1/25/2011

Explored the mind/body connect with a singer yesterday. :)  Lisa, a copy writer and editor by day, is very detail-oriented in her approach to her singing; so much so, in fact, that it tends to bog her down and her singing becomes more and more laborious as she goes along.  During her lesson, I asked her to think of the entire phrase that she was about to sing while she was inhaling for that phrase, sort of a mental preview of what she was about to sing.  The resulting freedom in the sound was phenomenal and, though she had a fear response to losing control of the sound, she has agreed to continue to practice the idea this week.  I'm eager to hear her next week...

1/20/2011

I am reminded today of how learning to sing is as much of a mental & emotional journey as it is a physical one.  Sam came in today, only 12 and his voice still adjusting to its new baritone/bass range.  We identified his head voice sound and his chest voice sound today; important for him because, if he's in the incorrect "voice sound," he can't find the notes.
When he started, several weeks ago only, he was very self-judging during his lesson, and made grimaces and sighs for every mistake he thought he made.  This slowed down our progress a lot, so finally I asked if he would be OK not reacting negatively to his mistakes, because he was going to be making a lot of them while he learned, that the studio was definitely the place to make all of them and we would make faster progress if he didn't react.  Right away, he stopped and hasn't done it since.
I had to chuckle inwardly today: we tagged his head voice and chest voice with colors as references.  This is something I do with many of my students and I always let them choose the colors, partly because I'm curious as to what they will come up with.  Usually, they choose purple, maroon or dark blue for chest voice, red, light blue, green or orange for mid-range and pink, yellow or some other pastel for head voice.  Sam chose white (head) and black (chest), and I thought back to his initial right/wrong mental judging during his beginning lesson.  I've only had one other student choose black & white...

1/19/2011

I had a young singer come back into the studio this past week.  She worked with me through her last two years of high school and then stopped lessons when she went to college, but has returned because she misses lessons. She has a beautiful  voice and her style is becoming clearer; amazingly, it is what would be called contemporary Musical Theater, or Disney style.   She could easily sing a Disney princess part.  To fully develop her talent, she'll probably need to go to Los Angeles or New York.

1/13/2011

Sarah (deaf student) came in for her lesson yesterday.  She had started a visual journal of sounds, using colors and shapes.  Then we discovered something new.  Since she has to feel vibration in order to match pitch with either an instrument or another voice, she can't sing something on her own.  I sang a line to her and asked her what the visual picture looked like.  She told me very clearly.  Then I asked if she could hold on to the picture mentally after I was done singing the line.  She couldn't: it faded immediately.  I can see now how the visualizations of the sound will act as a tool for her; eventually an entire song will be a visual and when she calls it to mind, she can sing it.  It's going to take some time, but she's very intelligent and very motivated.

1/11/2011

A singer (Anne) came in today who comes in every other week for an hour lesson.  She is in her mid-50's and sings locally for one of the higher-level performance groups.  She has good musicianship skills and is intelligent.  She is slender, muscled and still athletic.  She speaks quickly and in short sentence bursts.

The challenge she faces in her singing is over-muscling, both her singing and her breathing.  Because she has always been so physically active, she automatically uses her outer, movement muscles for her breathing and balance, instead of her core muscles.  Slowly, she is beginning to understand breathing from the inside, and how to find her balance so that the core muscles can work well.  With that understanding, the outer muscles can let go a little.

Today, I began to realize how much the hard-muscled body exterior mirrored her internal reality.  As her body softens, she is becoming less assured, more hesitant as she becomes mentally more open.  For a little while, she will be emotionally dependent on me during the lesson, until she feels more secure.

1/5/2011

Sarah's first lesson has prompted this process, because I can tell right away that her journey will be quite unique. Sarah is almost completely deaf and has been since she was a young child.  And yet, she has the soul of a singer.  She first interviewed with me a year ago and it was evident that she needed practice at pitch-matching.  She also wanted piano lessons, so I sent her to a piano teacher who was used to working with singers and could do the pitch matching practice with her, also.  
Now she has returned to my studio.  In our first lesson, we made the amazing discovery that she "hears" visually, so we started drawing out visual representations of the vocal exercises, using colors and shapes.  She is going to keep a visual journal as we work together over the next year.

1/5/2011

I have been teaching singers for over 25 years, for all kinds of music.  Each lesson is an individual experience, both for myself and for the singer.  Some amazing things can happen during a lesson.  Under encouragement of some of my singers, I am going to share my perspective of some of their experiences.  All names of singers are changed, of course :).