Checklist!!! With 3 lessons left before our concert - today for our lesson we continued our performance prep to make sure we feel more and more ready to go! Today we started our checklist! With each song that we will be performing, we have specific things we need to remember. Today's objective was to get through as many songs as we could - 1 song at a time, checking off our placement, performance, microphone technique, stage presence, intros, and exits.
Because I won't be reminding the students what to do, correct, and adjust in real time - we mapped out our checklist for each song BEFORE we sang each song - and then I sat down and didn't say anything while they were performing the songs. We would then evaluate at the end - say which boxes we could check off. If they checked off every single box - we would move on to the next song. If they missed a few boxes, we would circle them, and perform the song again - as many times as it took to pass off all of the boxes and feel 100% ready to go on that particular song! For each area (performance, placement, microphone technique, smiling, walking on and off), we would map out "what would be a win" with each song - or what would need to happen in every area for us to feel like we did the very best possible. In order to check the box off, we had to do all of the things in each category we had decided on before hand. Our checklists looked like this:
Dear Future Husband: Performance: Performance choreography: Sharp movement, remembering all the choreography. Using the microphone stand. Placement: Pop box (talked out, short words, squeaky placement) Smile! Microphone technique: Aiming the directional microphone at our mouth and following our mouth with the mic, making sure the audience can hear us the whole time. Making sure we are standing close to the mic when we are singing and that we back up a step when we are not singing so we don't hit the mic with our movement.
Smiling!! Walk on: Walk on and set in our confident performance stance - with our feet shoulder width apart, feet facing forward, and stretching really tall with our posture. Setting the microphone stand down correctly - without knocking it over.
Part of your world: Performance: Constant arm movement, big gestures. Keep moving (fast song) Smile!! Act like a princess with facial expressions and big upward movement.
Placement: Musical Theater character : Talk it.. bring it forward/ squeaky Get smaller on our high notes! Smile! Microphone technique: Aiming the directional microphone at our mouth and following our mouth with the mic, making sure the audience can hear us the whole time. Mic drops - dropping the mic when we are not singing.
Smiling!! Walk on: Walk on and set in our confident performance stance - with our feet shoulder width apart, feet facing forward, and stretching really tall with our posture.
Olivia did SO WELL TODAY!!!!!! I'm so pumped for her!!!!