Emily C., Voice Lesson Summary, 3/24/14

Emily C., Voice Lesson Summary, 3/24/14

We started out with simple 54321 lip trills that eventually became descending octaves. Next, we did [li le la lo li le la lo la] on a descending pattern. My tongue and jaw were really tight today for some reason, so Brianna had me do plenty of biting my tongue and massaging the jaw. We did a couple of dog pants and gorilla grunts to get the breath more engaged as well. 

We spent quite some time talking about healthy speech habits and about potential speech therapy during the summer at the U of U. She reminded me to keep the sound in my mask area and to support my speech with my breath. 

We did some “who’s blue shoes” on 8531 and some “nasty nahnahnah” vocalizes to try and get my tone more forward? But I really struggled to get the sound that Brianna wanted; it was really tough for me. Next, she had me try some Julia Child-like singing on “nah” and “nuh” on the same scale pattern to add depth to the forward tone. 

For my piece today, I worked on “Oh, quand je dors!” and we focused a lot on trying to get my sound/vibrato in a “pingy-er” place. When I struggled on the higher sustained notes, Brianna would turn it into the vocalizes that we did (listed above) in an attempt to have me apply it. We sang through the song on an obnoxious “playground kid nahnahnah” so I could get used to the feeling of the forward resonance. 

I had a really difficult time balancing “release” and forward resonance today; I could only get one or the other from the way I was singing, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my tongue to release at all. This was probably one of the toughest and most frustrating lessons I’ve had this year; I guess I just got really confused as to what Brianna wanted from me, because when I tried the “nahnah” forward resonance, I eventually got the sound that Brianna said was good, but I felt really really tight the entire time, and whenever she wanted me to “add depth” or feel more of an “anchor” in my breathing, I’d release some of the tension but the tone would go back into my throat. I guess I’ll just have to focus more on releasing the tongue (on the higher notes) and experiment with the “nah” frontal resonance until I can find a sense of release while still having a forward/high resonance.