Today we worked on scatting!!! We first worked on separating each note slowly, making sure to emphasize the separating with our trusty finger guns. We then sped them up little by little - making sure that Ella's brain was processing each note individually instead of the entire scat as one motion.
Tone Concentration/ Texturizing Today we started on REALLY advanced style technique! We started working on varying our concentration of tone to give our song more texture (or to help it sound more produced and give it more style). We started by drawing out a spectrum that looked like a color pallet -- with darker and more filled-in boxes on one side, gradually getting lighter and less filled-in until we reached the other end of the spectrum with the lightest boxes. Then, I explained that FULL tone, or something that sounded like our baseline forward and talking placement, was represented by the darkest boxes. Then, as we add more air, widen our vowels even more, and take out some of our tone in our words -- we travel down the spectrum to the lightest boxes that would sound like an airy whisper. When singing a pop song, or any song we want to add texture to (most of the time we will want to use it when we have a mic of some sort) - we want to be all over that spectrum, using different tone concentration for different words and phrases to give each line a more produced and customized feel. This is hard stuff. As we went through Ella's song, I started putting my finger on different areas of the spectrum and had Ella match the tone concentration based on where my finger was on the paper. We then switched and I had Ella choose the concentration of tone -- and show me where it was at on the spectrum. She did so awesome!