Sam Meredith Partner Practice 10/16

Caitlin has her memory checks this week, so I helped her today with memorizing the text for her songs. She had the idea that we should try to memorize the song backwards. I thought this was a good idea, because I think it will force her to learn the text for each phrase independently rather than always relying on the phrases that come before to job her memory. We started by saying the phrases aloud, looking at the music. Then I took the music away to quiz Caitlin. Once she was able to remember the words I played the melody to the song on the piano and she spoke the text in rhythm with the music. I feel like this was an effective exercise because it gave her the opportunity to hear the pitches and also speak the text in rhythm. I think that will make it much easier to sing accurately later on. After that Caitlin helped me with 'beau soir.' I still want to achieve more freedom in my tone on this song. Caitlin first suggested that I try to think of something that gives me a feeling of freedom that isn't related to singing. That helped a little, but I was still feeling really constricted when I had to reach up for high notes. In the past I know that has been a problem with my posture, so I stood up and tried to concentrate on having good posture. When I did that, though, I didn't feel as much freedom in my body, so we found a way to achieve more freedom in my body while keeping my shoulders back in the right position. Caitlin stood behind me and grabbed my arms. She pulled backward and I tried to move my body forward. This kept my shoulders in the right position, but also gave me more of a sense of physical movement. Both of these things really freed the sound up more.