We started the lesson just by talking about his role in secret garden and what he wants to work in so he won't be so nervous and so that he'll sound good. He said there is high part in one of his quartets. That sits up pretty high so he wants to be able to perform that better, and at the end of a bit of earth reprise he sings a high A in falsetto and he says sometimes it comes out and sometimes it doesn't.
For our first vocalize I started with what I always do. Descending scales, light and easy. I started on Bflat and worked my way down. I noticed that he tends to tuck his chin way down into his neck/chest quite a bit. So I asked him if he could be think about keeping his too teeth parallel with the floor. ( it's a good trick) this improved his sound after the adjustment, it was more rich than it was before. I asked him how that felt and he said it felt easier that way. Good!!!
We proceeded with some vocalizes and he went down to about a low G. I would classify uncle Carl as a baritone...
We then did an ascending vocalize on an A vowel up to an f before he started getting nervous and his voice cracked. I had to remind him once again of his chin position, and to think about the teeth being parallel to the floor.
As we went through his sings for the musical, I noticed his breath management was off. He was taking a lot of big breathes frequently but not sustaining them very long. So I stopped him and we did some breath exercises and I demonstrated diaphragm breathing and I implemented the "rose" technique into his breathing. We sang a phrase in one breath that he ahead to do in two the previous time, I asked him how that felt and he said it felt much better and that it was amazing how much just a breath gesture can change the way he felt singing. Along with the breath gesture, I gave him instruction on keeping the vowels pure, and the space in the mouth open, and to make the space in his mouth as similar as he could for each vowel. This helped a ton with the high A that he has to float in falsetto. He was able to do it very nicely each time with a warm open sound. I asked him how he felt about his falsetto notes and he said they were much easier than before! Awesome.
So I gave him 3 ideas to remember from this lesson that I thought were most crucial to him at this time:
1. Chin up ( I know it sounds like terrible advice but for him it works)
2. Rose
3. Similar space
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