Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/13/14

Emily C., Amanda G., Lesson Record/Reactions, 2/13/14

Lesson Record:

• I decided to start the lesson out by going over the concept of “posture” with Amanda, sort of teaching her what I learned this past week after reading What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Human Body. I told her that we don’t want rigidity, but freedom and flexibility to do what we want while standing or sitting. I recommended that, as a part of her daily routine, to become more observant of her sitting position in particular (since she sings while on the guitar sometimes), using her spine as a support for her weight, rather than her muscles. I told her to experiment with using her skeleton as her main support this week. (I really didn’t go too far into the details because it would take too much time in the lesson…) 
• I quickly reviewed what I had Amanda work on last week, which was consonants, breathing (the “shh” exercise from before), and “hair-pinning,” which was referring to dynamic contrast in her piece (but after reading Cindy’s comments, I decided that I wouldn’t work on emphasizing that as much). This week, I accidentally read Ch. 3 from Malde, rather than from McKinney initially, but I did learn some interesting things that I decided to share with Amanda. Because there tends to be a lot of rigidity in her breathing at times, I told her that the ribcage moves independently of the shoulders (which I didn’t know before), and that’s provides a lot more freedom as far as where/how your ribcage can expand while breathing. After divulging this information, however, I honestly don’t think it did anything to help Amanda.
• I honestly didn’t know exactly how to start the lesson with Amanda today, so I had her try some simple lip trills going down on 54321 starting in F major. I immediately remembered that this wasn’t the best vocalize for her because she tends to force her air out and tighten up her throat because she struggles with getting her lips to buzz. So I moved on to “thee” instead of lip buzzes. Today, Amanda seemed to be pushing a lot more than she used to, which had me worried. I told her to be “gentle” with the exercise and that we didn’t worry about whether or not it sounded good, but if it felt good. Her jaw was also tighter today than it was before, so I had her put her hands on her face so she became aware of the unnecessary jaw tension/movement with the pitches. I told her to try and maintain the released position of her jaw and notice the space between her back molars. We then switched the vocalize to “lee” instead of “thee.” 
• Listening back on the recording, it almost sounded as though she was trying to make her “head voice” sound more like her “chest voice.” Her onsets were almost like she was “punching” for that first note, which I heard, but I didn’t realize it was an onset problem at the moment (if that makes any sense), so I struggled when it came time to try and correct it. 
• To try and break her out of her rigid tone (I really don’t know how to describe it other than that; the pitches were very robotic and hammer-like), I had her do some swoopy speech in an attempt to loosen her up, telling her it should be like the swoop that accompanies a yawn when you add voice to it. After a couple of those, I decided to add some pitches, doing a slide down from 5 to 1, starting in F major, skipping around with a low B major (B3) to a top note of D5. 
• Whenever she changed pitch, her jaw moved along with it, so I told her to not move her jaw (and then I quickly corrected myself) and told her to release her jaw and let the tongue do the articulation. I modeled it for her, and she caught on—it’s just a habit that we need to monitor. 
• I then added another pitch to the slide, going from 5 to 3 to 1 on the same sound. I told her that we want a nice swoop to each pitch, but we’re not excessively worrying about how each pitch sounds, but again, on how the singing feels. I switched the sound to “lay” because she was getting tense, and I told her to try and not use her jaw for the diphthong, keeping it released. 
• I had her do some more “whooooo” swoop sounds, and had her say a couple of things in her child-like voice to get her to release. I then went into 53421 on [li le la lo lu]. I had to keep reminding her that we want a swoopy sensation that was flexible and released, rather than a pitch-pitch-pitch-pitch approach. (Looking back on this part as well, maybe I should have just had her say [lu] or start out with [lu lo la le li] instead, because she was much more relaxed on her back vowels.) 
• I had to correct some audible breathing, but that part has improved a little; the gasping isn’t as obvious as before. 
• At this point, I started to realize that most of her problems were in her neck, causing jaw tension and tongue tension, so I had her shake things out a bit by dancing around ridiculously and shaking out our bodies for a couple of seconds. I also decided her breath energy could use a little boost, so I asked her what things she looks forward to (i.e. I love the BBC series Sherlock, and whenever an episode is about to come on the tv, I have this breath of anticipation) and to have that anticipation feeling. 
• I had her sing on 8531 “who are you.” I tried again to get her to add swoop to her singing, but it just wasn’t working. I told her she was “trying too hard” to make the swoop come out. I told her it should be natural and easy to do like seeing a cute guy and saying, “Well, who are you.” It’s not forced, but it’s easy. This finally got her to loosen up more. I failed to recognize that she couldn’t do what I wanted her to do because she was trying too hard to do it! 
• I told her this week to practice 531 gently swooping down to each pitch with the same feeling we had in the previous exercise. 
• With the time we had left, I had Amanda sing her piece. The first thing I noticed was that she was definitely thinking more about the meaning of her piece, which added a little more style/emotion to her singing. However, this is where I started to see that her onsets to higher notes (especially if it was a jump from a low to high note) were especially harsh and “punch” like. 
• With her onsets, I told her that when she had a jump from a low to high note, she needs to be less heavy on her lower note in preparation for the higher note. I told her to sing the low note with the high note in her mind. I had her sing the first pitch and then swoop upward, not worrying about what the notes she sang after the first pitch. Her jaw was still getting in the way, so I challenged her to try and sing this piece moving her jaw as little as possible, keeping it released and letting the tongue do the articulation. I had her roll her head around in small circles (gently) while she sang in an attempt to loosen her up, but even when she wasn’t singing, her head moved in a disjointed fashion, almost as if the place where her head and neck connected was a rusty hinge. I told her about how our head and neck connects in a place inside our head to get her to make her head/neck movements more fluid, but it didn’t do anything for her singing. So I told her to just practice loosely moving her head on her neck without singing this week. 
• I had her sing the jumps a couple of times with a released jaw and her heading moving around slightly until she sang it well. I pointed it out to her, especially noting that her higher notes were more released because she wasn’t pushing for a particular sound. I told her it was okay if they sounded a little airy because those muscles are still becoming stronger. We don’t want to push a muscle farther than what it’s ready for. 

Lesson Reactions:

• Well, my reactions are pretty scattered throughout the record, but here are the main points that I got from this lesson:
• I need to take more time to think about what she’s doing exactly. I was able to hear the problem but not pinpoint exactly how to fix it. 
• We really need to work out her neck tension. It’s bad.
• I need to allow her to sing on her back vowels more often because she sounded better on them so I can compare “oh, sing this like you sang that.” 
• Onsets need some work, along with keeping the higher notes lighter than the lower ones. 
• I feel like I’m becoming more and more overwhelmed with teaching the more I learn in class; there’s so much more to address that I can’t even think straight while I’m teaching anymore. I think I need to write up a check list of things that I can look out for instead of scrambling about.