Student:April A.
Brief overview of lesson: It had been a long time since our last lesson, so I asked April how her singing and practice has been going. She said that it had been going well and that she sang in front of some people the other night when some of her friends were playing around with a guitar. I told her that that was great, and she said that she can tell that she is becoming more comfortable with the higher part of her voice. She also brought up that when she speaks more, it's easier to transition into the higher voice. And also when she is tired and she talks that her voice kind of hurts after a while.
I told her that sometimes we don't always speak very healthily, especially when we are tired. We often start speaking in the lower part of our voice were it kind of sounds gravelly towards the end of the day. I told her that this is actually very tiring on the voice. I then explained how we want to speak a in a higher place where our voice can move and sound freely, without putting too much pressure on it. I told her that we could focus more on speaking a little higher today in our lesson.
Before I began, I asked her if she needed to do some stretching. She said she would like to do a few.
When she was finished, I told her that I wanted to first release her tongue. I had her bring the arch of the tongue forward and bite on it. While she was doing this I explained to her that our tongue is a lot bigger than just what we see, and that it is a very strong and stubborn muscle. I asked her while she was stretching if she felt any pain or tension in her neck, and she said that her neck felt fine. I then asked her if she could feel the stretch at the back of the tongue and she said that she felt it.
I then explained the feeling of a high arch tongue posture while we are singing. I told her that she could find this tongue posture by making the "ng" sound. She seemed to find it pretty easily. While she maintained this tongue posture I told her that we were going to do a downward sigh. I told her to pick the pitch, and let it be up in more of the child-like sound at the top. I also told her that it would sound really nasally. She did it a few times, and it seemed more like she was manufacturing the sound, I then joined in with her for a few, and then stopped to allow her to do 3 or 4 sighs on her own. I felt like they were much more free and easy, and I could tell that she had found the release of the tongue. I told her that I wanted her to maintain that released tongue posture in our exercises today.
I then said, "Also, I know that we've talked a lot about releasing our jaw, and I just wanted to talk about something so I'm being a little more clear in my instruction. When I ask you to release and open your jaw I want you to feel more of a swinging backward motion rather than a straight down motion." I then had her make the shape of the jaw with her arms, and mimic the motion of the jaw. I could see a light bulb turn on, and she said, "That makes more sense, and that feels a lot better. If I swing my jaw back, it makes more sense than bringing it down." I told her to keep that in mind in all her singing.
We then began with the vocalizes. I began with [i] 54321. I told her I wanted her to think three things. 1) jaw swinging backward, 2) tongue in the "ng" posture, and 3)Think about the top pitch REALLY hard before beginning. I started the warm-up at B4, and again reminded her to use her child-like voice at the top. She did the first repetition and it was really breathy and sounded forced, however, she managed to match all of the pitches. I stopped her and asked her what she thought about that time and what happen. She responded that she didn't like it, because her tongue bunched up in the back. I told her that I thought that too. We tried the warm-up again, this time it was better, but I could see some high larynx in that repetition. This time she stopped me and said that she thought it was getting too low for her child-like voice. I told her that when she felt that it was getting too low, then it would be appropriate or fine for her to transition into more of her speaking voice. She said okay, and we tried it again, I was looking at her larynx to see if she was grabbing or raising the larynx to accommodate the high note--sure enough, she did it again. I then stopped her and asked her to take a slow-silent breath of surprise. I asked her where the breath went when she did that, she said, "Well, before I was breathing up in my chest, but when I did that it was more by my stomach." I said, "Good, I'm glad that you can recognize that. Now I want you to implement that into your singing, let's try it again." I started her on A4, and that time, there was less air being pushed up on the vf's.
I asked her if giving her an action would be easier for her to remember the different instructions, she said that she wasn't sure, but she'd try.
After I told her to use the motion of the arms as the thought of the jaw moving, it was less labored, and the she matched all of the pitches from then out. HOORAY!
I then moved on to a different exercise. Going along with the movement of the jaw, I had her speak like a vampire to feel that release of the jaw. I asked her how her jaw felt, she said that it felt good, and that it felt free.
We then transitioned that feeling into [u] 8-5-3 [a] -1. I told her to begin with the child-like voice, and then on [a] transition in the speech-like sound. We did a few repetitions, and I felt like she was matching pitch for the most part, but I could see a jutting forward of the head. I stopped her and asked her to grab ahold of her ponytail to release her a-o joint. This seemed to realign body better. I felt like she was doing better with the child-like voice, but the transitioning part was not happening at all. After a few more repetitions she asked if she could sit down cause she felt light headed. I told she was fine to sit on the piano bench. After she sat down she started to match pitch more. I told her that I was proud of her that she was much more consistent with her matching pitch. The only times I felt like she wasn't was up around C5 on up. I think this is understandable since singing high is still very foreign to April, and a bit scary.
I then brought out the hymn book, and April picked "Lead Kindly Light" to sing. I thought this would be a good exercise to practice singing because April's goal is to be able to learn how to sing better so that she can read music and sing freely when she's at church.
I began playing the song with all the chords, I played through the first phrase and had her sing along. It didn't match pitch at all. I stopped and asked her which part she was going to sing. She replied that she was sing what she was hearing. I said, okay, then maybe I'll just play the melody. So we began again at the first measure and sang through it again. She didn't match pitch at the beginning, but did towards the end of the phrase. I recognized that this was because the beginning of the phrase was an ascending exercise, so I took her to the second half of the phrase so she could start at the highest note, sing the descending part of the phrase. This was much easier for her. She matched all of the pitches. I asked her how it went. She said that the first note was scary, but as it went it got easier because it was lower. I said, "Okay, so maybe we should approach the top note from above, let's try doing a sigh and then landing on the first note." It seemed to work and she matched the pitch fairly easily. I said, "So that worked for you. So whenever you think or see a high note remember to approach it from above. If we are singing a phrase that is ascending then we need to prepare for that high note."
She then said, "Yeah, but I feel like when I'm singing low it's down here, and then when I get higher it's up in my throat." I translated this as that her larynx was rising.
I then asked her to try to speak like Glinda the good witch. I had her speak like her for a bit, and then I pointed out some pitches on the piano that April was speaking on. She was up around C5 and B4. I told her that although it seems scary and hard to sing those notes, they are achievable because she just did it for me.
We then talked about our take-aways.
Assessment of student: I think that April had a bit of an epiphany with the swinging back of the jaw, so I was happy to be able to redirect her way of thinking for the movement of the jaw. She is finding the child-like voice, but she has a very hard time transitioning from the child-like to speech-like voice, so there is a bit of improvement. I noticed during the lesson that her voice is often breathy, but I feel like it is mostly
How will you modify your teaching based off of what you learned from the lesson? I need to focus more on giving students actions to associate different thoughts with, rather than verbal instruction. I think the movement of the arms helped April focus a little less on making things happen, and a little more about think-let-trust.
Questions for Cindy: What else can I do to ease the transition between different registers for April besides doing downward sighs, and descending scales? I plan to continue doing that, but I just want to make sure that I'm doing my best to help aid that transition in my teaching.
Takeaways for the student:
1. Speak in the Glinda voice a little bit everyday. And associate that a little more with her singing voice. Make sure that this is free and easy, open, and free of any lurch up in her throat.
2. Tongue arch in back posture.
3. April chose for her last takeaway, to focus on swinging the jaw backwards, rather than pushing down her jaw.
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