1. Making our forward placement more conversational
2. Learning to keep it forward while extending notes
Making our forward placement more conversational:
This week we worked on moving Kate's voice to a more conversational version of our "forward placement". We still want Kate to feel our new placement - and how it is different than the way she came in singing, but now we want this placement to feel a little bit more comfortable for her. At the same time - we are rounding off some of the edges we developed when we moved Kate's voice to our extreme "hit the wall" placement last week. By rounding off these edges - Kate starts to sound more and more like she is singing in a natural way.
We go slow like this so that Kate never has the opportunity to go backwards, it keeps her moving forward (with both her progress and with her voice).
Keeping it forward while extending notes:
One of the things I do to transition Kate's voice into a more conversational sound, is I have her start extending her short staccato words (talking it out), so that she can stay in the same placement - and feel a little bit more like she's singing. When we make this transition, a lot of times the student kicks back into singing mode, and pushes their voice back into the old incorrect placement that their brain associates with singing. Because of this, we worked a long time today on maintaining our forward placement while adding on to it. This was awesome practice for Kate, as we will continue to work on maintaining our placements as we keep adding on to them in various ways.