I started this lesson by having her do the Aborigine squat, so that she could get a better idea of how breath should feel. She tends to belly breath and I wanted her to feel it in her back, even though it wouldn't feel the same when she was standing. I also talked about what is meant by a deep breath and how it doesn't mean big in the chest area.
Next we did some yawns. The first vocalize was "who" descending on 5-4-3-2-1. She was really breathy in this exercise so I had her do the "wow" thing (ask her to say wow like she's really impressed with something--to get a more focused tone). She didn't end up doing it well because unfortunately we were at my parent's house again. Here I took a minute to talk about how in speech we're not paying attention to how we're doing it, we just do it. That same easiness and feeling of "just doing it" should be in our singing.
*CM 8-5-3-1 on "Ho-w are you"* (I'm realizing now that I am picking very aspirite sounds for a singiner who tends to be breathy anyway. Bad on my part.) She did a couple and they didn't sound the best, so she said:
K: I'm doing it wrong, right?
Me: No you're doing fine. Don't worry so much about whether or not you're doing it right. Sometimes when I'm I'm doing a vocalize, I'm not necessarily looking for perfect pitch, but for correct placement. So just allow yourself to just do it. So I'll play the note just above the note you'll sing and I want you to just think that note and allow it to fall into the right place on the real note you'll sing. *DM 8-5-3-1 "Ho-w are you?"*
She did better with me playing the pitch above. Her larynx wouldn't rise to try and make the pitch, and she had a much easier sound. My mom was listening from the kitchen and happened to ask why I was playing the scale with a note that didn't belong, so that was good because I was able to explain my thought process out loud for Kat.
I tried the chewing your food while humming thing, though I'm not sure why I chose to do that. Probably because I was drawing a blank for something to actually work on what she needed. Luckily I moved on from that quickly. I asked for "nee nay nah noh noo" as well probably for the same reason as the food thing. (Side note: I'm really glad that we talked a lot in class about having a purpose in mind for the vocalizes we choose. In my earlier lessons, I'm noticing a lot of random vocalizes that I only choose to do because I'm not sure what else to do.)
We started singing "I Dreamed A Dream" in this lesson. This was a much better song choice as far as comfortable range (minus the really low note). She would run out of breath before each phrase and I could see her trying to rest her hand on her stomach and push her hand out with her breath. She also scooped up into her notes a lot. To address the scooping, I had her "bop" the melody. LOADS of improvement!! She had a much more focused tone and her pitch was much better. Next I had her speak the whole song as if she were in a play and this was a line, not a song. It was a little helpful, but her inflections and rhythms were different because English is her second language. To end the lesson, I gave her homework to go through the song and mark places where she could potentially breath, thus giving her places to mentally look forward too so she wasn't panicking at the end of every phrase.
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