Jared D Camille B lesson record/Reactions for 4/15

So i tried really hard to stick to the scheduled plan, I don't think it was my smartest plan because we got through it but i don't feel like it accomplished much, I felt Like i was more determined to do my lesson plan than i was at helping her. i realized afterwards as well that i wasn't even watching her half the time. I was just timing everything and getting through the exercises. I listened back on the lesson and realized I wasn't listening or noticing a lot of things. Most importantly was her breath. it was so loud and gaspy most of the time, even during the vocalizes, so obviously I was not helping her at all by giving her that lesson. I asked her lots of questions and i feel like she's smart and just figured out what the correct answers were to give not necessarily what she was actually feeling or doing. So I think this was a failure on my part and I don't have a lot of detail to give because i was an idiot and wasn't paying attention to my student just my schedule.

Jared D Camille B lesson plan 4/15

This week I want to really test her understanding and ask her more questions about how things feel and see if she can better describe the sensations. I want to do more vocalizes. I feel like i waste time talking and explaining and she needs to do more free singing. or at least experimenting to find out what free singing feels like. So i want a lot of singing this lesson. I will start with the hums for a few seconds just to check in with where she is. ill ask about posture and then we will go into some "never never nos" starting in the middle of the staff and randomly progressing up and down. Then i want to try the bounce again because that seemed to help a lot.

Jared Daley Camille B Lesson record/reactions for 2/7

SO we started with the stretching and i could tell it helped her mood and her stiffness immediately. we then went straight into the silent 8 exercise. It wasn't working like i wanted it to, so i switched to the hums and the the descending 5 [a] then tried again with the silent 8. we started on about a A in the middle of the staff and worked our way up. She did alright, i felt dumb because i wasn't sure how to fix what i was hearing. it was a lot of air passing through during the silent note. Almost breath farty. but i kept going just to see if it was a consistent thing. I really wasn't getting what i wanted from the exercise. it was still harsh and not fluid. So i gave up on that and we did it a lot lower and i just play a really high note and told her to think about singing that high but to sing these lower notes at the bottom of the staff. I continued to play the high note throughout the exercise. She said it wasn't helping and that it just annoyed her. So i laughed about that for awhile and really didn't know what to do. I felt stumped that day. So i went to the songs and told her to sing them in her pleasant voice and that she can always add more grown up sound later. On I can hear the bells she actually sounded really good there wasn't a lot of tension, just weird head movements and posture slouching. So I told her to get in the correct posture and she went into her old "singing' formation. So I yelled at her kind of and said that's not the posture we've been working on is it? she said sorry it's just a habit, and it didn't feel good as soon as I did it. SO that made me happy that she was aware that it didn't feel good or wasn't right.

Jared D Camille B Lesson plan for 2/7

This week I wanted to switch back into breathing and onsets. She has very harsh onsets like i do. So i'm an expert at recognizing them. It could also be why she complains her voice hurts when she "belts" I want to do the silent 8 descending scale with her so she can get that think let trust in her head, and just let the notes come out when they come out instead of blasting them out. it's a difficult trust exercise and I think it'll help her a lot. I want to do the stretching again before we start because that put her in a much better place and mood. She did well in her audition and got a call back for the lead so we will be looking at a couple of hairspray songs.

jared Daley Camille B lesson record/reactions for 1/31

SO my goal for today was all about posture.  started out by doing some stretches. We reached out to the sky on our tippy toes and reached as high as we could then we released. we did about 4 of those. then we rolled our neck slowly to one side then back up then the other side and back up. We did that two times. we bent over and let our arms hang. i even checked to see if she really let her self go and if her arms were limp. They werent at first so i had her shake it all out and try again. she did it this time, and said she felt good. I had her roll of really slowly telling her to imagine her vertebrae stacking one at a time all the way up to her neck. and we bobble headed until our heads found their balance point. I asked her to pretend like she was about to sing something and tell me what her body feels like doing. She prepped herself for singing and she said my whole body wanted to tighten up and it felt weird because i was so relaxed. I explained that we don't want to feel tight and tense when we sing and that we can't be super relaxed either. we need to find a balance. And we want to be energized but not tight!
She asked me how to do all that and I said uh, i'm still working on it as well let's find it together. I had her run in place for a second and then had her sing a line of her song. Then run really fast again and had her sing again. I told her that's how we should feel on the inside is that energy throughout the phrase and inbetween. we don't want to relax and lose that energy when we breath or start a new phrase. So i had her pant inbetween phrases next without taking a "real" breath. she liked that she felt like she was excited while singing. I said great! then time was up and she had to leave but I told her to practice that panting inbetween phrases.

Jared Daley Camille B lesson plan for 1/31

I really want to work on posture with her. We have touched on it a little bit but i feel like the whole lesson should be on posture. We are learning a ton about it in class so maybe I'll experiment on her. I really want her to feel more. I want to help her sensory awareness. We can also do a little bit of body mapping. I will start with some stretches. I want to make sure everything is warm and ready to work for us and not against us. I want to try the balancing thing where we start at the top of our bodies and balances all the way to our toes. we might need to lie down so she can do some things without tension. She is mostly just very self-conscious and doesn't want to do anything that makes her look fat or weird. So i will try to make her more comfortable by doing it all with her and being my normal weird self

Jared D Camille B Lesson record/reaction for 1/24

So Cami came in and said she was really tired and almost didn't show up but felt bad because she knew i needed a good grade. So she was kind of blah the whole time. I tried to get her more energized by doing jumping jacks and trying some panting. I noticed when she did the panting that it was all in her upper chest so i said forget the panting! That's not where we want to feel it. I explained about where the panting should feel lower in our bodies and she tried and tried and couldn't get it down there. So i stopped her and said lets try something different let's try taking our cake hum breath then hissing it out. so we did that for a few minutes. she could hiss for a really long time and when she breathed in it wasn't in her upper chest it was lower. i also was able to see her abdominal wall release which was cool. after all that we didn't have much time left so we switched to the song and found 16 bars towards the end. It's from thouroughly modern millie and she's singing gimme gimme. it's kind of hard, i want to change it but she insists on singing it. Her voice sounds very harsh on it. Very shouty. I didn't know what to do at first. So i just said sing it like a little girl. It took a few tries to get it completely out of her nose, and sound pleasant. she said she didn't like it and couldn't promise she'd practice like that. I told her she'd get better faster if she did. Her posture was all over the place today, i find it hard to know which things to focus on when i only have 30 minutes. I really think i should switch my focus to posture next week.

Jared D Camille B lesson plan for 1/24

So for my next lesson with Cami I want to help her not hurt her voice when belting. She's working on an audition and thats her main concern and why she came to me to teach her, so I will do some vocalizes that will help set her up properly then have her find her light pleasant voice and have her sing that way through the piece. I want to use an exercise where she sings lighter at the top. So I was thinking of using the trampoline one that Cindy uses. 5 note descending loudest on the bottom note and lighter going up. Also i want to follow up on her practice with the hums. Then with the piece we will find a good 16 bar section for her to audition with.

Jared D Camille B lesson reactions for 1/17

So Cami was a little bit late and I had a student coming in after her so we had to rush through this lesson i feel like. We started with a bit of stretching. I had her do the rag doll, because like most people she goes into a "singing" position which looks really stiff, so I had her hang over and relax. We also did the toaster shoulders. I asked her how her voice was feeling, she said she had been talking a lot that day and I could kind of hear a bit of congestion. We moved onto the rose hums but we decided that she likes to smell cake better than roses so it's now the cake hums. This caused dramatic improvement. Usually her voice is small and airy when she first sings for me but today after the hums there was immediate sound and it wasn't harsh. We really didn't get far into my plan before i had to go to my next lesson, so i told her to practice the hums during the week. Things i noticed her her breath gesture is super high, and she tilts her head when she sings, i think it's to try and emote, but it still isn't good. She always complains that her voice is tired and that it hurts when she sings belty stuff. So i will aim my next lesson plan towards that kind of a thing.

Jared D Camille B Lesson plan 1/17

So after having a first lesson with Cami, I decided I wanted to just make her feel comfortable in the practice room. So I want to do some movement exercises with her where she can be silly and free and sing that way. I also want to do some Hums, because her voice tends to be on the airy side. We'll do some rose hums into an [a] and then I want to hear her sing her audition song she'll be bringing to have me help her with.