Savannah lesson report 1/30
Savannah was complaining of a sore throat for this lesson so I threw most of my lesson plan out the window and made it my goal to teach her a little bit more about vocal health and care when she is sick and focus on some musicality aspects. I wanted to test her vocal ability a little first and make sure she wasn't exaggerating her throat pain. So I told her to do some gentle descending hums. She was fine on the exercises that were neatly within her vocal range but anything higher or lower caused pain. I assumed that this was because she was employing extrinsic muscles to change pitch. So, we left vocalizing alone. I instructed her on some things she shouldn't do and even taught her some very basic vocal anatomy. I did this so she could better understand why it is so important to take care of our vocal folds, especially when we are sick. Savannah is also my student who doesn't know how to read any music. I spent some time getting her familiar with where her range is on the piano, explaining rhythms and how to count properly. We then did multiple breathing exercises starting with leaning over in child's pose and breathing "into our backs." Then we took low breaths in letting the air out on <sh>. She had some epiphanies about the way she should connect to her breath and I think that going over counting helped too. We also picked out some new rep for her that she could for sure find recordings of on youtube. Hopefully she will be a little more motivated to practice now. :) I was a little worried about how this lesson would go but I think that Savannah learned some really important things, among them, you don't necessarily have to sing to practice singing.
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