This week: We vocalized on:
Relaxation: Mah-mah, lip buzz, be-be
Range extension: everybody's favorite, nayaya
I am so impressed with Ella. She is truly one of the most talented people ever - and because of that, she could keep singing songs that came easy for her, get them to an awesome place in voice lessons, and just build a catalog of things in her comfort zone.
Instead - she is constantly wanting to learn new things and challenge herself even though she knows it will be hard and uncomfortable in the beginning. She knows that she can not only do it, but that she will very quickly make the hard songs sound just as good as the easy ones - while building a whole new skill set with her voice.
It's amazing.
We worked on:
1. Pop box with an upbeat song/ The variation of our forward placement with a fast song vs. pop ballad.
2. Staying in the pocket
Today we started a whole new extension of Ella's placement!! We took our pop box placement that we have worked on with several of our pop ballads - and took it to another extreme to make it fit our upbeat pop box placement. In order to go from where we use our voice in a pop ballad - to where we use it in an upbeat pop song, we have to make our words smaller, brighter and shorter than before. Our upbeat pop box placement is the one that is the hardest transition to make because it feels the most unnatural - and you have to hear yourself do it to make sure you are bright enough, small enough, and quick enough.
It's hard stuff. Ella is crushing.
Staying in the pocket means that Ella goes fast enough that not only is she not behind the music - but that she has time to add extra texture and/or scats. It's a hard thing to stay in the pocket with a song this fast - but Ella is doing AWESOME!!!