Emily F. lesson 3/5

Emily F. lesson 3/5: I came to my lesson warmed up and ready to work. We talked about NATS and how it went. I had a new experience while there. It was one of the first times that I was able to be kind of "out of body" like an observer. Usually I'm so nervous when I perform that I don't really know what I did or how I did it, but at NATS I was conscious of a lot. Some of it wasn't great, but then I was able to do some course correcting while singing. I noticed my overly big breaths that made my folds have to gush air out on phonation, and I noticed stiffening in performance, and so I tried to focus more on my texts and communication. I was disappointed that I didn't place, because I really felt good about my performance overall and the judges were very complimentary while I was there, so it was disappointing, but made me want to do better next year. l received some really lovely compliments from the judges, and also some great advice, most of which I've heard many times from you, Cindy, and from Laurie. We discussed another song analysis form. We started with 1318531... on [a] with a loose jaw and bobble-heading. My voice felt free and easy. We did [tu to], octave descending scale with M3 flips up on each note. We did [u o i e a] on 5, descending to 1 on [a], with my top teeth pulled far over my lower teeth, to get the sensation of vowel formation farther back, then with mouth regular, but keeping back space. The [i] vowel in the middle made for a little tougher negotiation for me, but was a good exercise for concentration. We did [i u]...on 1, then 123454321, in mid/low range, to bridge primal speech to singing. We did ascending octave and a half in the scale (12345671234)then down (275421), on [e a o], and this is when I started noticing the popping and moving in my thyroid and cricoid cartilages. It was a very disconcerting feeling, but everything was lining up beautifully--low, open larynx, easy breaths. I got up to a high F, pretty comfortably. We did "I feel just fine today" on 1358531, in the lower range. On one of the higher ones I got slightly stuck, and Laurie caught it, even though it was tiny. We stopped and fixed it, recognizing that it was just a lack of body connection. We worked on "Faites-lui mes aveux" from Faust. I'm still uncomfortable in the text, so I sang through it and it was weak, disconnected. Laurie had me speak the text a few times. Then she had me sing parts with my chin up all the way. This helped me get really good connection/tracheal tug, and improved it quite a bit. I alternated phrases on different vowels moving my chin up and down slowly, keeping the body the same. We worked on the smiley/rounded French vowels, which are always a challenge for me, but when I do it right, it's so much better! I don't know why it's so hard for me to figure it out. Goals for the next two weeks: MEMORIZATION!