Today we continued our work on performance technique - getting Kate used to adding movement to her song so that she maintains her placement when performing! We started this out by adding a ball that she had to toss back and forth. Adding this distraction while singing and vocalizing, forced Kate's brain to focus on something secondary - allowing her to relax a little bit more into our placement as we make it second nature for her, and it let Kate see the times that her placement falls out (when throwing the ball, she would stop singing sometimes to focus on the ball). We worked with the ball several times, making sure Kate was able to maintain her placement, and then we removed the ball and added movement. Once Kate was used to movement and a secondary focus, she was able to maintain her placement better when performing!
Relaxing/smoothing our pop box placement
To build on our pop box, today we worked on smoothing out the rough edges left behind when we cut words off, and sing things through our teeth all the time. We wanted to add some dynamics to our song by adding a few longer words, and making our placement a little bit less staccato - without losing everything the pop box adds to our sound (brightness, quickness, better pitch).