Jacob Spjute lesson record reactions jacob cortez

I spent the first few minutes just getting to know jacob a little bit. Apparently we were both in Meistersingers when I sang in their choir for a year when I came home from my mission. I didn't remember him at all though. I felt bad. Anyway he's a music major at bsu, he's 23, and sings tenor.
I started off with the same stretches I always do. Rolling the neck very softly and slowly in circles then reversing the direction. Then we did the bent over hanging stretch I like to do. Instead of starting off with vocalizes I asked him if he had a song he wanted to sing just so I could hear him sing and get a feeling for his voice and to see if I could see/hear any problems or anything like that. He sang a hymn for me, and I played what I could of the accompaniment. He has a really nice voice. It's very light and clear, and in general it sounds very free. I did notice some breath gesture problems when he was singing. He was doing a lot of heavy Bucket breathing and his chest was moving way too much for my liking. So I talked about breath gesture and I explained the idea of the rose and breathing down with the diaphragm so he wouldn't recruit all those extra muscles around his shoulders neck and chest while singing. After that we did some vocalizes and I asked him if he could try to apply the rose breath gesture into these vocalizes. I said I would give him plenty of time inbetween scales to set up a good breath. I started on C3 and did 1-9 and down again on an "a" vowel. We moved up a half step until we reached f#4 and then we stopped because he wasn't able to be as free and open as he was on the other scales lower pin the range. I had to stop him twice to remind him of the rose gesture. We did it again, except this time we went faster between scales. I wanted to see if he could work that rose gesture correctly with less time to set up on the scales. He was able to do it two times but I had to stop him after that and talk about setting up breath correctly every time. I told him that I also struggle with this very same thing. We talked for a bit about choir at bsu, then all of a sudden the half hour was up.
I asked him what things he would take away from the lesson and he said obviously the breath gesture and the rose technique. I think he already has a decent technique set up and everything I think he's just at the refinement stage in his training. Pretty cool guy!