"Caro Mio Ben"
Well, as Cindy has said, we should always start with something positive. This girl's intonation was very good (only a few pitches were amiss), and her voice moved through the piece displaying musicality and sensitivity.
1. What is wrong with what I am hearing and seeing? The most obvious problem to me was the breathy tone. She also had shallow breathing, poor alignment, and a lot of distracting, extraneous body movement.
2. What is causing the problem? The airy tone is caused by hypofunction.Her breath energy is not converting to energy in her voice. Likely her chords are not fully adducted.The excessive movement of her arms, neck, shoulders, and back are caused by tension, nerves, improper alignment, and probably due in part to the fact that she doesn't know what she SHOULD be doing with her body. Her shallow breathing is due to her poor alignment.
3. What would I do about it if I were the teacher? I would be very cautious in addressing the breathy tone. Judging by her appearance, I would guess that she is still very young. As she matures, this problem will improve on it's own. If I am not careful in the way I address this issue, she will likely develop a habit of pushing or squeezing to achieve adduction. The key is to be patient with her voice. A good warm up to address hypofunction is a five note descending staccato scale on [bi], [di], [gi] etc. Oren Brown says that flicking your forearm on the first and last note aids in adduction, but I haven't tried that yet. For her posture difficulties, I might have her sit down in lessons for a while. Erect and poised, but sitting. Once that problem is fixed I think a lot of her random jerking and shallow breathing will go away. If not she may have to lie down on the floor.
4. How well prepared were the performances? I was impressed with her level of preparedness. I feel like she is the kind of student who puts in a lot of work and will go far! Her diction was very good, but could have had more maturity and openness in the vowels, especially [i]. She obviously knew the piece and the accompaniment very well. There can always be more musicality and expressiveness, but I think she did a really nice job. My only other tips would be to wear more formal clothing, and keep her hair back so we can see her face.
"The Roadside Fire"
First something positive. This guy has a nice tone! Unpolished, but very pleasant and robust! Could develop into something really cool. He's very invested in this performance. There's nothing timid about him. I feel like he's committed to the piece and he's giving his all.
1. What is wrong with what I am hearing and seeing?
His random body movements (stepping around, twisting, shuffling, shrugging, waving, lurching) were very distracting, but more importantly, his entire breathing mechanism was twisting around! Managing his air and stabilizing his larynx while he's moving like that would be like trying to play jenga on top of a galloping horse. He needs to find stability! He needs to find purpose for his movement! The other problems would include diction, farty exhales, and intonation problems.
2. What is causing the problem?
I think his body movement is caused by nerves, and also perhaps because he is not confident in his physical awareness of his own body. He is young. His body has probably changed a lot - he definitely looks uncomfortable in his skin. Another cause is that he isn't genuinely involved in what he's saying. He is posing and gesturing "dramatically," but there's little of his actual personality present in his singing. He needs to perform it simply as he would say it if the story were his. The diction problems are caused by some strange tongue movements I think. I could see his jaw and lips forming the vowels, but all I heard was "nuhghgh ugggghhh ehenngnhh." It could be the recording I suppose. His breath farts are caused by clavicular breathing, and no control over the decrease of the thoracic space. I think that fixing the breath would help with his intonation. If not he needs to keep working on memorizing pitches until he can [bi bi bi] through his songs a capella!
3. What would I do about it if I were the teacher?
First off, I'd sit that kid down! He should practice sitting at least a little bit until he starts to get his body under him. Maybe have him sing lying down. He's got to start body mapping, as it's clear he has no awareness of what is going on with his body while he sings. I would have him speak the text as though it was a monologue a lot too, so he could see what a more realistic amount of physical movement would be. We would start in on rib expansion and the release of the abdominals. Once he understand the breathing mechanisms, he will begin to breath with better efficiency and fluidity. We start this by body mapping, modeling, feeling our visceral displacement and rib expansion, and releasing the abdominals. Then we do breathing exercises like the hiss and silent counting. For his diction I would talk about purple pigs - keeping the consonants out of the vowels and the vowels out of the consonants.
4. How well prepared was the performance?
Well. I think he was about half way there. It was memorized. But I the pitches weren't all in his mind and the meaning was no where near his mind. It was also clear that he was VERY uncomfortable with the accompaniment/accompanist. I don't know what tempo he was trying to sing at, but she was clearly not on the same page, and vise versa. Bleh! Accompanists who don't listen are absolutely the worst.
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