Ben Shaw 11/08 lesson summary

In this lesson, we started by doing some vocal exercises. Throughout, I stayed on the aerobic ball in an attempt to alleviate shoulder tension. I think it helped, but I still had quite a bit of tension in my jaw. After the warm-ups, we moved to a couple of songs. We started with "Nocturne." In this piece, I had a question about whether or not I was over or under singing. Laurie had me illustrate physically the musical movement of the song. After doing that, she said that I wasn't over or under singing, and also that my phrasing became more florid as my breathing became more consistent. Then, we moved to "the roadside fire." We paid special attention to the contrasting section, trying different postures in order to maintain proper breath support. We found one that works pretty well, but unfortunately the breath support wasn't as good when I returned to the standing position. I definitely have my takeaways.