We vocalized on:
Relaxation: Mah-mah, lip buzz- be- be,
Classical placement: hooty, who-whee
Freeing up + opening up alto notes: arpaggio who-whee
We worked on:
Finding top space in low notes, finding the hooty- classical on your own.
Finding top space in low notes:
Low notes are the hardest notes to sing in classical music because of the natural tendency to thin out the low notes when coming from a more airy sound. Because Olivia has a big powerful voice - and she has the range to hit all of these notes in full voice - we decided to use that to thicken up her low notes. Because of this - we worked today on maintaining the top or back space (lifting her soft pallet) through her low notes to keep the sound consistent - to keep the sound in her placement range while adding a more classical sound to it by expanding the roof of her mouth!
Finding the hooty - classical on your own!
To make sure Olivia is all set to go for her concert choir auditions - we made sure that Olivia could consistently find this new variation of our placement on her own! In order to do this, I gave her a series of exercises to make her feel different parts of her mouth - so that she could self-check her placement and feel confident in where she was starting when she auditioned!
Her process looked like this:
1. Yawn. Exaggerate the open feel all the way through the breath (lifts the soft pallet)
2. Whoooty - Exaggerate the open feel that you felt in the yawn all the way through the sound (adds tone to lifting the soft pallet)
3. Whoo-eee - Exaggerate the open feel all the way through the wheeee - (widens the vowel while lifting the soft pallet - further expanding the big sound and feeling to other parts of the roof of the mouth)
4. Wheee- Lu-lu - Maintain the open feeling and sound all the way through Lu-lu (takes the placement and applies it to the vowel she's auditioning with)
5. Whee-- lu-lu on pitch of audition - making sure the cycle is complete and that she can feel the lifted/open feeling with the exact song she's auditioning with.
She should do this a few times in her car before she heads in to audition!