Lesson Summary and Take-Aways 1/21/15

Take-Aways:
Think of the vowel before the consonants: prepare it high. Shaper is below the tone maker.
Use daylight to relieve pressure.
Wait to give in to the low voice.


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We worked on "Habanera" from Bizet's Carmen...

When working with higher notes, the back of the tongue is higher and the jaw is more released than you might think. This goes against natural instinct to depress the tongue.

Remember that when descending in pitch, you maintain height. Have a little bit of "daylight"/lift in between each note. "When you're coming down, you're not really coming down." If you have difficulty adding "daylight" between notes, that means you're adding unnecessary pressure.

On the vowel [u], think of sucking on a lemon. Think high and back for higher notes.

"et" Mouth is really soft, and the vowel is really far back and up!! Bright vowels and high notes already have forwardness--they need "backness."

To maintain height, you need to feel like there's nothing that's closing down on the word; lift is reiterating itself. Thinking of bringing the bottom up to articulate, never the top down.

When your nasals are good, there is no pressure from below, but rather the vowel is coming down from the top of your head out your nose. 30% nasality + 70% non. To practice achieving it, start with no nasality and slowly dial it in.

Once you're below A4, allow yourself to release/sink on those notes and give them "body." (Don't press though.) Keep a greater sense of high until that point though.

[a] Needs to be up inside your mind (high starting vowel..) before you even sing it. Don't think of where the consonant is being sung; think of where the vowel is coming out (think unicorn horn).

Watch your B natural on descending! You go wayyyy flat; maintain height. It's the shortest half step you'll ever sing.

I hate [u]--> Teeth far apart in the back and sucking on lemons facial thing. Think of a ghost.

When singing higher notes, think lighter, "pleasant voice," Galinda the good witch.

On "garde" upward leap, thinking of opening up from the g, rather than pulling open the jaw.

"Sing in the middle of the sound, not the edges, feeling like there's a vast amount of voice that you're just not using at that moment."

[bap bap bap, baapbaapbaap, baaaa] 54321. Maintain buoyancy. No pressure increasing from note to note. Think of slide that goes up first and then descends. Try ascending, but be careful about increasing pressure.

1 5 5 5 54321 [bap], then 1 5 5 5 5432123454321.

There is a refreshing on each new note, even when it's a repeated note.

Work on refining aural mental understanding of French accent. "Their sound is kind of like a little ball that is just above the top teeth between the lip and the nose. The mouth is forward, and just swing the jaw back for singing depth. The sound is right up in the arch of the soft palette."

French vowels are very tall and thin, compared to american vowels that are more spread.

Higher, more hum-like start for each high start vowel.

Practice syllables with consonants just at the very beginnings, like you would practice [bap]

**Late 5 min. of the recording: To practice the high notes, do descending scales. Don't use the jaw to open up. Feel it from above. There's a section of every scale that you must allow to be very light and to just allow the voice to find the place where it wants to sink. "Vocal equivalent to delayed gratification."