Emily F. Sarah F. lesson record/reactions for 1/9

Emily F. Sarah F. lesson record/reactions for 1/9: 
Intake evaluation: 
A.Sarah is a 13 year-old girl who likes to sing to the radio, sings in her church choir, and has just begun singing in her middle school choir. She is very interested in musical theatre, but hasn't performed much. 
B. 1.During her song, her posture was fairly strong, although she has a habit of locking her knees and pushing her neck and head forward. Breaths seemed appropriate for the phrases, but may be somewhat shallow. She doesn't seem to have a lot of bad tension habits.
2. Her tone quality is slightly hooty, somewhat breathy, but fairly round and natural. Vibrato is mostly non-existent. Pitch is inaccurate. It seems that Sarah doesn't have a good internal interval gauge. She usually gets to the pitch eventually, but not immediately. 
3. I've never seen Sarah sing expressively except for when she's being silly. Her choice of song was "My Favorite Things" and while it was basically stylistically correct, there wasn't much interest and expression in it. 
C. Sarah wants to "get better at singing" and "know how to use my voice well, or correctly". She also wants to audition for a musical coming up soon and prepare a song for that. 
Lesson record: Sarah and I began the lesson with talking about her goals, her likes, and her evaluation of her voice. She likes musical theatre, popular music, and isn't opposed to trying some classical music. Her self-evaluation was that on the positive side, her voice is "pretty" and doesn't sound like a little girl's, and she feels her biggest problem is her pitch inaccuracy. (I have been in the habit of telling her when she changes keys in her singing around the house, so I guess she thinks that's a problem.) After we chatted, Sarah sang "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. I complimented her crisp diction, and her consistent, clear timbre. I asked what she liked about her singing, and she said that she liked that she didn't sound like a little girl. There was nothing that she didn't like about her singing. We then talked about the warm-ups she usually does in her choir class, and I learned that all of her warm-ups are ascending. I asked her to start vocalizing daily and pay attention to how her exercises feel in her body. We then did some "whale talk". She was nervous and embarrassed to do this, but I had her copy me. I asked to focus on the way it feels, rather than how it sounds. We moved on to some gentle sighs. Then we tried a breathing exercise, having her hiss on "S" in time, four counts, then double time. I asked her to do a panting exercise. I gave her an F4 and had her pant four times, then sing "he-hey-ha-ho-hu" with four pants between each sung note. That was really challenging, so we switched to two pants between. I moved chromatically up to a Bb4, but that was getting high, so we moved back down to a D4 and did a few there. We then did an air management exercise, having her breathe in for four counts, hold breath for four counts, then release for four counts. I counted and clicked, moving from 4 to 5 to 6 and finally 7, the same pattern each time. I asked how she felt about that exercise.  She said that it was difficult to manage the slow inhalation and that she just let the air gush out on the exhalation. It was a tough exercise for her. I asked Sarah what she wanted to sing and she chose "Tomorrow" from Annie. She wasn't comfortable with the melody, so we sang through it a couple of times. Because she was singing in an affected manner, I had her speak the text in rhythm. I had her sing it by herself then. We talked about the expression of the piece--what is the message and motivation of the song, how do you want the audience to feel when you sing it? Finally, we recapped what we did and what she needs to do during the week. I asked her to come up with a personal image or idea of what the song means to her, and to vocalize daily and pay attention to how that feels. 
Lesson reactions: When I listened to the recording, I was happily surprised at how friendly and positive and confident I sounded. I felt quite nervous for this first lesson. I felt like my instructions were choppy and disconnected, and I didn't feel like I knew which exercises to choose, what order to do them in, and how to describe them. I thought the "whale talk" was effective; she seemed a little uncomfortable, but it was interesting to hear the breaks and oddities in places in her voice. I think if she does it often it can help her with consistency in her range. I don't know if the hissing exercise was helpful at all. The panting exercise was very difficult for her, but seemed like something that can be beneficial as she gets more used to it. The air management exercise made me wonder if it was helpful--it looked like it created a lot of tension where she didn't have it before, and I started wondering about sub-glottal pressure caused by the holding of the breath and if that would be bad. I recognize that I didn't do any descending exercises and I want to make sure I do plenty of those in the future. We did lots of talking this time--I'm sure that's normal, but I want to make sure I get in plenty of vocalizes next time. I thought that I need to revisit the Oren Brown book to try all those good exercises. I'm sure they'll be helpful to me. I also really am recognizing the importance of decent piano skills. Mine are POOR, and I think that it will be much easier to help a student when I can play scales, exercises, and functional harmony for songs. Overall the lesson was ok. Not disastrous, not really amazing or effective, but fine for me.