This week we have moved into classical to get Erin ready for her Shades of Blue audition!
We worked on: adjusting her placement from pop to classical, freeing up high notes, classical belt, transitions.
Adjusting placement:
The great news about the placement that my students are trained in is that it works for all styles of music! With slight adjustments they can correctly sing a pop, country, musical theater, indi, classical, and opera song - just by exaggerating different parts of the placement. With pop - we exaggerate our "pop box" or the high end, ultra forward part of our voice (the most chipmunk part). With musical theater - we exaggerate the wide vowels and long jaw belt of our voice, giving it a big open feel while maintaining the power of the original forward placement.
With classical - we exaggerate the part of our placement that links to our soft pallet. When we do our "hooty" exercise when we vocalize, we focus on getting a yawn like feeling in the top of our register - and then from there pushing our voice forward so that the whole range looks like an upside down U. When singing classical - we have to focus on completing parts of the U that other placements leave out. The first one is the very top - where our soft pallet lifts.
By lifting our soft pallet and then smiling in our molars - or widening the back of our mouth, we can open the sound and keep it from sounding shrill or thin - like a lot of classical singers or choir singers.
Classical belt/ transitions:
The correct transition between the high high notes of classical and the lower ones comes from the placement we have already perfected. We insert parts of our mix voice into our classical sound, completing the front part of our upside down U - pushing into it as it gets lower to keep our low end strong in the song.
Erin did SO awesome!! The craziest thing was how easy it was for her when her brain was expecting it to be much much harder to switch!