed to the actual notes (very close to the arpeggiated triad) on “foo” on each note change.  I noticed that he was doing a lot better with keeping light at the top and not carrying weight back up with him.  I told him to practice each phrase with the harmony in mind, as we just did.

            They we added the words.  When we did, he wasn’t so good at making sure it was light coming back up.  He was also very wishy washy in his consonants, so I asked him to really dig into them.  I don’t think that was such a great thing to ask for, because it still sounded weird… I don’t know what it was…

            The phrase started with “nor”, and I had him change it to “for”, so he could get a lighter feeling on that highest note.  I also asked him to yawn before he sang.  He was still bringing up weight with him on the ascent, but I didn’t point it out, maybe I should have.

            I had him try another phrase that had a similar down then up contour, and had him yawn before hand.  I think the yawn is helping get a less pinched sound.  He asked me if the sound was breathy to me, and I told him I wasn’t worried about that right now.  And that’s because breathy seems ok to me until all tension is gone.

            I caught myself telling him that “I liked that a lot” without specifying what I meant.  I need to be specific with praise.  We moved onto another phrase, and I asked him to remember that this phrase was one big thing, not 7 notes.  I remind him this a lot because he has a tendency to bounce his head on each note.  We moved onto the next phrase, which started on a higher note, and he scooped.  I stopped and asked what he heard on the first note, and he said he heard the scoop.  I asked him to try the phrase again starting on a yawn.  He still scooped, and so I asked him to add a “f” at the beginning of “and”, which was the word he was scooping on, and it helped him not scoop!  We noticed that a lot of the phrases in the song began with a vowel, so I told him to practice those phrases with a “f”, “sh”, or “s” at the beginning of those initial vowel words.  I also suggested that he try recording himself in his practice and listen back for scooping, and told he him he could do a lot of self teaching.  He worried that the computer would distort the quality of the voice.  I told him that even though he was right, recording myself is closest I can get to getting outside of myself.  So a recording is probably better than what your own ears are telling you.

            So I suggested he work on one phrase at a time, and focus on the first note of each phrase. 

            We put the piece away, and ended the lesson with another exercise: “faaa faa” 54321 5 4321.  I asked him to yawn while singing, which helped release the jaw.  I then asked him to add bobble heading, which helped get the line more legato because he didn’t have neck tension.  I had to remind him to bobble head randomly, and not in conjunction with pitch.

Reaction:

I think I’m on a good track trying to get rid of his neck tension.  I liked to think of some more ideas to help him with that other than bobble heading.  I also feel very unconfident in working on pieces with students, because of my lack of piano skills.  How do I deal with students who feel uncomfortable singing acapella, but I can’t play for them?  But I was happy that I was able to find some passages in the music that matched the contour of my warm ups.