I felt very exposed for this lesson, since I knew she had taken lessons before, and I hadn't heard her sing my whole life like my other student. To start out, we tried lip buzzes--tried being the operative word. She wasn't able to do lip buzzes very well, though I think that was more due to her being shy and silly about them. So I asked if she could do raspberries, and that was a no as well. Little did I know this would be the beginning of a very difficult process of finding a vocalize that was something she could relate to (the "Glinda the Good Witch" thing didn't make any sense to her since she didn't see it in English and hear the original voice) and also one that she was willing to do. This struggle was present in pretty much every lesson...
Another struggle we had at this lesson was the fact that it was done at my parents house. There are two reasons this was a problem. First, my parents house is really open. So you can hear everybody, including my mom cooking dinner, my dad on the phone, and pretty much anything happening upstairs. The second reason is related to the first in that Kat was already bashful enough without an audience being there to listen. Since we could hear everything they were doing, they could hear everything we were doing.
We started this lesson with the "Hey Mom!" thing. We tried it up in the head voice, and then used it to transition into saying "5 4 3 2 1", which was then segued into the descending vocalize of 5-4-3-2-1. I started in FM and then did random keys. Overall she did pretty well, though sometimes she would try to use chest voice too high, and I would just remind her to use her high voice. Another thing I did was I decided to have her do the sound of indecision and then do the descending 5-4-3-2-1 and then just go down by half-step instead of random keys. They were going really well until she did two really different. Here I stopped and asked her what was different about the one she just did compared to the one before it.
K: I was more in tune on the second one because my jaw was in better position.
Me: Interesting. I really liked the first one because you had a much more prepared in your inhale and your "huh" was more natural.
I dropped down a whole step from the one we just ended on, and had her start again but to not be so careful like she was on the one she just did. She started getting bashful and silly again, so I had her close the "uhh" to "mmm". That seemed to work better (also I started doing random keys again).
I played an FM triad and asked her to start on "oo" and then on the bottom note say "ah". I also instructed her to start really light on the high note and then let it fall into heaviness. After a couple, I realized she wasn't doing the light or heavy very well, so I gave her an example of the sound you make when you see a really cute puppy--"Oooohhhh!" This helped a little bit in the sound, but she still acted weird as soon as I associated it to something emotional (I think that's when she gets the most uncomfortable and starts being weird about the exercises). She got a couple good ones in at the end, so I thought that it was a good place to end the vocalizes.
For the song part, we worked on "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables" from Les Mis. She was really quiet and breathy, so I had her try and just doo thinking it was because she didn't know the words super well. It helped a little. I then told her to think of herself just speaking the doo's. That helped even more. Here I asked her to tell me what part of that page she liked that best in her singing. She thankfully picked the same spot I was thinking, and I figured out that she had a better sense of tonality there because I played the accompaniment best there. Another thing I tried was to have her do monkey sounds on the rests in between each phrase. I made sure she knew that it didn't have to be in time and that I wouldn't play on until I knew she was ready with a good breath. It sort of worked, and maybe would have worked better in a more private space.
Once we got to the middle section of the song, I realized that this song wasn't a good idea for her. It is written for a tenor and therefore a soprano must sing pretty high to still sing it. She wasn't ready for the large leaps and the higher notes just yet. We decided we would try a different song the next lesson, and it was here she told me that she had always wanted to sing "I dreamed a dream". I glanced through it and figured it didn't have big leaps or too high of notes and agreed.
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