Sam Meredith Lesson Summary 10/4

I was still feeling pretty sick when I went to my lesson today, so I definitely wasn't as ready to sing as I normally am when I go into my lessons. I didn't think I was going to be able to sing during the lesson because of my illness, but I was actually able to sing fairly well considering the circumstances. We did some simple vocalizes in the comfortable part of my voice just to ensure that I was getting some good vocalization in. We practiced trying to maintain the light quality of my higher register in my lower register. We started on a higher pitch with a light 'o' vowel and moved down an arpeggio changing to an 'e' vowel. It was easier at the beginning of the exercise to keep the light quality in my voice, but it was pretty hard to maintain it when I got down to the lower part of my voice. I really had to concentrate to get it to happen the way I wanted it to. I got it down after awhile, but once I did the vowel had lost a lot of its integrity. That was also the case during the next exercise we did. Essentially we did the opposite of what we did in the first exercise. We started in my lower register and moved up the scale. This time we tried to add the light, easy quality of the upper register to the lower register and the open quality of my lower register to my higher register. It was pretty hard to keep the throat open when I started to climb up the scale. The first couple of times I couldn't really do it, but when I just really concentrated and visualized my throat staying open it happened. It was still hard to maintain a good vowel, though. So I think my goal is to practice this more before my next lesson and once I can get the quality of my voice to be consistent try incorporating more consistency in the vowels. After the vocalizes we did some work learning the diction for my songs. We went through the pronunciation of my French piece. I had a printed version of the IPA, but apparently there are some symbols they use that aren't the most accurate. So, when I practice this song in the future I'm going to take note of the places where I need to change my pronunciation a little. I also want to do a better job chunking up the pronunciation. Up until now I've mostly been doing it first word by word and then by combining all the words in a phrase. I think I will try chunking the text up into mini phrases just so I can get a better feel of what the text is supposed to sound like when I sing it.