This week we got Olivia ready for her concert choir auditions. Because she wanted to work on a more classical sound we worked on slightly adjusting her baseline forward placement to a more classical placement, worked on her consonants, and widening her high notes.
Classical placement:
The placement that I teach all my kids works for all types of music - which is great news when they decide to switch off! The entire placement is like an upside down U. We access different parts of the placement depending on the style of music and the song. With classical (and what we did today) we have to make sure we're accessing the very top of the placement where the soft pallet lifts the most. From there we push the sound forward to take any shrillness out of the high notes and to smooth the transition into the lower notes - much like we would in a pop song.
Widening high notes:
With this new classical placement - we're also focusing on expanding the roof of Olivia's mouth so that the sound goes from sounding two dimensional to sounding three dimensional; It opens up her sound and placement to keep it full. It's like opening an umbrella on the roof of her mouth - we get there using a lot of yawning and hooty exercises.
Consonants:
Because consonants - especially the "lu-lu" that Olivia is auditioning with - close off the sound, you have to work extra hard to bounce off of them instead of letting them settle into the sound. You can't linger on a consonant or it will take all the fullness you've created in the vowel. You have to hit it quickly and lightly in the front of your mouth - leaving the back open to maintain the fullness of the note. We worked a lot on this today.