2. Widening low notes and staying forward to increase our low range
Relaxation exercises for a tired voice
Today we worked on relaxing Ella's voice when it is exhausted to the point of raspy and painful. Ella's throat has hurt for the last little bit due to allergies, overuse and some sickness - so today we worked on making sure that Ella's voice was nice and warmed up in a way that wouldn't cause further strain to her cords.
After Ella sang her before video her voice started bugging her so we started with our hooty and lip buzzing exercises - making sure to take it slow and light. From there, we pushed into a harder vowel and went to mm-mah - making sure to have Ella move her head around to prevent any tightening of her cords. We made sure to have Ella lubricate her cords appropriately with water and cough drops as we loosened her cords up. We did a 25 minute warm up instead of our typical 15 making sure Ella had ways to help her voice on her own. Ella's voice is tired - this break next week will be so great for her cords as it will give them time to rest. We will be able to jump into all of her songs when we come back at 100% as long as she rests her voice! In the meantime I think today was awesome at making sure Ella isn't hurting her voice and showing her that there are ways for her to make it feel better if she does have to sing when it is tired. She did great! I feel so bad that she doesn't feel well.
Widening low notes and staying forward to increase our low range
With Ella's voice hurting - we focused our energy and our remaining time on our low register in our verses. We focused on the texture of our voice - widening our vowels to sound smoother and more stylistic, and worked on making sure to fall forward on our low notes so that they didn't fall back into our throat and mute the sound. Ella did awesome!