I started out the day with some short vocal warmups by following along with Lessons 2/26 and 2/27/16, but my voice was very slow to respond. It could have been because I had to wake up early, I was tired, and my voice felt pretty raw from overexertion yesterday and acid reflux. After about 30 minutes of practice, I had a short 30 minutes coaching with Dallas, and we went over a couple of my arias. Again, my voice still felt like a brick (much like yesterday), with my larynx and soft palate feeling like it weighed a million tons, but I was kind of able to fake it towards the last 10 minutes of the coaching.
During choir, we did a lot of "sing this piece on [u]" for 35 minutes. About five minutes into it, I decided to use this opportunity to do some pencil work, so I stuck a pencil in my mouth and sung, really thinking about the concepts that I had considered yesterday in my practice.
When I got home, I practiced for about an hour and decided to follow along with another lesson, because my voice still felt pretty heavy, and this is when things got much better, but by this time, it was around 3-4 pm.
Lesson 2/19/16
- The breath gesture creates the depth.
- "Depth is not shape. Depth is breath gesture."
- With this in mind, I really really thought about having a neutral mouth and tongue, and thinking the vowel and pitch, while allowing all "depth" to be in the body, and trusting that the sound would be as "full" as it wanted or needed to be. This included anything in my "chest" voice.
- When I got it right, it felt as though my tongue was going to fall out of my mouth because it was so fat, especially on my [i] vowels, but it was completely effortless from the larynx up. I felt really anchored in my body when it was right, and weightless up above.
- My mouth isn't as open as I thought it would be, and I don't need it to be open in order to be released. If I need to sing higher, just let your jaw swing open as it needs to.
- Let the air come in through the nasal passage if it wants. "Let the air come in. Dilation, not
- sucking in air through the nose."
- Don't anticipate consonants.
- "Forward presence without closing out in the back." (I thought of the back wall of the pharynx at this point, really thinking about feeling no closing down in the space especially when I was moving around in pitch.)
- horizontal release
- Release only the air above the larynx. "Open up the space, but don't let go off all the sound" was an instruction that was a little helpful.
- Again, I thought of the space above the back molars as the place where the vowels resonated from.
- Don't try and make yourself "sound like a mezzo." Depth is in the breath! You don't make depth in your throat.
- For pitch change, nothing moves. Just think it and trust that you can do it "like that."
- FOCUS ON WHAT YOU LIKE.
- ~12 minutes for this alignment session.
After having done this, singing my repertoire was very easy. Sometimes I would plug my ears to get a better sense of what was moving unnecessarily, and I would usually only do this if, no matter what I seem to be doing, I can't seem to convince myself to trust that the pitch will just happen.
After this practice session, I left for a Choral Scholars rehearsal and came back, followed the warm ups again, and found my good sound again. After singing like this, I can understand how an opera singer can sing an entire 3 hour opera and not be vocally destroyed by the end. It's so effortless and easy, and it makes me excited and happy to sing. It only took me about four hours of spaced practicing to figure it out [insert heavy sarcasm here].
Let's see if I can recreate this again tomorrow....
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