This lesson was a prime example of why teaching family can be very difficult. Poor Tage got the brunt of my anger that was created from a misunderstanding with Sid. It seems easier to be short with the people you are closest to. Maybe it's because we know them so well that we expect more from them. Regardless, it took me a few minutes to realize how grouchy and rude I was being to Taessia, who was an innocent bystander. Luckily I realized how poorly I was acting and quickly apologized for my behavior.
Although I way overreacted, it doesn't make Tage's lack of knowing her notes and rhythms any less bad. She's had this song long enough. Even with us only starting to work on it in lessons 3 weeks ago, she should at least know the melody of the song by now, since she picked this song before Christmas. Plus on top of that, we were dong this lesson way late at night because she kept putting our lesson off, and she hadn't had a lesson that week.
This made working on technique in the song difficult, but we still got some work done in the vocalizes.
To begin with we did some yawning and stretching with some sighs. The first vocalize was "ooo ah" on 5-4-3-2-1, with the ah only coming in on the tonic. I verbally explained the exercise, stateing that I wanted it to be more light on top than on the bottom, then I modeled it for her. I started her on FM and then went down by half-steps. After a few, I added that she should carry her head voice as low as she could, and to pay special attention to not go into "singing mode".
Next I had her do the aborigine squat, both to release her back muscles and to feel the breath low in the body. After about a minute of squatting, we worked on getting the low breaths while sitting. So included in this exercise was working on getting the upper body balanced so that she could feel the correct sensations in her breath. Once she was able to feel the release of her breath, we went back to the "ooo ah" vocalize. She had a much easier sound this around.
Kind of along the same lines as the previous exercise, we did the "ohhh cute puppy dog" sigh. This was to help with the glide/transition from head voice to chest voice. So first I had her do a sigh and then "thee" on 5-4-3-2-1. This wasn't as effective, so after a few we switched. Instead I had her talk in the 'Glinda' voice and tell me about her day, one sentence at a time, and then do "thee" descending. I also told her to do it all in one breath. In other words, don't breath in between the sentence and the "thee". On the third one she had a beautiful released sound, so I stopped and had her decide between the most resent two which one was better and why. She described the good one as being "easy to sing".
*EM chord singing "Ho-w are you, I am fi-ne today" on 8-5-3-1-3-5-8-5-3-1.* I played the chord and then told her to imagine she was on a dock pulling in a big boat all by herself. This imagery helps invite the lower body to be more energized and to get a better suspension in the sound. I instructed her to feel that 'tug' sensation throughout the scale. After a couple I mentioned that she needed more 'dump' release into her body as well. Her sound wasn't focusing very well because she was pulling her tongue back. So I had her think of the foot ball posts on either side of her mouth and that the sound had to stay in front of them. On the vocalize immediately after she used a lot of larynx in the sound in an attempt to focus it. So I pointed it out by modeling what I had heard, and she was able to hear what the difference was between what she did and what I wanted.
Next I had her do a downward sigh ending on a "huh" (which I had to clarify later wasn't suppose to be super low in pitch) and then transition imediately into "thee" on 5-4-3-2-1. There were a lot of instructions so I modeled one for her. She had a much more focused sound and her vibrato was more released and natural.
As for working on the song, I actually did more on helping her learn the piece than anything else. One of the things I had her do was "bop" the notes. She had been a little pitchy and airy in her sound. This was really helpful in getting both of those things to change.
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