Funny voices...

I have a young, female student, just going through puberty.  She came into the studio a year ago with a heavy belting low voice, a gap in the middle and no clue how to access her high voice.  She loves to sing and has made good progress because she practices a lot at home on her own.  Her low voice is now much less strident, the gap in the middle has closed, though the notes are still not very strong, and she has high notes now.

Sometimes, students make breakthroughs on their own, without realizing it.  This young singer was singing Popular, from Wicked, today in her lesson.  After we had gone through it a couple of times, I asked her to sing it like a cat.  The sound was immediately strong & clear in the mid-range!  She then divulged that she loved using character voices and had also tried singing Popular with a British accent at home.  I asked her to show me and again, the mid-range voice was clear and strong.  We spent the rest of the lesson trying out other "character" voices, coming up with Kermit, a plugged up nose and country.  She's going to explore some more voices on her own this week, her only watch-for is that it shouldn't hurt at all.

Breathing...

If somebody asked me, "What is at the core of your teaching approach?", I would have to say "teaching people how to breathe." Some people have simply lost flexibility and strength in their breathing structures and musculature. Some, out of ignorance or incorrect information, impose an artificial and usually labored secondary breathing pattern over the organic one. Some seek to control their breathing. Some manipulate their breathing for an effect. Some hold their breath, when they are thinking or emotional or editing their speech. And some have adopted compensatory breathing patterns because of allergies or asthma.

Believe it or not, one of the most important influencers on breathing is body balance.
If a person's body balance is off of their skeletal structure, then the breathing structures in the core of the body cannot function properly. Body balance is posture in a sense, but the word posture has come to connotate something rigid, whereas body balance has to be something flexible and fluid. Just in normal breathing, our bodies make dozens of micro-movement adjustments to our balance. Try standing on a non-solid surface, such as a trampoline, a piece of foam or a mattress and notice the changes in your balance as you breathe.

Singing is based on breathing - we are a wind instrument, essentially. The most frequent thank-you comment I get is: "Thanks for teaching me how to breathe."

A palate of colors

One of my singers is an actor with a pretty active career in commercials, voiceovers, etc. We were working on a musical theater song yesterday that requires a semi-speech approach to the first section. The melodic line lay in her mid-range, a difficult transition for her because she usually speaks in her lowest range. As we explored the mid-range speech a little more (with a few giggles), a nasal quality appeared in her voice that I had noticed before, but that she was unaware of. What a learning moment! I identified it for her, demonstrated an alternative which she imitated, and asked her what the difference was in her experience. She immediately identified a difference in her throat; right before starting the more nasal sound, there was some tension/closure. I asked if she could inhibit the closure. After a couple of tries, she was successful and went on to easily "speak" the first section of the song in her mid-range with clarity.
This process was especially important for her because she's always been cast as a character actor and wants to develop more options. All sorts of vocal colors are possible and can be considered a palate of colors. Some colors are more difficult to produce and should be used sparingly, for effect. The goal is to give the performer complete freedom of choice.

Max

I'm trying out blogging from my iphone :). Summer has been pretty full teaching-wise, with lots of students studying jazz just for fun. We planned a jazz soiree at the home of one of the singers. My jazz trio came and we had our own open mic night, complete with wine & appetizers. Everyone wants to do it again next summer.

Unusual high school male singer came in this summer: very ADHD, with a subsequent speech disorder. We'll call him Max. He loves to sing and wants to be a comedian - well, why not?
Discovered quickly that he is VERY intelligent. Picks up and applies concepts so fast, it's amazing to watch. We've worked on 3 songs and 2 monologues so far. The most effective directive I've given him so far seems to be to slow down. One day, I suggested he deliver his monologue in slow motion and suddenly all the words came out clearly, with no dropped syllables. He's a very good mimic :). He seems to have the support of his high school drama teacher. He's trying out for the school play this week: I wonder how he'll do?

6/6/2011 Recital

OK - I'm back.  Been busy with NATS and our Studio Recital this past month, where almost all my students performed.  So pleased :) - seems like every singer peaked at performance time.  Several had personal triumphs over stage fright and memorization fears.  Everyone was musical.  Sarah has decided to take a break for the summer, a good choice.  It will give her ear and mind a chance to assimilate the work we did this spring.

3/10/2011 Sarah

Sarah's pitch memory is gaining ground and she can accurately imitate back the intervals of  a 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, ascending.  The 2nd is more difficult for her because of the smaller distance between the notes and we just today began an exploration of what a 1/2 step sounds like.  We also started working on rhythm, which she has no internal sense of.  We sang "Dona nobis pacem" together, myself next to her left side and tapping the rhythm on her back while she kept her eyes closed to limit her sensory input.  Felt like a Helen Keller moment...

3/2/2011 Sarah

Amazingly, Sarah is preparing for an audition as chorus for a local musical theater production.  She's done one production with them already but she's nervous about the audition because it's for a new director.  We are going to have an extra session this week to get her independant on her vocal line.  Aside from that pressure, a very good discussion today.  Practicing an octave glide with her on different vowels, but the same pitches.  I explained that she needed to find a way to differentiate between the color/vibration change that happens because of pitch change and the color change that happens because of vowel change - otherwise she would change the pitch when the word changed.  She understood, but then asked why it wasn't an issue in her speech.  It was a moment of brutal truth.  Her vowels in her speech are almost identical, giving her the characteristic deaf "slur" to her speech.  Her face changed when I told her, and then became strong with determination as I explained that this process would help her speech as well.