Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/6/14

Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/6/14

Lesson Record:

• I started out the lesson with the breathing exercise that we did in class a few sessions back. We squatted down with our knees apart and the arms in between them and took several deep breaths without moving the shoulders. I asked to make sure that she could feel the opening in her ribcage and not any involvement in her shoulders. I had tried to explain this sensation to her previously, but this really helped to solidify the concept. 
• I then went on to reestablish her singer’s “posture,” but I made sure to tell her that small movement (micro movement) is okay, and that we’re focusing on freedom, not on strict form. 
• We started out with the “shh” exercise, making sure that her breaths were silent and that there was no engagement in the shoulders, and that her breathing was in her back. She seemed a little tense during this exercise and her breathing was still hitched up in her throat a bit, so I had her say “shh” still, but immediately after she was done with the consonant sound, I told her to just let her jaw hang open to let the air come in. 
• I was curious to see how well the lip trill exercise would go with her, now that she had improved slightly, starting in F major, going down on a 54321 scale. She struggled with maintaining the trill, so I had her try sticking her tongue out slightly while doing it, but that still didn’t work either. So I changed the exercise to “yawn,” going down on the same patterns. She was trying to say “ah,” but her onsets were a little off, so I had her emphasize the “y” sound in “yawn.” She was particularly stiff today, so I told her to “snake” her head as she sang. (Whoops; I said, “Don’t hold the head.” I should’ve said to let her neck/head be free.) 
• I moved on to “mmm” with the sensation of “I’m about to yawn, but I’m holding it back with my lips.” Still on the 54321 (I really need to find things that deviate from this…) Her shoulders were heaving in between each start, so I slowed things down so she had time to reset her breathing and take in “deep” breaths. I also told her to open her mouth for the breath because she was getting shallow breaths still. 
• I tried to do a 5 to 1 slide on “ng—ah,” holding the ng and letting the ah out freely. However, Amanda really struggled to find her “ng” sound; she kept going to an “n” no matter how I tried to get her to do it correctly. So we ended up switching that as well. All I wanted was for her to get more into her mask; she was utilizing the “yawn” well for opening up her throat, but her sound was getting too swallowed. 
• I changed tactics and move to a 53421 on “mama” in an Italian style, with emphasis on the “m” sounds. I told her to maintain a good “yawn” feeling, but keep the “m”s nice and Italian. I really liked how this went with her; it definitely gave her more resonance when she got it correctly with good breathing and space. 
• I told that whenever she’s singing, I told her that there are three things I always want her to be conscious of: breathing, maintaining “yawn space,” and utilizing the “mama,” with the nasal/frontal consonant sounds. 
• We went over her piece, “Gravity” by Sarah Barielles. She really took to heart the things I told her in her last lesson, which was to utilize her nasal sounds to help propel/bridge the gap between her chest and head voice. It was a little extreme, but it was easy to tell her to tone that down a bit. She does have some random breathing in the middle of phrases. 
• I told her to work on making her words slightly more intelligible by working out the consonant sounds more, especially at the ends of words. I told her to hairpin the phrases, adding more dynamic contrast to the piece and giving her breath a sense of direction. 
• There was a moment when her tone was really good and her vibrato sort of just popped out, and I stopped her singing and asked what she did differently. She didn’t know, but I told her that it was because she had more breath engagement and that she was letting the air flow more freely. I told her that we’d rather have a “regurgitation” of air than “stiff” air that we hold back because we’re afraid to run out of breath. With the phrases being as short as they are, I told her to not be afraid to expel more air with her singing. 
• I want to work on her getting more of her face engaged in her singing, so as a precursor to next week, I told her to practice speaking/singing her piece in front of a mirror with extremely exaggerated facial expressions for a couple of minutes in every practice session. 

Lesson Reactions:

• Her vibrato started to come into her singing today; it’s very slight and sort of wobbly, but it’s freer than when we first had our lessons, and it just popped in randomly. Her singing was more engaged and the tone was less breathy. 
• I want to work on vowel sounds with her; she got a little lazy with them, and I think it makes it slightly more difficult for her to sound resonant. I think that may partially be my fault though, because she’s trying to maintain her “yawn space.” I think I need to tone down that bit of the lesson plan because she really takes what I say seriously (which is a good thing, but I need to be wary of it). 
• I need to work out the higher section of the chorus part with her; I forgot to address it. 
• Honestly, this was probably one of my less successful lessons with Amanda because I was not mentally “there.” I was sort of scattered and my brain was foggy today for some reason. There was just so much to work with that I kind of jumped all over the place today instead of keeping everything in perspective. 
• I should’ve addressed/corrected her breathing more throughout the lesson. 
• I need to make sure to work on telling her pitch/rhythm corrections before she memorizes the piece the wrong way. I keep forgetting to get to that as well. 30 minutes is not very much time!
• Overall, I feel somewhat satisfied, despite my scatter-brained-ness. I feel like Amanda really is improving, which sort of baffles me because I’m just going over vocalizes with her and she comes back every week slightly better. However, I’m just worried that now that I have her engaging her voice more that I’ll push it too far and she’ll be over correcting.