Bric Slade DYV Chapter 11
Chapter Summary: Every day brings with it new challenges for your voice. In warm ups be sure to be aware of what your voice is telling you. Smart practice is essential when preparing to sing. Your body may be tight or you might need water. When you pay attention to the signs you exhibit it makes it easier to know where that line is that you don’t want to cross from smart practice into overdoing it. The idea is always to be in a place of ilignment . Don’t do. Think and let your voice release. You can’t control the outcome, all you can control is the input. There are different things singers can do to make practice less beneficial. They rush practice or they only practice the parts they like. You should learn music from the bottom up by chunk practicing. If you can learn the song in your head before you start you can prepare yourself even better so you don’t have to go back and fix so much of it.
Key Concepts: Warm ups are key to maintaining a healthy voice, just make sure you do them smartly.
Making Connections: I think warming up is the hardest part of my practice because it takes a lot of concentration to listen to your body and act on what it needs. I find myself all the time practicing routely and at those times I have to stop and tell myself pretty much everything in this chapter. Then I have to concentrate and find the areas I am really struggling in. It can be difficult but I can see that the rewards are greater than if I practiced any other way.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 12
Chapter Summary: Preparation allows us to feel the music even before we practice it. When we can understand the emotion behind the text it allows us to memorize faster firstly, and secondly it provides us with emotional power we can turn to our advantage while we are trying to communicate the message to an audience. Dynamics obviously play a huge role in the emotion the piece is attempting to exhibit. When we ask questions as to why the composer might have chosen to do this here or there, we can begin to understand the true message they must have wanted to communicate. When we understand the piece a lot of the time we are more confident in our performance. Even when we are performing a recital or putting together a program, we need to keep in mind a string of emotions that ties the songs together and relates them to one another.
Key Concept: The art of singing is the emotion in the song. Technique is more of the science.
Making Connections: I have found time and time again that when I focus more on the emotional context of the piece I am singing, I sing much better than if I am constantly worried about if I am singing the song right. Emotion is such a huge part of singing, and even when we graduate and go look for jobs the people who are going to get hired are the people who can act for the most part, rather than the people who can sing because there are so many that can sing but can’t act.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 13
Chapter Summary: Looking for a singing gig is just like looking for a job. Perception is reality as I always say. Your goal is to look good, act well, sing well, smell well, taste well, etc. (okay maybe not taste well.) The point is you are selling yourself and just like any other job out there you need to own it. People like to hire employees who exhibit signs of integrity, passion, friendliness… courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and reverent. In short, professionals like professionals, NOT amateurs.
Key Concepts: Skill is a given, charm is a commodity.
Making Connections: I can totally see how a person wouldn’t be hired if they didn’t own up to themselves and were confident. When we grow up we need to be able to show it.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 14
Chapter Summary: Choral singing is a difficult endeavor for the individual voice for the reason that we are trying to get a certain sound. It can be just as difficult for the conductor when there is so much change from year to year as old singers leave and new ones are added in. Conductors should keep in mind the dangers of overdoing it while singing in a choral setting, it isn’t a competition, it’s a team sport. This means regular warm ups to cultivate healthy singing. This means encouraging your singers not to overdo it. This means finding the right set up to achieve the best blend without forcing any one of your singers to change too terribly. This means encouraging your singers to warm up even on the days there isn’t rehearsal.
Key Concepts: Healthy singing is healthy singing and choral singing shouldn’t be any different.
Making Connections: a lot of the habits I feel I have developed came from only singing chorally. I Feel that if I knew what I know now (ironically I feel this about a lot of things) I would be much happier now! Looking back I don’t feel that my conductor forced our voices, it just came from my own understanding. I think when I become a conductor I would encourage my students to take voice lessons along with choir, no matter their skill level. (or whatever they think their skill level is)
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 15
Chapter Summary: Higher notes are, as a fact, louder than other notes and need less amplification. When we force the same amplification we would have on lower notes on the high notes it can be damaging. Pressure becomes smaller in between the vocal folds when air is passed through it. The pressure decreases even more when the folds are brought in closer proximity of eachother and air is still flowing through them. When we are trying to be more resonant we need to keep in mind that resonance isn’t more power, resonance is more space and is defined by the mass of the resonator.
Key Concepts: The idea is to understand physics and use it to your powerful advantage. There are many factors that go into carrying a sound and if we simply focus on one of them we will most definitely exhaust ourselves more quickly than if we used all of them. Resonance is king in the stratospheric registers.
Making Connections: I find this part of singing very very difficult. I am getting there but I’m still no where close to where I want to be in understanding it. It comes with knowing your voice. It comes with experimentation.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 16
Chapter Summary: When we know and understand the vocal anatomy, we are better prepared to help ourselves and help our students improve singing. It is important to understand where things are and how they function to understand the importance of certain excercises in warming up the voice as well as sensations we need to be feeling while we are singing. Our vocal folds help produce sound, but they also help in breath regulation and preventing food from entering the lungs. The folds are not even the sole producers of pitch. They work in unison with the laryngeal structures and resonators to produce that sound. The entire laryngeal structure is suspended from the hyoid bone. Extrinsic and Intrinsic muscles connect the framework of the larynx together as well as connect it to the rest of the body. These muscles have nothing to do with pitch production and so it is imperative that we release them. That is why trusting, thinking, and letting is so important during phonation.
Key Concept: Understanding the framework of your voice helps us to see into how the voice works and will add to our ability to sing healthier.
Making Connections: Thinking and letting are probably my biggest challenges in singing. There are so many muscles in the neck that it makes things extra hard to differentiate between the ones I should use and the ones I shouldn’t use. However I feel that understanding the anatomy of my own voice has catapulted my abilities this semester. I’m excited to see where it takes me in the future.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 17
Summary: The brain is even more powerful than we as singers might at first realize. When we think of moving muscles the nervous system sends those impulses to those muscles. When we think pitch, we don’t feel it but the brain sends a pulse to our vocal folds to bring them into the correct vibration proximity even before we have begun phonating. Controlling our thoughts is imperative to successful singing.
Key Concepts: THINK, let, trust. Thinking isn’t just a word, its important.
Making Connections: I think this explains why when I am busy distracting myself from the technique with the emotion of a piece, I am able to sing better. When I think too much my brain is sending off shots left and right and to no sure avail. When I can hone my skills and focus my mind on the emotion as well as pitches, and then just sit back and let my voice do its job, then singing becomes fun and easy.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 18
Summary: Our ears are amazing instruments with which we can hear things around us with amazing clarity, but because they are our own it makes listening to ourselves a little tricky. Its just like the side view mirrors on a car, "objects in mirror are closer than they appear". Especially when we sing higher notes there is a muscle called the tensor tympani which protects our ears against loud sounds. So, naturally because higher pitches are louder we get the feeling that they aren’t loud enough and so we use more force, when in reality everyone else can hear LOUD and clear that pitch. It is important to understand our voice through experimentation and understand the sweet spot where we don’t need to apply so much force on those high pitches. We need to find that spot that allows for resonance and just let our voice to the talking. Protecting our ears is extremely important especially with the growing noisy world outside.
Key Terms: tensor tympani
Key Concepts: Again we return to the think and let. I think this is the part that gets me hooked. How loud am I actually being? I suppose the only way to actually understand is to record myself singing and listen to myself. I just get to the point where I think its wimpy and quiet.
Bric Slade DYV Chapter 19
Chapter Summary: Stress is a canker for singers. It overcharges us with energy or saps it and we are left with a very unauthentic performance. Recognizing the source of our stresses can come in handy when we are striving to make an emotional connection with our audience. There are many methods out there to help us overcome our stresses. The main thing is to find out what works for us. Positive thinking can help us quite a bit when we are about to perform. Negative thoughts such as what the audience is thinking about us is not a good way to start off on the right foot. When we are too stressed out it makes it nearly impossible to give an authentic performance because we are constantly tailoring our performance to suit what we might think our audience wants to hear. They want to hear us, we just need to be confident to give it to them.
Key Concept: Find and neutralize your stress for a truly authentic performance.
Making Connections: I think stress can be a big thing for anyone. Worrying about what people think about us is only human nature and everyone has felt that way. When I feel that way I tell myself I have nothing to prove other than what I already know. My best is my best and they can't ask for more from me.
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