That being said, I was really determined to do much better today than yesterday. I knew there were a lot of things wrong with my mentality last night: "making" sound was my biggest issue, and I also lacked patience with myself.
Today, I spent the entirety of my practice with earplugs in. I didn't listen to myself at all, no matter how tempting it was. I focused all of my energy on becoming familiar with sensation, and in the end, (no surprise), my voice felt very free and easy by the end of my first practice session. When I returned to my practice during the afternoon, again, I put my plugs in, and I found a very free and easy production. This repeated in the evening when I went back one last time. By the end of my final practice session, I felt comfortable enough in the muscle memory to take out one of the earplugs and practice some of my rep with one normal ear. Once I had established an easy throat, it was much easier to give myself permission to listen to my sound, but I found myself often wanting to manipulate it. That's when the earplugs would go back in.
By the end of the night, I was singing Bb5 with relative ease because I was able to focus the mental aspect of the practice, rather than trying to directly tell body parts to do things.
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I started out the day with some swelling that is definitely telling of some on-coming illness. My tonsils were a little swollen, and there was a scratchy feeling on my folds (that wasn't an acid reflux thing). I spent most of my day wearing a mask because of it because I didn't want to spread some potential illness around. (I will say that it made me feel like the Winter Soldier though...)
I didn't do any serious vocalization until after choir (around 2:30), and I did light vocalization until 3:15. Before, I just did some easy warm-up things (lip trills, etc.). Evening session was in-and-out sporadically from 7:00pm and 10:30pm. I tried to keep sessions short (less than an hour at first, then 30 minutes) in order to a) not oversing with this weird scratchy voice, and b) to motivate myself to be as productive as possible in each session.
Listen Lesson 11/11/16
- about to sneeze space
- the tongue is fat, the throat is released and open (not forced open; just there)
- Jaw is released
- noticed space between my back molars
- lips are loose
- I noticed a feeling of "airiness" as I practiced, but when I took my earplugs out, it didn't sound like it.
- This started with the "childlike" sounds
- when you ascend, instead of tightening the tongue or moving it around too much, try sending more breath energy instead
- Once I had found pretty decent release, I noticed that as I got higher, the vibrations (not the sound--because I couldn't hear anything) felt "spread" and unfocused, like we talk about with getting higher. So I simply thought about focus and didn't try to change anything as I ascended, and the pitch felt smaller inside, but when I took the earplugs out, it was more focused.
- I did a lot of squatting when I did leaps in pitch in order to remind myself not to move anything in my throat or tongue. It's all thought and breath energy.
- Once I established the good, I took away the squat cue to see if I could do it without it.
I'm finding that it's really difficult to describe what sensations/thoughts were going through my head when I have no sound to go off of. But I will say that A5s are almost too easy when you find the right "focus." It's a little disorienting, because I'll sing the pitch, and it's so easy (especially compared to what I used to do) that I didn't believe I was singing the right pitch. It felt a fifth lower than it actually was because it was so easy.
To be honest, I'm just glad that I was able to vocalize so well, especially considering that I feel something weird coming in my body. Also, not having a mental breakdown is nice too, I guess.
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