Today we worked on our forward placement - focusing on our pitch accuray and our musical theater character placement! We worked on making sure Jay was separating each of his syllables so that he could focus on each pitch individually, putting each syllable in a place that was easier to control in pitch, and tone quality! We also worked on Jay opening up his sound so that we would have a bigger musical theater sound! We did this by not only aiming our words forward - but aiming them wider - adding an "ah" vowel to the middle of some of our words. This makes the high notes a little bit more sustainable, opens them up making them sound bigger, and makes them easier to hit giving them a softer and more controllable vowel sound.
Microphone technique
Today we also started working on our microphone technique - getting ready for our Fall concert! The first thing that we worked on was controlling a directional microphone! It's important when singing live that we always aim the microphone directly at our mouth (as opposed to talking across it or aiming the mic at the sky). This is because live mics are directional microphones - meaning they pick up sound best when it is directly aimed at the source. It's the microphone's job to not pick up the audience, other performers, or other things happening around the singer on stage. So, in order to have the highest concentration of sound and to be able to control the volume as much as possible - we have to aim the microphone directly at our mouths.
The next thing we worked on are what we call "mic drops". This is the move that we make - removing the microphone from our mouth, when we are not singing. By dropping the microphone down slightly when we are not singing, we show that we are in control of the mic and not nervous about the song starting without us. It shows confidence and helps take away some nervous ticks.