Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 3/6/14

Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 3/6/14

We were unable to have a lesson on the 2/27/14, so it was moved to this day. (We’re using the Lesson Plan for 2/27/14.)

This is also my final lesson with Amanda; she starts work after Spring Break, so it was good that we got all of our lessons in before her schedule got busy. 

Lesson Record:

• I had her do a chew hum on “mmm” going down on 54321 starting on C5. I consciously made the descending pattern go faster on the 54321 because she has a tendency to think too much about how it sounds, rather than how it feels. She started to get a little tense, and I told her to not worry about how it sounds and to just let the sound come out. After a couple more repetitions, I told her to be more “gentle” with the sound because she seemed to be pushing a little too hard to make sound come out. Eventually, I had her do a glide from 5 to 1, and this seemed to loosen her up. On the glides down, I told her to take her time going from the top note to the bottom. 
• Her breath was a little under-energized and there was some gasping and shoulder movement, so I had her stop and do some quick dog pants. It was difficult for her to coordinate the breathing with her shoulders moving at first, but she eventually got the hang of it once she released her shoulders. I told her that all of the breath energy/movement should occur below the bra line. I told her that the singer’s breath is “like you’ve got one thousand butterflies fluttering in your stomach” and giving the breath this feeling of activity while preventing the immediate collapse of the ribcage upon exhalation (a.k.a. the breath fart). I showed her the difference between what we want (delayed elastic recoil) versus the breath fart. To be honest, I kind of got off on a tangent here when I explained this to her, but it seemed to help later on in the lesson…
• I also took this time to address her slouchy posture, and I told her to take in a deep breath. As I expected, it was audible with visible shoulder and sternal movement. I asked her how she felt about that breath, and she immediately told me that it was tight. I told her that when she inhales, if her chest has to move upwards as she’s inhaling, then she needs to correct her standing position. I told her that she should already be in the position at the “apex” of her inhalation, as if she’s already taken in a breath. I reminded her to let the air come in, since the lungs do that naturally when they return to their normal shape. 
• I had her sing “thee” on 54321, but her sound was really swallowed. So I had her sing “eee” in a really “obnoxious” sounding voice that was really forward (I didn’t tell her to put it forward, but the way I demonstrated it suggested that it was more forward and almost nasal but not quite). She sang that once before I had her sing it on “meee” because her onset was really harsh. The consonant helped bring her tone forward and away from its swallowed sound. I had her do the glide on 5 to 1 as well. I had her start out with a long “mmmm” before adding the “eeee” and taking her time on the glide going down. She sounded like she was saying “may,” so I told her to try and sing it on “me.” 
• So, for this next exercise, I will be honest and say I’m not quite sure what I was trying to accomplish with this. I guess I didn’t like how much she was pushing for her sound on the previous exercise, so I had her sing “bop bop bop” on 531? I wasn’t quite sure how to fix it, so I just had her do this.
• I pointed out to her that as she sings, she has a tendency to loll her head to the right. This is where I decided to teach her A-O joint balance by telling her that we want our head to be released on our neck, but we don’t want it rolling to one side. I taught her the “parallel teeth to the floor thing.” 
• I still don’t know what I’m doing here (ugh, I’m sorry) and I ask her to sing “ki ki ki” on 531. I didn’t do it for very long though. I think I just did it to see what else we could work on. I didn’t like how the “k” sort of made her onsets seem really plosive and harsh, so I tried “li le la lo lu” on 53421. I still didn’t like the disjointedness of her sound and how her breath wasn’t really connecting, so I moved on quickly from that as well. 
• I tried “who are you” on 8531. I reminded her to practice the good breathing that we discussed earlier before each onset. After doing a couple of these, I pointed out to her that I really liked how she naturally made the higher notes lighter and the lower notes closer to her speaking range. She then asked me what this exercise was for, and I told her that it’s not about getting the notes right (in fact, I told her that in these exercises, I don’t worry about how it sounds, but how it feels), and that I just want there to be a connected line between each word, but it doesn’t have to abruptly jump from pitch down to pitch. Her top note was a little tight still, so I told her to not think too much about it. 
• She was still not releasing for the higher notes, so I had her do a couple of sirens. I then moved on to a “mmm” sound with voice inflection because she was beginning to swallow the tone again; basically, I had her have a conversation to herself using just the hum sounds with exaggerated voice inflection. Then I had her say “woooo” in the same place as the “mmm” and try and feel a similarity in their resonance. That wasn’t working, so I had her say “moo” instead in that same inflecting voice, and it really brought her tone forward. I asked her if she noticed any difference in the way that sounded compared to before, and she noticed that it was more “right in her face” and that it was easier to produce a clearer sound that way. 
• I then had her do a glide from 5 to 1 (again…) on “moo.” I often had to stop and reiterate the vocal inflection to remind her of the sensation whenever she went back to where she was before. 
• Next, we started working on her music. Although there were some minor intonation problems, I mainly noticed that her breathing technique had really improved. There were some moments when the breath got a little audible with some sternum movement, but it was very slight compared to the way it used to be. She’s gotten more efficient at measuring out how much air she’s going to need for each phrase, so there’s no “huff” at the end expelling any extra air, and there’s not really much effort for inhalation either. (Honestly, I was thoroughly impressed because I still struggle with this really badly.) Her vibrato also started coming out in other places in random places. There were some onset issues, especially for higher notes, but I really liked that she was keeping the high notes light in comparison to her lower notes. 
• I started out by addressing an issue with her standing posture; she was using her legs as props, so I had her bring her feet in and do a very slight pigeon-toed position. I also went over why it wasn’t as advantageous to have legs as props because it tends to lock our kneads (versus release or bend). 
• I worked a little bit on her lyrics with her because she sometimes has a tendency to go straight to the consonant sound rather than providing the vowel with the majority of the time. 
• On the areas where she struggled with her high notes, I noticed it was because she tended to try and swallow them. So I had her sing the chorus on “hmmm.” On the high notes, I had her do the same vocalize exercises we did from before, using those notes as the basic framework of the vocalize so she could remind herself of the comfortable/easy sensation she achieved earlier and apply it to this part of the song. 
• When it came time for her to leave, I asked her how she typically practices (because she’s improved noticeably since we started), and she just told me that she usually just does the things we do in the lesson from the previous week. I told her to keep singing “mmm” very gently (since she is unable to do lip trills) on a descending pattern as part of her warmup. She has my number, and I told her to keep in contact if she ever has any questions or if she needs new ideas for vocalizes. 

Lesson Reactions:

• I personally did not do my best this week, but Amanda can be very intuitive when it comes to figuring out what I want from her, even if I stink at explaining it to her sometimes. 
• I feel like her breathing has definitely improved from before. Sometimes her old habits creep back in, but it’s gotten much better. I also feel like she’s getting more of the sense of high=light and low=heavier/speech-like in her singing. 
• If I could keep working with her, I would definitely work more on adding some more breath engagement to her singing and having more energy. I forgot to have a really active face for her to mirror (another oops…) because, like me, she tends to droop her face. 
• There were quite a few moments when I saw/heard what needed to be fixed, but I was unsure on how to go about fixing it. I need to take more time to stop and think about the cause of the problem before speaking. 
• I’ll admit that I’m going to miss teaching Amanda; she was a really good student that applied what I taught her and was willing to experiment with me. Thanks for being my first test subject!