Caitlin Craig Voice Lesson Summary September 5, 2013

I arrived at my lesson somewhat warmed up, and loose from doing some morning stretching, and loosening of my neck, tongue, and shoulders.
I had brought some sheet music that Brianna and I had picked out from the previous lesson, and we looked over it to determine rep.  I am excited to begin some challenging, yet different pieces by Pauline Viardot.
After going over and finalizing rep, we began with some gentle familiar warm ups.  I felt like I was breathing low enough, but Brianna reminded me that I needed to release my lower back, and feel those dump moments while keeping my rib cage open.  I know that we had talked about this before, but I had forgotten.  It made a huge difference in my body and voice: it was freer and easier.  After releasing my lower back, and doing some hip hula motions, my onsets were becoming cleaner, and more like the pitch was falling high in front of me.  This also helped me find my correct high resonating space.  This one factor completely changed my vocal production, and it felt so much better.  One thing in my practicing I have been trying to focus on is to not continue singing if my preparation was bad or insufficient.  I've been trying to recognize error right away and fix it.  I did this in my warm-ups with Brianna, and it made a huge difference in my approach.  Brianna also told me to think of happy doggy pant breaths, and that seemed to help in evening out my vibrato.  Brianna had me try a new vocalise that requires lots of happy dog pant breaths, and one that will aid  me in the learning of my Viardot pieces (since they have some coloratura passages).  It is a descending 9 note trill scale, which will definitely help me on brush up on my piano skills.
We finished the lesson by singing 3 phrases in my Wolf piece, to practice feeling released in my lower back, releasing the tongue, and proper "dump moments".  The first time, I wasn't feeling the dump moments, so  we tried again, and it improved, by the third time we sang it my body was able to keep the dump moments, and release of my lower back and tongue.  It was a little tiring, but then I realized that that is what I need more of: error focused repetition.

Goals for next lesson:

• Feel and make that release of tension automatic in my lower back while warming up, singing, and singing without pitch.
• Learn how to play, and practice the new vocalise.
• Continue to stop when an error occurs, think about it, and fix it.  
• Breathe in happy breaths to keep energy, and high forward falling resonating space.