Today's lesson was really short due to the fact that the first 7-8 minutes we were talking about some of the things she had recently been doing in choir and how she felt they were contradicting with our lessons. I can relate with her since I often think back on some of the instructions Mr. Seare gave us and how they are totally weird when I think about what I know now. One of the big things that I tried helping her understand is that teaching technique in a choir setting is much harder. Not only is he trying to watch how everyone reacts to his instructions, but he is trying to say them in a way that 30 different people can understand. Another thing we talked about, was how choir teachers are looking for a good sound as a whole, not from each individual per say. I encouraged her to try to listen to what he asked them to do, but always be aware of how she would feel when she tried to follow the instruction. If she ever felt like she was getting more tense or doing something that didn't feel good and released, I encouraged her to just politely stop, and just mime the exercise. (Though in her defense, I know that some of the technique he teaches is completely off base with what I have learned over the course of my studying).
Today I had a hard time getting Kat to focus on singing. With her so confused about Mr. Seare's intention in choir, and how they were not seeming to line up with what I was teaching, she was little bit chatty and not wanting to focus (kind of a bummer since our last lesson was so good). However, we did get a better understanding of choir lessons versus individual lessons, so that was still helpful.
I find it hard to believe that I waited till this lesson to talk about balance in the body. I know I talked to Tage about this, but I was giving all of this info to Kat for the first time. I talked about the function of the bones being to give shape and to be the weight baring part of the body. I then moved into the six places of balance: where they were; what order to address them; what incorrect placement does to the rest of the body; etc. I also talked about how we tend to think that we need to feel our muscles working in order to feel like we're singing, and how that mentality is false. I'm pretty sure we got talking about all of this because she was really creeped out by Mr. Seare asking them to massage each others shoulders as part of a warm up in class. I'm not sure if that's totally unheard of in Germany, or if she's just has a large personal bubble. Regardless, it was really funny seeing her reaction to me telling her that massaging tight muscles is actually really beneficial.
For the vocalize portion I started with her singing "shy" on 5-4-3-2-1. I asked her to sing this in her little kid voice (so as to keep it light and not push the sound out). I've said before to her that we need to imagine pitch coming to us, but I explained myself a little more today (there was a lot of talking in today's lesson, so maybe Kat's attention deficit was partially my fault). I had her start on FM and work her way down by half steps.
After this vocalize was over, there was only about 6 minutes left in the lesson, so I decided to go into singing her song. I figured she would enjoy that more. Her tone was more focused today, but it didn't seem purposeful. As homwork, I asked her to practice speaking the text so that she would really understand what she was saying and why.
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