Sam Meredith Lesson Summary 10/11

I felt well prepared for my lesson today. I was feeling a lot better this week, so I was able to do a lot of good singing in the practice room and I also feel like I had a good plan for things that I wanted to work on during my lesson. We started by doing some vocalizes to try and get me more in the habit of having a more consistent, less harsh tone in my lower range. We started high on a very light sound and went down some scales trying to maintain the same tone quality in the lower range. It was kind of difficult to do at first, but really just required some extra thinking. The one we did that I liked the most was when we started on a place in my upper range on an 'o' vowel and sang a descending arpeggio ending on a more powerful 'ah' vowel. I really liked that exercise because it helped me concentrate not only on maintaining consistency in all parts of my voice, but it also helped me make a smooth transition to the lower part of my voice. I want to keep using that warm up daily to make sure I'm developing good habits in that area. Next we did a vocalize where I sang a descending 5 note scale on the syllable 'bee.' As we performed this exercise we concentrated on getting rid of unnecessary muscle involvement in my neck and also on having clean onsets and proper breath distribution. I obviously can't direct the biomechanics in my neck, but I found that just thinking about the fact that the muscles required for proper singing are actually very small helped me find a freer, easier sound. As far as onsets and breath distribution, I found that I improved in all of those areas a lot when I just took more time to prepare myself to sing the scale. When I just took an extra few seconds to suspend my breath and really hear the pitch, the scale was much more accurate and much prettier sounding. I also want to continue using this vocalize in my daily practice. After that we started working on some music. We took a look at 'songs my mother taught me' first. We started by singing it in a different key. We started on g and worked our way up until we were back in the original key of b. I found that doing this made it a lot easier to sing the song in its normal key because I was used to singing it with the ease of g by the time we got there. Once we were back in the original key we worked on some aspects of my posture that are making it more difficult for me to sing. We worked on trying to be more open in my chest so I can get better breaths and then on keeping my head, jaw, and neck in a position that would minimize tension in my throat. When my jaw was loose, my neck wasn't stiff, and my head wasn't jutting forward and creating tension it was so much easier to sing. We did a similar things when we practiced 'beau soir' after that. This time, however, I laid down on the exercise ball to ensure that I was allowing my voice all the freedom it deserves. This next week I want to find a way to consistently practice that kind of posture so I can myelinate that circuit and start myelinating the good ones.