Today we started working on a different variation of our baseline - forward placement: our musical theater character placement. As we go through our lessons, we will continue to work on perfecting our baseline placement - making sure we are continually moving Jake's voice forward, brighter, stronger, and to a place that is more easily controlled. But, as we do that, we are able to further customize songs based on genre and style by taking certain parts of our regular forward placement and taking them to extreme places, emphasizing different parts of this new voice we are building.
With our musical theater character placement - we work on emphasizing the talking part a lot, since musical theater is a genre that goes from talking to singing abruptly. We work on making that transition as seamless as possible - using our "talking it out", simple forward placement as a foundation - adding from there the character elements we need with different voice inflections, and longer notes that we need for a more melodic song.
Simplifying style to cater to a specific genre
As we cater each of our songs to the specific genres we are singing, the stylistic choices change. In a big ballad like Jake's "hallelujah", there is a little bit more room to stylize using texture and breath, and belt with a high pop open sound - the stylistic choices are very specific to the type of song we are singing. When singing our new song "empty chairs at empty tables", the style is all in the simplicity of the song. The vulnerability that is required when playing the character in the scene where his friends have just been killed - frames they way we will map out the song as far as dynamics - starting from a place that is not too stylized with vibrato, not too heavy so that it sounds like we are just singing the song like karaoke - but instead we start in a place that is simple and lets the song speak for itself. From there, we are able to build appropriately based on lyrics and vocal range of the song - extending notes, increasing volume, and increasing intensity of consonants to show more anger or sadness. Placement or style that depends on simplicity is hard - and feels a little strange at first. Jake did so awesome!!!