This week:
We vocalized on:
Mah-mah, nay-yay, be-be, oh-ah
We worked on:
1. Following through notes/ More conversational pop box
2. Texture and style (widening the middle of notes)
Following through notes/ More conversational pop box
Today we worked on our pop box (condensing our words to make sure we stay in the pocket) and moving the placement to a slightly more conversational/comfortable place to make them easier to sing, make them sound even better, and to get his voice a place where we can add style.
Our transition today was moving from a staccato pop box, to one that flowed through the words a little bit more. We did this by making sure the end of each word was more forward than when it started, so that each word felt like a little water fall, making the beginning of the next word even easier to get to. This allowed Walker to stay in the pocket, maintain the placement, and at the same time - soften the harshness of the sound.
Texture and style (widening the middle of notes)
We have started moving past placements with Walker, and started moving into more advanced ways to manipulate his voice. Today we worked on adding breath to his low notes as a style technique - simultaneously moving the sound from just a softer place (what we accomplished by making his pop box more conversational), to a sound that is more controlled, and more individualized. We are building Walker's bag of tricks, so that he can customize each song depending not only on genre, but that he can add to it stylistically with scats, texture, breath, register switches, and different variations of our standard genre placements.
The other style technique we worked on today was widening the middle of our words - both in his low and high notes - so that it sounds bigger, without sounding distorted. He can get a more belt sound by doing this without forcing the pronunciation to a harsh place (like we have to at the beginning of our work on songs to move into different placements).
He did so awesome!!
Here are our videos from today!
Before/End of our lesson: