Kate had her first lesson this week! She did awesome!!
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:
Kate started working super hard right off the bat! We started moving her voice into a place she's never felt before right away with our vocalizing. She soaked it up so fast! I really appreciated her awesome work ethic!
It's in our vocalization exercises that we do all the hard work. We start to move the student's voice into extreme versions of the placements we will use from here on out - it is in these exercises that we build and work towards extending their range, building stamina in their voice, and we start to build the placements from scratch, starting with singing how we talk. We make sure that our vocalizing exercises become strategic instead of a typical warm up that makes the student feel like they sound pretty while vocalizing. We use different exercises to emphasize different things.
Kate really did so great.
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. It was so great that Kate was used to my craziness with our acting class - because she had no problem with this!
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 Kate to feel her voice in a completely different way. We do this not only for sound quality and vocal technique but also for safety of her chords. We are trying to get any ounce of pain or tightness out - and give Kate the ability to control every part of her voice 100% of the time. We are also trying to build the muscle in Kate's ear that matches pitch - so that she can always hear them and sing them correctly.
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.
We vocalized on:
humming, mah- mah, me-me, yah-yah, nay-yay
We worked on:
1. Introduced our new placement: singing like we talk,
2. and started moving her voice to a more "forward" and "bright" place.
3. Singing like we talk
4. Smiling to force your voice to a brighter place while widening the vowels for tone quality and to make the sound more commercial
Here are our videos!
Before/End of our lesson:
Great job Kate!! I put you in Wednesdays at 7:30 - so I will see you so soon!