Tatum had her first lesson this week! She did so well!!
Each week we'll break down our lessons into a few different categories:
"This week", "Things to remember", our progress videos, and reminders to bring a new song at the appropriate times.
At our first lesson we introduce so many new things:
- Vocalizing and matching pitch: vocalizing is a strange thing - especially if you haven't done it before. We use it to not only warm up our voice so that we can extend our range (hit high notes and low notes without hurting our voice), we also use it to learn HOW we want to sing our notes/words, we use it to learn how to match pitch to make sure we're singing the right notes the right way.
- You'll hear me say several times throughout our lessons that we want to sing how we talk. We start doing this in vocalizing.
- Relaxing the voice while singing: I make all my students promise me at the beginning of their lessons that they will do all the silly ridiculous things that I ask them to do because it will make them a better singer. You'll see this in their videos as i make them wiggle in a variety of weird ways. Some of the motions are to remind them to do very specific things (there will be a lot of forward arm movement). Some of the motions are to distract them so that they can't squeeze their vocal chords when hitting exceptionally high or low notes in their song - you can't hurt your voice, or sing incorrectly in an unsafe way, if you're rolling your head and moving your shoulders. It helps accomplish what we need to and we take the motions out the more lessons they have and more we move into performance technique.
- New placements : a new placement with our voice is an interesting thing. With our first few lessons we're trying to get Tatum to feel her voice in a different way. We do this not only for sound quality and vocal technique but also for safety of her chords. The first placement we introduce is singing like we talk. While the students are figuring out how this feels with their voice we break it down in ways that are easy to do. We call this "talk it out".
You'll hear me talking throughout their videos, saying all sorts of things that don't make sense. They make sense to your student I promise! As I remind them in real time of the different things to focus on in their song.
Now that you know what to expect - Here is your first lesson break down!
This week:
- We introduced vocalizing/ matching pitch.
- We vocalized on: humming, me-me, yah-yah, pinnochio sound
- We introduced our new placement: singing like we talk. and started moving her voice to a more "forward" place.
Things to remember:
- Smile!! Sing it happy! It brings your voice forward!
- Talk it out! The transition from singing to talking should be seamless!
Before our lesson ---> After our lesson:
Tatum - you did SO awesome! Lessons will only get easier and more fun as we learn more and more how to get our voice to do what we want it to! I'm so proud of you! You worked HARD today!!