Kat was so awesome about her homework! She took it very seriously and did a really awesome job!! I maybe fixed one or two of the marks she made, but overall I was really impressed. She made really thoughtful decisions about why she should breath in certain places and we had a good talk about why certain breaths were taken, both for technical aspects as well as character choices.
I started her doing a few downward sighs on "oo". Next, I tried the lip buzzes again. Now that she was more comfortable with me, she was able to not be so silly in trying them and she was able to do them. I had her lip buzz first and then add sound after. Though she was now comfortable with lip buzzing in front of me, she was so concentrated on keeping her lips going, that it just got in the way when she had to add sound. So I moved on and had her to "shy" on 5-4-3-2-1. I started these on FM and then moved down sequentially by a half step. It got a little caught in her throat, so I had her talk really nasally to get the sound more forward. Then I had her do the 5-4-3-2-1 on a nasally "na na na na na". This war really effective in getting her tone more focused and less throaty. I extended the vocalize to the octave, which was good but could have been better if I was more rehearsed on my scales. THANK HEAVENS we were at my apartment, because she made a lot of improvement because she wasn't so worried about being overheard.
When we started singing, and I could tell that she had really practiced on the notes and rhythms and that marking the breaths had gotten her really familiar with the song. One of the things I noticed that she did still that inhibited a good breath, was that she held out her notes longer than necessary. She took gaspy breaths because she held the previous note so long that she wasn't able to take full advantage of the rests. Also along those lines--and I'm definitely still guilty of doing this--even when she had plenty of time to breath, she would wait till just before she sang to take a breath. This resulted in shallow noisy breaths. First I addressed her too long notes, as I figured this would help her realize that she had plenty of time to breath. She still would take the high bucket breaths every once in a while, but if I gave her a quick reminder, she was really good about being more relaxed.
Another thing we worked on was distinguishing the feeling of each register. There is the few times in this song that there is that really low note, and I talked to her about how it wouldn't, and shouldn't, feel the same as the notes that were a little higher.
This lesson was pretty short because they had gotten to my house a little late and needed to get back for some plans they had in Preston. But I was really happy with how this lesson went, and that I didn't come away so frustrated with her.
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