Emily Cottam
10/2/13 Lesson
As usual, we started out easy, doing simple lip trills. We focused a lot this week on taking deep breathes and staying committed to the entire phrase, because I have a habit of forgetting to support my notes at the end of a phrase. We worked on trying to keep the tongue forward (as you would on the “thee” exercises) and the larynx low and the soft palate high by taking “surprised” or “anticipation” breathes. This week, we worked on “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” by Roger Quilter. After singing it through with the accompanist, Brianna asked me to make a specific story about the meaning of the poem so that it’s more emotionally connected to me. Also, because the words match up so evenly with the notation, I had a tendency to make the rhythm robotic--so to help, I was told to put “dump” moments on the important words to add musical shape and variation to an otherwise very repetitive rhythm. (On that note, in my practice room today, I decided to try out the “dancing” technique as described in SOHH by Eloise Ristad, and I discovered musical shaping that I otherwise had trouble articulating when I was standing still). Sometimes, I lacked depth in my tone, so I need to imagine that I’m breathing in through my knees and that my hips are extremely wide to help keep myself grounded. Brianna told me to focus especially on my “ee” vowels because there’s a certain edginess to my tone that’s indicative of hypertension in the throat, so I need to not only keep the front part of my tongue forward, but I need to keep the back of my throat open even more as well.
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