Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions for 1/23/14

Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions for 1/23/14

Lesson Transcript:

• Amanda got sick not too long ago this past week, and she’s recovering slightly still, so I decided to be very gentle with her voice today. We started out by standing and done some very simple and basic stretches; we reached for the sky, stretched to the left and right to feel the stretch in the ribcage, and bend forward, letting our arms hang to the ground, and slowly brought ourselves upright again, making sure that the head rested well on the neck with no stiffness. I showed her the proper “singing position,” making sure her weight was evenly distributed on both legs with the feet about shoulder width apart. I had her do the “toaster shoulders” thing several times to get her shoulders into place. 
• Next, we did some breathing exercises; breathing in for 5, breathing out for 5, breathing in 4, out 4, etc. I made sure to tell her to keep her hands on her ribcage as she did this and told her to resist collapsing the ribcage while exhaling. I made sure that she didn’t do the “pregnant stomach” thing either. 
• After that, I started on a gentle vocalize, saying “yawn” as we go down on a 54321 scale, starting on E4. I jumped around, but I stayed below B4. I told her to just let her voice glide over the pitches while releasing (not saving) the breath, and that we were mainly focusing on letting the sound just slide out. I started to notice that she was raising her shoulders with every inhale and making a slight gasping sound with every breath. I tried to tell her to try and avoid that, but when she kept doing it, I moved on.
• I had her sing “ah” starting on a pitch that I gave her (within the same range as the above exercise), and just sliding down with no pitch in mind. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish with this, but I realized it wasn’t working, so I moved on really fast. I then tried to have her put her hands on their corresponding shoulders (left hand on left shoulder, vice versa) and say “yawn” sliding down on random pitches (no piano) in an attempt to have her stop her tense inhalations. 
• That wasn’t working so well either, so I told her straight up that she was gasping and raising her shoulders on inhale. I told her that whenever we exhale, the lung’s elasticity will automatically suck air back in without any effort, and our job as singers is to allow space for the air to enter with no resistance. I had her exhale on “shhh,” and made sure to just have the throat open for a completely silent breath. She responded really well to this and it calmed her shoulders and released a lot of tension as well as made her breaths less gasping. We did this several more times until she got the hang of it. 
• We then moved right back to the “yawn” exercise above on the 54321 scale (same pitches), applying what we did in the “shhh” exercise for our breathing. This worked very well, but there are times when she reverted back to her old habits. I told her to practice the “shhh” exercise in front of the mirror so she can see how her shoulders are moving and pay attention to letting the air in. 
• (I really have nothing besides my “yawn” exercise really, and a couple of Oren Brown’s exercises at the moment, so bear with me.) I had her try and fake some yawns until she could actually yawn. We did this a couple of times so I could get her to relax and de-constrict her throat because her tone was shallow. We went back to applying the yawn to the 54321 scale, adding a sloppy chew to the end. On occasion I had her move her head around as she sang because she tended to get stuck in one place. 
• Next, I went to saying “li, le, la, lo, lu” on a 54321 scale (same pitches again, going a little higher to C#5 this time), applying the yawn motion, the silent breath. I also told her to try and keep the jaw relaxed while maintaing the “same” mouth position while speaking all of her vowels. She was making some decent space between her molars, but I couldn’t figure out how to get her tone to be less shallow? back? (I’m not sure), so I tried something else.
• I had her to some “Mmmmm” with some sloppy chews, as if she had a mouthful of something savory, starting on random pitches and sliding down. I was attempting to get more of her resonance forward, and as she did these, I told her to put the sound into her cheeks, but she didn’t quite understand what I meant by that. So I had her say “ng” in a really nasal sound, telling her that when she sings, we want to feel like the sound is coming out of her cheeks/mask resonance. I then told her about “smiling eyes” to see if that would help put more energy into her resonance. 
• I reminded her about her “singer’s stance,” and had her sing “li le la lo lu” on 53421 to change things up a bit. This really didn’t do anything or have any purpose. Good job, Emily. I told her to make a little more space, but that really didn’t do much either. I had her listen to the 53421 on the piano two times while thinking the sound that she wanted before singing again. 
• I then had her sing on “ni ne na no nu” to try and get her sound more forward, giving extra time to the first “n” sound. 
• Before moving on to her music, I reiterated the four things I wanted her to take away from this lesson: Singer’s stance, “Mmmmm + chew,” the “shhh” exercise, and the breathing exercise. 
• Amanda’s singing “Gravity” by Sarah Barielles, and I had a minus track to accompany her. Her lyrics were rather disjointed and the singing was literally note to note, but I have a feeling it’s because she’s still learning the piece. To remedy this, I told her to use a “bouncing” feeling to help propel the phrases forward, placing emphasis on important words and areas with unique rhythmic qualities, and I had her use her hand to conduct the “bounces cycles.”  
• There were a couple places where the piece jumps from low to slightly higher, and these were particularly disjunct. I had her use the consonants to help switch “registers,” such as “n” and “m.” I also told her to try and keep a legato line because she has a tendency to make pauses/breaths in awkward places in the music. 

Reactions:

• I feel like I jumped around a lot in this lesson. I tried to fix one thing and then saw another thing and tried to fix it. I honestly wonder how effective I’m being in my lessons. 
• However, upon later inspection of the lesson recording, I realized that Amanda may be a hypo functional singer and I’ve been treating her like a hyper-functional singer. I’m going to try doing some exercises that will bring up her energy level, like body movement exercises and breath energy stuff. 
• With only a few years of voice lessons to go off of myself, I still feel really limited as far as vocalizes go; I’m definitely going to have to do more research in our past books for some help. 
• I think I did a better job of pointing out the good things that Amanda was doing as well as telling her what I was trying to fix with the exercises I was doing (particularly when whatever I was doing wasn’t working). 
• I’m getting better at this teaching thing, but I’m still pretty all over the place.