Emily F. Sarah F. lesson record/reactions 1/16

Emily F. Sarah F. lesson record/reactions 1/16: 
Lesson record: 
E: Let's begin with some stretching. Do you feel tension in your body anywhere? 
S: Yeah, in my back. [We took a couple minutes to stretch our upper bodies.]
E: Let's do some whale talk. [ We had a small conversation in whale talk. Sarah giggled a lot, so her face was a little tight, but she did get some vocal movement and smoothness moving her voice around.]
E: OK. Repeat after me: [ni-ne-na-no-nu] [We worked on this for a couple minutes. Sarah would swallow her tongue if she tried to keep her jaw in the same place. We did speaking with line on those syllables, speaking with line and projection, then singing the same syllables on a downward 5 note scale beginning at B4. Then C4, then down to F#4. I suggested she make her jaw "stupid" and sing on the same pitches. I was noticing a lot of tension in her neck and jaw. I asked her to lip trill on any pitch. She was losing a lot of air--I don't know if that's common for beginners?]
E: Why don't you try walking in eight equal steps from the piano bench to the couch. Hmm. Didn't quite get the right distance. Try again--this time with five equal steps. Alright. It's kind of hard to know exactly how big a step you need to take, isn't it? So that's what we need to do with air. Try really gently hissing out air for as long as possible. [She tried it.] OK, good. If you have a balloon, you don't want to squeeze it and push all the air out, just let it come out at a steady rate. Try it again. How did that feel? 
S: It was hard. I felt tightness in my jaw. 
E: What did you feel in your torso?
S: I don't really know. [At this point I noticed a lot of tightness in her body so I asked her to be kind of floppy when she did the gentle hiss.]
E: Great. Now we'll do kind of the same idea, but with a lip buzz. Just let it be gentle, and come out steadily. Are you feeling any engagement down in your abdomen when you do that?
S: Sort of, I guess. What should it feel like? 
E: Strong but not rigid. You shouldn't feel like you're squeezing your air out. Remember our balloon? We don't want to squish all the air out at once! 
S: OK. [She tried again, but was still sloppy with it, so we moved on. We went back to the descending ni-ne-na-no-nu starting on F4.]
E: Good. Let's do it again, but slower, and more like you're speaking it. [She tried that, but became even more disconnected and airy. I know that airiness is okay because she's 13 but a lot of it seems like lack of engagement or energy.]
E: Let's try some "nyah-nyah-nyah". And make it ugly! [Sarah thought this was pretty funny but she got into it. We spoke an ugly "nyah" at different places in the range, me modeling for her. We then jumped right back into ni-ne-na-no-nu. She immediately switched back into airy, disconnected sound. I had her start the exercise with a "nyah" then right into the descending five note scale on F4. This time there was distinct connection, openness, and resonance. Her eyes got big.]
E: How did that feel?
S: Better! 
E: How was it different from the times before? 
S: There wasn't any tightness here (indicating larynx, jaw, neck) and it was clearer. 
E: Hmm! Interesting! [We continued the exercise, alternating between "nyah" and regular, ascending by half steps through G#4. I wanted to give her a chance to sing some higher notes, so we tried "holly-lolly-holly-lollipop", descending 5 note scale beginning on F5, moving up by half steps till A6. Then we just did a simple siren without specific pitches, letting her sing as high as she liked. She probably got to about a C6 on siren.]
E: Alright. What did I ask you to do this week for your song? ("Tomorrow" from Annie)
S: Oh yeah, I was supposed to think of a story for my song. I don't want to share my idea, though. [She sang through it. I noticed her sticking her chin out, the disconnected, hooty quality came back into her sound. But the pitches and rhythms were more solid than last week. I had her re-start the song, and I stopped her after the first phrase and had her "nyah" a couple times and back to the song. We did this a few times. I asked her to put her hands to her sides and stop rocking back and forth. Her sound improved when the energy wasn't displaced to other parts of her body. I asked her to sing the chorus while tucking her chin under softly. She was consistently missing a note, so we ran through it several times. Then we sang the chorus on short "pip"s to make sure the pitches were accurate and to see if she could sing with some more energy. Then we tried singing it on lip trill. She had to take several breaths, it was messy and inaccurate. I had her pull on my arms while she sang the chorus to see if she could keep some steady energy. We tried speaking in her "fancy British" voice to engage simply speaking simply in register 3. This seemed to make more hootiness. We tried singing in the "nyah"/bratty voice, but that didn't seem to help either. I had Sarah sing the chorus letting her head fall back on her shoulders but letting her jaw just fall.
I asked Sarah to practice this week saying a "stupid uh" and alternate with the bratty "nyah-nyah". I asked her to continue vocalizing this week, and practicing her song. 
Lesson reactions: This felt overall much more productive than last week's lesson. I was a little less nervous and just trusted my instincts more. I'm still afraid that everything I'm doing will mess up Sarah's voice, so I doubt a lot that I'm doing. I don't know if I'm asking her to overadduct her vocal folds or not. The "nyah" right into "ni-ne-na-no-nu" seemed really effective at connecting her speaking and singing "voices" and making the sound more natural and speech-like. I did a lot of different things and moved through them quickly. Sarah was nervous that she wasn't doing what I wanted, but I reassured her that it was my responsibility to find things that will be helpful to her, and that not everything I chose worked well.  Maybe I'm not sticking with certain exercises long enough? I basically tried all kinds of things in this lesson and moved on if something didn't seem to help right away. Maybe I didn't give her time to experiment with what I asked of her. I know that Sarah has potential, but I don't know how to tap into it. I hear that it seems like she's on the brink of vibrato, but I don't know how to encourage the strength and freedom that that will require. Overall, this lesson was an improvement from last week's. It was fun and satisfying to make a suggestion that made a difference in her sound, if only for a minute.