Sarah Brenay - Lesson Summary

9/6/13
I felt reasonably well prepared for my lesson today. I've been working on my pieces for this semester for a while, just learning as much as I can without the voice; I've learned notes, rhythms, expressive text, decided where I want breathes, etc. What my practicing has lacked is direction. After a summer of little classical singing I don't know what I should be doing and I'm afraid to do anything lest I step in the wrong direction and hurt myself.
So my lesson was really helpful! First we discussed vocal health, dos and don'ts. Then we went through the text for my German and Italian pieces. I got the IPA for all of my pieces which has helped a ton - but I'm no IPA expert, so I still need a lot of help. We reviewed some basics: open vs close vowels, some basic rules and stuff. That took up the majority of our lesson, but was absolutely essential for me, otherwise I'd just be practicing the words wrong and I find it so hard to go back and fix text. For the remaining 10 minutes we did some warm ups, trying to get more ping in my voice. Trying to get the higher resonance on open vowels. Cindy explained how when the jaw drops for the "ah" vowel, the tongue tends to drop with it, causing that swallowed sound. My favorite was the unicorn analogy, which I won't attempt to describe here. It really needs to be seen in person to do it justice.
Key things I learned: difference between close and open vowels, German vowels are generally open when followed by multiple consonants and close when followed by one consonant, keeping resonance high in lower register allows for consistency in timbre across range and gives you options.
My goal for my next lesson is to have my text learned for all of the songs we reviewed, and to get my Spanish set ready to go over. I also want to practice getting the ping sound, in the practice room and in choir.
New Vocalizes:
-ngngngngngaaaaaaa! (with neener neener hands)
-unicorn beep beep beep aaaaa arpeggio