Right now I'm just trying to get familiar with my Italian and French sets. I found a YouTube of Joyce didonato singin my entire Italian set in one recital, si I was able to use that to get a feel for how the accompaniment goes along with the vocal line.
My voice has been pretty tired all week I due to the celebrate America rehearsals and performances, so I've been tapping out the rhythms in my music to be able to get the feel of how the songs go. Slow process, but it works I'm the end.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Jacob Spjute lesson record reactions jacob cortez
I spent the first few minutes just getting to know jacob a little bit. Apparently we were both in Meistersingers when I sang in their choir for a year when I came home from my mission. I didn't remember him at all though. I felt bad. Anyway he's a music major at bsu, he's 23, and sings tenor.
I started off with the same stretches I always do. Rolling the neck very softly and slowly in circles then reversing the direction. Then we did the bent over hanging stretch I like to do. Instead of starting off with vocalizes I asked him if he had a song he wanted to sing just so I could hear him sing and get a feeling for his voice and to see if I could see/hear any problems or anything like that. He sang a hymn for me, and I played what I could of the accompaniment. He has a really nice voice. It's very light and clear, and in general it sounds very free. I did notice some breath gesture problems when he was singing. He was doing a lot of heavy Bucket breathing and his chest was moving way too much for my liking. So I talked about breath gesture and I explained the idea of the rose and breathing down with the diaphragm so he wouldn't recruit all those extra muscles around his shoulders neck and chest while singing. After that we did some vocalizes and I asked him if he could try to apply the rose breath gesture into these vocalizes. I said I would give him plenty of time inbetween scales to set up a good breath. I started on C3 and did 1-9 and down again on an "a" vowel. We moved up a half step until we reached f#4 and then we stopped because he wasn't able to be as free and open as he was on the other scales lower pin the range. I had to stop him twice to remind him of the rose gesture. We did it again, except this time we went faster between scales. I wanted to see if he could work that rose gesture correctly with less time to set up on the scales. He was able to do it two times but I had to stop him after that and talk about setting up breath correctly every time. I told him that I also struggle with this very same thing. We talked for a bit about choir at bsu, then all of a sudden the half hour was up.
I asked him what things he would take away from the lesson and he said obviously the breath gesture and the rose technique. I think he already has a decent technique set up and everything I think he's just at the refinement stage in his training. Pretty cool guy!
I started off with the same stretches I always do. Rolling the neck very softly and slowly in circles then reversing the direction. Then we did the bent over hanging stretch I like to do. Instead of starting off with vocalizes I asked him if he had a song he wanted to sing just so I could hear him sing and get a feeling for his voice and to see if I could see/hear any problems or anything like that. He sang a hymn for me, and I played what I could of the accompaniment. He has a really nice voice. It's very light and clear, and in general it sounds very free. I did notice some breath gesture problems when he was singing. He was doing a lot of heavy Bucket breathing and his chest was moving way too much for my liking. So I talked about breath gesture and I explained the idea of the rose and breathing down with the diaphragm so he wouldn't recruit all those extra muscles around his shoulders neck and chest while singing. After that we did some vocalizes and I asked him if he could try to apply the rose breath gesture into these vocalizes. I said I would give him plenty of time inbetween scales to set up a good breath. I started on C3 and did 1-9 and down again on an "a" vowel. We moved up a half step until we reached f#4 and then we stopped because he wasn't able to be as free and open as he was on the other scales lower pin the range. I had to stop him twice to remind him of the rose gesture. We did it again, except this time we went faster between scales. I wanted to see if he could work that rose gesture correctly with less time to set up on the scales. He was able to do it two times but I had to stop him after that and talk about setting up breath correctly every time. I told him that I also struggle with this very same thing. We talked for a bit about choir at bsu, then all of a sudden the half hour was up.
I asked him what things he would take away from the lesson and he said obviously the breath gesture and the rose technique. I think he already has a decent technique set up and everything I think he's just at the refinement stage in his training. Pretty cool guy!
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Jacob Spjute lesson plan jacob cortez
So jacob is a guy that sings in the Meistersingers at bsu. Tim givens told him about me and that I was ding lesson while I was home so he texted me saying he would like a lesson. Since I've never heard him sing, and I don't really know anything about him, I'm kinda in the same boat as I usually am. This first lesson is about listening to his voice and figuring out where he is at from a technical standpoint. I figure he must be a pretty decent singer if he is in the concert choir at bsu.. I guess I'll find out!
Jake Spjute lesson plan Rex spjute
So Rex is unce Carl's son, I wonder if they'll have any of the same tendencies?? Haha
Anyway, Rex is a pretty good singer from what I've heard him do in the past. He's been in choir all through high school, and is also part of a barber shop quartet made up of himself and his 3 buddies. This first lesson I'm gonna see wheee he is at vocally and technically, at this point I just want to get to know his voice and figure out if he has any problems.
Anyway, Rex is a pretty good singer from what I've heard him do in the past. He's been in choir all through high school, and is also part of a barber shop quartet made up of himself and his 3 buddies. This first lesson I'm gonna see wheee he is at vocally and technically, at this point I just want to get to know his voice and figure out if he has any problems.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Jake Spjute lesson record reactions uncle Carl #2
We began with some relaxed light stretches, the same ones I do with Cameron and my other students. Hi said he hadn't really sung yet today so we started off with some light vocalizes on an "a" vowel. Descending five note scales, I feel like they are the best to begin with, we started on A3 and worked our way down to a low G. I feel like he doesn't have a very big range, which I think is due to him being in his fifties and not training his voice on a daily basis, but I would definitely classify him as a baritone.
During the downward scales I would have to ask him to fix his chin. He tends to put his chin down toward his chest when he sings, he holds that position the whole time and it looks like it causes a lot of tension just by looking at him, so I can imagine it's causing a lot of inner tension with the voice. My cue for him to put his chin in alignment is "chin up" which probably sounds horrible to command as a voice teacher, but for him it works. I had to explain the top teeth being parallel with the floor idea to him last time at our lesson, so when I say say chin up, he actually moves his chin to a better aligned position. During these scales I also noticed his breathing seemed chesty and this seems like it triggered the chin to go down into his neck/chest again. So I explained to him about breathing with the diaphragm and not using any extra muscles that are not needed to breath. I also explained that when we recruit more muscles than needed, we usually cause a tension, which will hurt the quality of our voice.
After these scales and conversations about breathing and alignment, we took out his music for secret garden and worked on his part for the rest of the lesson. Most of the role he sings is pretty much in the middle range of his voice, so it in general isn't hard for him to sing, but I wanted him to sound as beautiful as he could. So I talked about vowel space in the mouth and how we shouldn't change the space more than we need to when we change the vowels. We talked about keeping a big open space all the time, and applying the breath technique we had discussed earlier into the phrases of his role. I demonstrated singing different vowels while trying to maintain the same space, but since I'm not the best at that, I turned to YouTube for the help of Bruce ford to demonstrate. I asked if I turned the music off, if he could tell when Bruce changed vowels, so we had a little fun with it and basically, we both couldn't tell when he changed vowels with the volume down because his vowels were so uniform. Very cool!
During the downward scales I would have to ask him to fix his chin. He tends to put his chin down toward his chest when he sings, he holds that position the whole time and it looks like it causes a lot of tension just by looking at him, so I can imagine it's causing a lot of inner tension with the voice. My cue for him to put his chin in alignment is "chin up" which probably sounds horrible to command as a voice teacher, but for him it works. I had to explain the top teeth being parallel with the floor idea to him last time at our lesson, so when I say say chin up, he actually moves his chin to a better aligned position. During these scales I also noticed his breathing seemed chesty and this seems like it triggered the chin to go down into his neck/chest again. So I explained to him about breathing with the diaphragm and not using any extra muscles that are not needed to breath. I also explained that when we recruit more muscles than needed, we usually cause a tension, which will hurt the quality of our voice.
After these scales and conversations about breathing and alignment, we took out his music for secret garden and worked on his part for the rest of the lesson. Most of the role he sings is pretty much in the middle range of his voice, so it in general isn't hard for him to sing, but I wanted him to sound as beautiful as he could. So I talked about vowel space in the mouth and how we shouldn't change the space more than we need to when we change the vowels. We talked about keeping a big open space all the time, and applying the breath technique we had discussed earlier into the phrases of his role. I demonstrated singing different vowels while trying to maintain the same space, but since I'm not the best at that, I turned to YouTube for the help of Bruce ford to demonstrate. I asked if I turned the music off, if he could tell when Bruce changed vowels, so we had a little fun with it and basically, we both couldn't tell when he changed vowels with the volume down because his vowels were so uniform. Very cool!
Jake Spjute lesson record reaction Cameron Spjute #2
I started off the lesson just by talking to Cameron a little bit about how he was doing etc. he said that he had been trying to remember the posture technique stuff in his choir classes and that he felt it was helping.
I started off with the normal neck and back stretches, rotating the neck in circles in both directions, and letting the head and back hang down reaching with the hands down to the feet. We then started singing with a soft vocalize starting on A3 and going down on an "a" vowel. Instead of going through the scale for a while without correcting anything like last week, I stopped quite a few time in this exercise to correct his posture and his nervous body movements that I think May be a hard habit for him to break. When he sings in the middle or higher part of his range he gets very nervous and his body starts to wiggle around and he crosses his arms and just does kind if nervous twitch type things. So I would have him start lower in his range where he seems very comfortable then I would switch up to higher notes and do a scale right away with no break and I would try and track his body I to see if he was still doing those nervous body movements, he improved a little bit when I would have him do the low scale-high scale jumps like that.
By this time the lesson was already almost over! ( I can't believe how fast time goes when I'm teaching)
So I wanted to work on the hymn we worked on last time before he left to see if he could sing the higher notes with more confidence and technique this time. With a few reminders to have a good breathing posture and a big space he was able to sing the second stanza which has the highest phrase in the song, not only was he able to do it on one breath but he sang all the notes and he didn't get nervous and give up like he did before. And the tone was improved from the first time we did it last time. It was very cool to see his improvement in this lesson.
I started off with the normal neck and back stretches, rotating the neck in circles in both directions, and letting the head and back hang down reaching with the hands down to the feet. We then started singing with a soft vocalize starting on A3 and going down on an "a" vowel. Instead of going through the scale for a while without correcting anything like last week, I stopped quite a few time in this exercise to correct his posture and his nervous body movements that I think May be a hard habit for him to break. When he sings in the middle or higher part of his range he gets very nervous and his body starts to wiggle around and he crosses his arms and just does kind if nervous twitch type things. So I would have him start lower in his range where he seems very comfortable then I would switch up to higher notes and do a scale right away with no break and I would try and track his body I to see if he was still doing those nervous body movements, he improved a little bit when I would have him do the low scale-high scale jumps like that.
By this time the lesson was already almost over! ( I can't believe how fast time goes when I'm teaching)
So I wanted to work on the hymn we worked on last time before he left to see if he could sing the higher notes with more confidence and technique this time. With a few reminders to have a good breathing posture and a big space he was able to sing the second stanza which has the highest phrase in the song, not only was he able to do it on one breath but he sang all the notes and he didn't get nervous and give up like he did before. And the tone was improved from the first time we did it last time. It was very cool to see his improvement in this lesson.
Monday, May 19, 2014
Jake Spjute lesson plan Carl Spjute 2
Today I wanna see if uncle Carl is able to not push his chin down into his chest. He was doing that a lot last time, hopefully he's been working on remembering "chin up"
I will also be monitoring his breath control, reminding him of the "rose" idea if need be.
I also want to continue applying these principals into his role in secret garden.
Short term goal: see if Carl can self monitor himself when he pushes his chin down
Long term goal: keep working breath control/posture until it becomes a habit
I will also be monitoring his breath control, reminding him of the "rose" idea if need be.
I also want to continue applying these principals into his role in secret garden.
Short term goal: see if Carl can self monitor himself when he pushes his chin down
Long term goal: keep working breath control/posture until it becomes a habit
Jake spjute lesson plan Cameron 2
So last time Cameron had struggles with just ting his jaw out and upward, and he also had problems with keeping his body aligned, and his breath down, ( sounds like every singer ever..) haha
Today I want to see if he has been practicing better technique and posture, and then i want to apply those principles in the hymn we were working on.
Short term goal: get him to be able to self monitor chin movement
Long term goal: achieve proper body alignment
Today I want to see if he has been practicing better technique and posture, and then i want to apply those principles in the hymn we were working on.
Short term goal: get him to be able to self monitor chin movement
Long term goal: achieve proper body alignment
Jake Spjute lesson record reactions/'uncle Carl
We started the lesson just by talking about his role in secret garden and what he wants to work in so he won't be so nervous and so that he'll sound good. He said there is high part in one of his quartets. That sits up pretty high so he wants to be able to perform that better, and at the end of a bit of earth reprise he sings a high A in falsetto and he says sometimes it comes out and sometimes it doesn't.
For our first vocalize I started with what I always do. Descending scales, light and easy. I started on Bflat and worked my way down. I noticed that he tends to tuck his chin way down into his neck/chest quite a bit. So I asked him if he could be think about keeping his too teeth parallel with the floor. ( it's a good trick) this improved his sound after the adjustment, it was more rich than it was before. I asked him how that felt and he said it felt easier that way. Good!!!
We proceeded with some vocalizes and he went down to about a low G. I would classify uncle Carl as a baritone...
We then did an ascending vocalize on an A vowel up to an f before he started getting nervous and his voice cracked. I had to remind him once again of his chin position, and to think about the teeth being parallel to the floor.
As we went through his sings for the musical, I noticed his breath management was off. He was taking a lot of big breathes frequently but not sustaining them very long. So I stopped him and we did some breath exercises and I demonstrated diaphragm breathing and I implemented the "rose" technique into his breathing. We sang a phrase in one breath that he ahead to do in two the previous time, I asked him how that felt and he said it felt much better and that it was amazing how much just a breath gesture can change the way he felt singing. Along with the breath gesture, I gave him instruction on keeping the vowels pure, and the space in the mouth open, and to make the space in his mouth as similar as he could for each vowel. This helped a ton with the high A that he has to float in falsetto. He was able to do it very nicely each time with a warm open sound. I asked him how he felt about his falsetto notes and he said they were much easier than before! Awesome.
So I gave him 3 ideas to remember from this lesson that I thought were most crucial to him at this time:
1. Chin up ( I know it sounds like terrible advice but for him it works)
2. Rose
3. Similar space
For our first vocalize I started with what I always do. Descending scales, light and easy. I started on Bflat and worked my way down. I noticed that he tends to tuck his chin way down into his neck/chest quite a bit. So I asked him if he could be think about keeping his too teeth parallel with the floor. ( it's a good trick) this improved his sound after the adjustment, it was more rich than it was before. I asked him how that felt and he said it felt easier that way. Good!!!
We proceeded with some vocalizes and he went down to about a low G. I would classify uncle Carl as a baritone...
We then did an ascending vocalize on an A vowel up to an f before he started getting nervous and his voice cracked. I had to remind him once again of his chin position, and to think about the teeth being parallel to the floor.
As we went through his sings for the musical, I noticed his breath management was off. He was taking a lot of big breathes frequently but not sustaining them very long. So I stopped him and we did some breath exercises and I demonstrated diaphragm breathing and I implemented the "rose" technique into his breathing. We sang a phrase in one breath that he ahead to do in two the previous time, I asked him how that felt and he said it felt much better and that it was amazing how much just a breath gesture can change the way he felt singing. Along with the breath gesture, I gave him instruction on keeping the vowels pure, and the space in the mouth open, and to make the space in his mouth as similar as he could for each vowel. This helped a ton with the high A that he has to float in falsetto. He was able to do it very nicely each time with a warm open sound. I asked him how he felt about his falsetto notes and he said they were much easier than before! Awesome.
So I gave him 3 ideas to remember from this lesson that I thought were most crucial to him at this time:
1. Chin up ( I know it sounds like terrible advice but for him it works)
2. Rose
3. Similar space
Jake Spjute lesson plan uncle carl
So I kind of have an idea of how uncle Carl sings... Most in my family are fairly musical so I imagine he will be able to stay in tune and all that stuff. The main reason we are doing these lessons is so that he will be able to sing more confidently in Boise music weeks production of the secret garden. He plays Mary's dad so he actually has a decent amount of singing to do. He says most of it sits up higher than what he is normally comfortable with, so let's see what he has going on!
Short term goal: figure out his voice and what he needs to improve
Long term goal: help him be more confident for the show
Short term goal: figure out his voice and what he needs to improve
Long term goal: help him be more confident for the show
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