Ella Huss: On my own (week 1)

This week:

We vocalized on:

mah-mah. be-be. nay-yay

We worked on:

1. Musical Theater placement

2. Bringing high belt forward

Musical Theater placement

Today we started working on a new placement - our musical theater placement! The musical theater genre is all about story telling, projecting, and filling a stage, so - our placement mimics the objectives being wider than our regular forward placement to bring more power and projection in the voice without having to apply more pressure to the chords, and is more talked than our regular forward placement so that it easily transitions between talking to singing (as it would in a musical theater scene). In order to get this bigger sound, we widen our notes by adding "AH" to the beginning and middle of words (for example "light" is pronounced "LAHYGHT" to make it easier and sound bigger). We also focus on the triangle of our forward placement even more - our smile as the bottom and our dropped jaw forming the point - dropping our jaw more than necessary to help accomplish the "bigness" as well.
At the beginning of learning this placement (like our other extreme placements), we have to put Ella's voice in an extreme place so that she can feel exactly what "wide" or "forward" feels like in this placement. From there, we can soften it and make it sound more natural. We "hit the wall" or make these placements very extreme in the beginning, so that bad habits aren't formed while the student tries to figure out the difference between what we usually do, and what we're slightly altering. By making it extreme in the beginning, it allows them to feel the changes more and more, allowing them to add them to our regular placement easier and more effectively.

Bringing high belt forward
We also worked on our high belt today - making sure it stays forward and doesn't pull back or sound nasal or muffled. We worked on it coming from more of a talked place - as is the ongoing struggle for everyone when singing high belt.

Ella did so awesome today!! I'm so impressed with not only her ability but her desire to challenge herself and learn new things/ new ways to use her voice. She's so great.

Here are our videos from today!

Before/End of our lesson:

BEFORE - ON MY OWN

AFTER - ON MY OWN

(The youtube videos are being crazy right now, I'll switch up the links as soon as it gets better)
Great job Ella!! See you soon!