After watching this video, I realized that I have a tendency to go a little flat throughout the entire piece, particularly on my high notes. There's a slight wobble in my voice that's especially noticeable in my "ee" vowels that I need to fix. Some of my vowels were a little shallow (esp. on "Sing birds, springtime, high.") I forgot to do a lot of the dynamic contrast for this song as well. For my breathing, even though there were only a few moments with really noticeable shoulder moment, my breathing felt shallow--my lower back and rib cage were pretty tense, which explains my sort of cut-off phrases. When I was recording this initially, I realized that there was a mistake that I'd been making in my song memorization, which was a good thing to catch now than later (it's fixed in this video).
Emily! What a beautiful song and you do a great job with it! It is really nice in your voice. I think you have an accurate sense of what was happening in your voice in the video. One thing that I noticed was what Cindy calls "sausage singing", meaning it was a bit note for note. With more grounded breath support though this will go away and the phrases will more have arc :). Also singing about nature can be hard because it is vague. Maybe relate it more to you through more specific thoughts. Your expressions were great, but I think that will take it to the next level. Great work girl!
ReplyDeleteEmily, I envy your mezzo voice. I did notice that your posture seems to be upright, however there is a lot of holding in the rib cage area. I think that if you could release your rib cage and back muscles, it would help you feel the down and outward motion of the breath. With this release and energy in your breath, I think your vibrato would fix itself. I think a tool to help you find the release would be to paint a legato line into your voice. Pretend you are painting a horizontal line across all the walls of the room, I have found this helps me in breath management, and evening out my vibrato.
ReplyDeleteEmily your middle range is amazing and you low notes are to die for. I want to talk a little about your breathing. You tend to let your stomach pop out instead of letting your ribcage expand. I think if you were able to get this down you would have more support for those higher notes and be able to get them with more ease.
ReplyDeleteNice, nice job! You have such a lovely voice. Your lower range is just so beautiful and pleasing to listen to. I am slightly jealous. I do hear the wobble in your voice that you mentioned in your self assessment. I think that would lessen if you kept your energy and breath consistent. These two balance each other out. your breath has to leave but that space still needs to be maintained so that your body does not collapse so you must increase your energy level to take the place of the breath. any holding back of breath or squeezing out air creates tension and will prevent you from getting the sound that you are striving for that is the best for your voice. This will inadvertently help you not go flat on your high notes. You are doing great! you are such a hard worker! Keep it up! :)
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