Tatum worked hard while she was away from me! She came in and picked up right where she left off! Her placement was incredible!!
Her confidence in our placement went down a little bit - but we'll get it back up! We decided to do a song that was more sing-y than "Popular" but with just as much character to play to Tatum's strengths. We chose "Good morning Baltimore" from Hairspray!
This week was a little bit of a refresher because of the break we took with the musical - we focused on relaxation, moving through our words a little bit more than we did with "popular" a few months ago, more of a musical theater placement, worked on her belt placement, and added performance technique to her voice and actions!
Relaxation:
Relaxation is an important part of what we do in voice lessons so that we don't hurt our chords - but with Tatum, it's even MORE important. Her brain tells her that she isn't singing as well as her voice is actually sounding (a quite normal thing actually), and because she's such a hard worker she tries harder and harder to fix it - making it sound a little forced at times. In this lesson it CLICKED! As Tatum got more comfortable with the stage presence/energy/performing things we added, her voice got more comfortable as well.
We did several exercises to make sure she stayed nice and relaxed - especially on the high notes (that are no longer high for her)
Moving through words/musical theater placement:
We took Tatum to the next level of her musical theater placement as we started working on her musical theater belt - a place that starts the same as a pop belt, widens the vowel, and makes the sound a little bit bigger (or stage appropriate). We went straight to the vowel on our long notes, and talked our way through the rest.
Performance technique:
We're doing things with Tatum that not only help her actions and help her LOOK comfortable on stage - but the bigger we make her actions, and more comfortable we can get her performing as though she's on a stage every time - the better her voice sounds as well! Think of it as act bigger... feel bigger.. sound bigger!