Today we introduced a new placement!!With any contemporary genre (pop, country, alternative, indi), we want our voice to sound as up-to-date/contemporary, in control, and easy as possible. In order to go from where we use our voice and placement in a pop ballad to where we use it in an upbeat pop song, we have to make our words smaller, brighter and shorter than before. To accomplish this, we put our voice in a slightly smaller place - singing each word through our teeth even more, moving to a more chipmunk place in our high notes. When we add this smallness, we are able to sing our fast high notes a little bit easier. Our upbeat pop box placement is the one that is the hardest transition to make because it feels the most unnatural - and you have to hear yourself do it to make sure you are bright enough, small enough, and quick enough.
With these mid- uptempo contemporary songs, we also have to work on staying in the pocket (or keeping up with the music). To do this, we shorten our words significantly - to give Lily more control of the note, and to give her time to add texture and scats. This "pop box" placement optimizes our forward placement for quick words and notes - taking it to a few extremes to make sure that our voice doesn't feel and sound like it's moving through molasses when we sing quickly.
In order to do this, we move our voice to this more forward condensed place - (making it sound a little more chipmunky than usual) we shorten our words, talk them a little bit more, and make sure to separate each word with space giving our brain time to slow down the words and hit each one - taking out the "melting together" or "molasses" feel.