Today we worked on making sure that Lily felt comfortable singing by herself before we bring chloe in to practice! In our warm up, we added the vowels that are tricky in our song to not only warm up that particular part of our voice, but to also get our brains to memorize the correct feeling and approach for each of our high vowels as well ("rockets red glare", "of the free" ). Approaching each of our notes in our forward placement helps with not only the strength of the note and relaxation of the approach - but adding in our "talked" feeling of our forward placement also helps with the pitch of the song.
Singing a song A cappella is so hard! (we talked about this last lesson as well) So, any trick that we can do to firm up our brain's hold on the pitch so that we don't drift sharp or flat, or even change keys unexpectedly - becomes crucial!
We worked on the jumps in pitch that Lily needs to make for harmonies with repetition (having her sing the jumps by herself several times in a row, and then adding the harmony to that one section - making sure she maintains the correct notes and placement when the second voice is added).
We also worked on maintaining our forward placement throughout the whole song to help with pitch and brightness as well!
Performance rituals
We continued our work on performance rituals - getting Lily's brain used to the pattern she will follow before she performs:
1. Small drink of water
2. Deep breath walking out
3. Pitch pipe
4. Hum note for 1/2 second
5. "oh" note for 1/2 second
6. Start song
Getting in the habit of doing all of these things will help Lily not feel rushed, feel the comfort of something familiar even if she's nervous, and will help get her in the rhythm of her song so that she doesn't feel a sudden change when she starts to sing.
Audience Prep At the end of our lesson today, we started our "audience prep". I brought down a few audience members so that Lily could practice performing in front of people. The goal is not to make her feel less nervous - but to let her feel exactly what she will feel like when she performs in front of people - and to let her get used to performing when she is nervous. I want Lily to know that she can push through the nerves instead of trying to tell her she wont be nervous (something we can't control). She did so great!
Here are our videos from today!
Today's video is a lesson work video, showing part of our process from today!