I haven't done much singing over the summer, so I did feel "rusty" going into my lesson. I find that when I feel like I haven't done enough preparing, I try to hurry and get warmed up and push through some songs. This isn't working for me. I spent time warming up before my lesson, but I haven't been drinking enough water recently so I didn't feel like my voice was at its best. We talked about the expectations for the semester, with emphasis on keeping my instrument (my whole body!) in good singing shape. I had an epiphany about body preparedness over the summer: I had an audition that I was preparing for. I spent time reading my lyrics, warming up, speaking the text, smoothing out rough spots, everything but getting my body strong and relaxed. The night before the audition I was ridiculously tense, preventing me from hitting some high notes, and just making me sound bad. A friend pointed out that I was tense and suggested that I think about singing from my spine, and then I realized that my back, hips, neck, jaw, and everything in my body was tense! The day of my audition, instead of vocalizing much, I spent an hour stretching my body, doing some deep breathing, and doing exercises. I did very light vocalizes, and reading through my texts. It turned out to be the best audition/jury I've had in a long time. This makes me realize that I need to spend more time taking care of and preparing my body than trying to "sing through" everything. My list of requirements for the semester include drinking enough water, core-strengthening exercises, aerobic exercise, posture alignment and stretches, and more studious analyses of my pieces. Some vocalizes I did were: starting with air-filled cheeks, "whah" sliding on a descending 5 note scale; gentle "whooh" sliding down, followed by an immediate 5 note descending then ascending scale; panting "ha-ha-hee, ha-ha-hey...-ha...-ho...-hoo", ending with a 5 note ascending then descending scale (the "ha-ha"s are just panted, the ending syllable is phonated, all the same pitch till the last scale).
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