In our vocalization exercises, we are working hard to extend Jake's range - while making sure we relax our voice to prevent us from hurting our vocal cords. Because naturally everyone has stronger registers of their voice and weaker registers of their voice - we work on building each register individually with perfecting our placements and pronunciation in our vocalization exercises to build the different parts of our voice that we use while singing that vary in pressure and tone - we do this by singing different vowels at different degrees of our forward placement and repeating the parts of our range we particularly want to work on over and over. We then work on the transitions between each register where the amount of pressure on our cords needs to change (or the places our voice can crack between our chest voice and our mix voice - and our mix and our head voice). We do this by approaching each of these transitions with extra caution, lightening up the pressure and volume of our voice BEFORE we get to the point we need to, and then work on building that lighter/relaxed place into a strong sound that transitions well into a higher place where volume and pressure are less (for example - we add our “Pinnochio” placement into our chest or belt range before we get to the place where we need to switch into our mix voice so as not to hurt our voice. By adding this placement early - we can build to a soft belt place rather than try and pull our chest voice up and in turn, straining our vocal cords.)
As we work to extend Jake’s range - we are making sure to do it in a healthy, safe way for his vocal cords. We do this by adding lots of movement in our head, neck, and body, and monitoring the amount of pressure he is putting on his cords at all times.
We are working on this range extension so that Jake can sing any song, any genre, any voice part - and use any part of his vocal range that each specific performance calls for.
Musical Theater Character!
Today we also started a new part of our musical theater character placement: doing an upbeat character song! With upbeat songs, the character choices and acting side (of our acting/singing split) become a lot bigger - we use our voice inflections to move the song forward and tell the story. To do this, we simplify our style, talk out our song, and focus on the intensity and voice inflections needed to increase the acting! From there, we decide what words we want to extend into a more melodic place!