LaeKin Burgess- Austin M. Lesson Plan 1 for 3/27

Austin is still having a hard time telling the precise difference between complete release and the way he is used to singing. We went through the phases of breathing for singing and that seemed to help him because he is kind of a belly breather, I think.  We're working on expansion all around and complete release of all the abdominal muscles so we will probably review the phases of breathing for singing again this week. I think Austin struggles with pharyngeal constriction because using [i] vowel seems to make tension worse so I'm not sure that it's his tongue that is the problem. Then again, maybe it's both. I think we can try exercises on the [e] vowel this week since that is in between an [a] which can be too swallowed for him, and an [i] which is way too pinchy for him. Also, I had him speak nasally like last week to try to bring the sound forward a bit and this seemed to help him a lot. I think he just tries to swallow his sound and so I think I will do a forward na-na-na on 5-3-1 or 5-4-3-2-1 this week and have him do things that distract him from manipulating his voice such as using different head placements, or the hula. We'll see how it goes.