Practice 10/28/14

I spent a lot of my time just solidifying the English translations to my songs in my head today and last night. Surprisingly, it was really easy to commit things to memory because I'd been thinking about the general meaning of the words throughout the semester, so when I went to be more specific, it wasn't difficult.

After my practice yesterday, I still felt really good going into my practice room, so I made sure that I kept it that way by really focusing (yet again) on breathing, experimenting with "small mouth," bouncing and letting the note spin, and not worrying about how I sound.*** This has been the most helpful thing to me so far this week, and it's gotten me to really focus on how things feel rather than sound.

I did notice that sometimes, if I'm not careful, I get a small "twinge" in my voice that makes me want to clear my throat, and it sort of puts an itch on my voice. I'm assuming that's probably not good, so I try to think higher when that happens. I get that more on my closed vowels than on my open ones and if I push too much on my lower notes.

I experimented with "singing out of the back of my head" to see if that would help the "twinge," because when I tried to think "forward," I think I was pushing for placement in the mask instead of letting it come as a result, so I tried to work with different things, like "happy face" as well.

In order to better facilitate "higher" singing, I thought of "big space, but you sing on the very tip top of it." I wanted to visualize that better, so I raised my arms and made a large oval shape with them, and I imagined singing on top of it, and that really helped me release, especially on my open vowels.

I also experimented using my hands to create a sort of "shelf" just below my nose, pressing the tip of it upwards just slightly so I could isolate sensation towards the top of my head to see if I was singing with enough height; sometimes I get distracted by the resonance of my own voice that I have to isolate myself from the sound. That really helped as well, and I imagined having a large cavern just behind my nose as I sang.