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: Not the only one Performance: Constant arm movement, big gestures. "quarter back shuffle" 2 times each side (opening up the stage) Smile!! No fidgeting!! Using the microphone stand!
Placement: Style heavy - Wide vowels, change the pronunciation of our words to add that "ah" sound, push it forward, make it squeaky/ pop box placement, make some of our words punchy. 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 pulls! - pulling the microphone away from our mouth when we're not singing to show control and confidence.
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.
Coloring outside the lines Performance: Constant arm movement, big gestures. "quarter back shuffle" 2 times each side (opening up the stage) Smile!! No fidgeting!! Placement: Forward, slightly squeaky, wide vowels on our high notes. 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.
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. We passed off "Not the only one", and are still working on "Coloring outside the lines"! Walker did so awesome today!!!