Funny side note about this lesson. I forgot to turn off the recorder after the lesson was over. So after the lesson was over, I left for school. That means there is like 3 or so hours of silence on this thing. HA!
So I need to explain some background stuff about Tage so that the first part of our lesson makes sense. She has had some strange, concerning things happen during her periods for the last couple of months. She's been passing out, and on one occasion she had a seizure. After anything crazy like that happens, the rest of her period is beyond miserable, due to the fact that she feels like she has the flu the whole time and has terrible cramps. Today's lesson happened to be on a day during her period, and she'd actually all but passed out earlier in the day. The only reason we were still having a lesson was because District Solo competition was close and she was less than prepared.
So to start off the lesson, I talked about how although she was in a lot of pain, she should still try to be as aligned as possible, since singing out of alignment is practically worthless. Before the lesson had started, she took some Alieve hoping that after a while she would be able to be more involved. Once that was taken care of, I had her massage her jaw and then sit on the exercise ball.
Me: *played FM triad-demonstrated "shy" on 5-4-3-2-1* (Just as she was about to start, she took a gaspy breath).
Me: Oh wait, breath through your nose with a lilac tree breath. *FM chord*
Together: "Shy" *EM*
T: "shy" *EbM*
T: "shy" *DM*
T: "shy" *DbM*
T: "shy"
Me: I want you to think about... well first breath all your air out because you're trying to stuff more air in each time, but when you are about to sing, I want you to feel like you don't stop inhaling. *Demonstration* That same sensation of the low larynx and the release in the body--not like a no energy in the body-- it's energized while you're breathing in. That same sensation needs to carry over when you're starting to phonate. *DbM*
T: "shy" *CM*
T: "shy" *BM*
Me: That one was better. It didn't look so grabby in the throat. *BM*
T: "shy"
Me: that was your best one. *FM*
T: "shy"
Me: speech like *EM*
T: "shy"
Me: better *EbM*
T: "shy"
I noticed that she was jutting her jaw forward, so I had her try *EbM* again with me having told her about the jaw. It was a little better, but then I had her rest her hand on her jaw for the rest of the vocalize to remind her to not let the jaw forward. I also noticed that I need to better explain that each pitch in the 5-4-3-2-1 scale is created through thought. She would have a great first note, but then she tried to make each pitch afterwards as she descended. The definition of each pitch is a result of thought, not consciously moving our vocal folds to the next desired pitch.
Me: *EM triad with octave for "Who's new blue shoes"-I demonstrated it for her*
Throughout this vocalize I noticed that she was squeezing for the top note as well as modifying the vowel so that it turned to "hose" instead of "who's". So to combat this, I would have her speak it, then sing the exercise. Also we talked about the correct way to form the [u] vowel, so that one can avoid the "cache valley 'ewe' sound" in the [u].
The next exercise I chose was "ooo whop ooo". Starting on tonic, imagine "throwing your voice" up to the octave--where you put the "whop"--and then descend back down on "ooo". I chose this so that she would get the sensation that her voice was out in front of her, and that she couldn't control it. She had a really hard time not controlling this exercise. Even after trying to fix a few things in between each attempt, this wasn't helping her at all, unfortunately.
So to end on a good note, I had her do "A B C D 5-4-3-2-1" on a descending 5 note scale. This exercise has helped her in the past to not be so involved in her singing. I try to put the speech like "A B C D" next to singing so that she can associate the freedom she naturally has in speech with the singing.
After this, she was finally starting to feel the Alieve kick in, but she needed to take some time to stretch out her back and release some of the muscles in that area.
For the remainder of the song we worked on getting her to release into the sound and not try to make it. She still didn't really know the song well, so she was often trying to stop. I decided that I wanted her to practice just going on, so that she wouldn't mylinate stopping when she messed up. We also worked on getting into character and selling the emotion of the piece.
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