Practice 2/3/17

Singing for the opera this last week has been an interesting experience. I've been struggling with finding flow phonation in my singing, but once I get into the Morgan, things tend to slowly fall into place the longer I'm singing. It feels like I'm singing with more energy, and normally, I would be worried that I'm singing with too much "effort," but by the end of the night, I feel vocally fine, like I could continue singing for a while even after the show is over. 

I'm working finding the balance between not hyper-adducting the vocal folds and getting too "fuzzy" or "leaky" with the breath flow. 

• Even if you don't know how/why something happened, just try and keep a clear snapshot of what that sensation is like. Have knowledge of result and trust it. Find it by asking for it. 
• anchor the larynx down with the shoulders
• "shopping" and thinking of the tone following the direction of the airflow for "sh" and floating on top of it. 
• Start sitting so it's easier to find a lower breath gesture. 
• Lesson 2/19/16: plug ears. 
• Pay attention the flow of air as you plug your ears
• "yes" or [j] to help with root of tongue
• "oh my baby" instead of "I ate pancakes"
• [a] mouth and [e] tongue. 
• Lesson 7/18/16
• use [gei dei gei dei] with the [g] and [d] consonants to train the breath gesture and find more focus in the fuzzy sound. 
• [fi fe] is another way to do this, along with "shopping" 
• really think about the "arch" when you descend. You're not just going straight down. 
• At this point, after doing about 35-40 minutes of vocal warm-up/alignment, I feel like things below C5 feel really good, but it's done in a way that isn't optimal for anything above C5, like there's a ceiling to the pitch and I can't get any higher. 
• Think of "elevator 2"
• Thumbs in back molars
• Whoa!! You really need to stretch this, Em. You close down a lot. 
• Also; my lips feel like they're being stretched too? Not the skin, but the muscle in the lips? It's so weird. 
• [nim nem nam nom num] 
• Remember, completely release the mouth; just the tongue should be in the closed vowel position
• internal smile; watch out for the frown in the corners of the mouth
• This helped a little bit, and keeping my ears plugged helped with some of it. Struggling with the open vowels quite a bit; they tend to want to fall way back. 
• Think "opposite": the [a o u] are forward...
• All vowels are on the top surface of the tongue, not the body of the tongue. If that makes sense. It's top layer of the blade of the tongue. Just the surface of it. 
• Watch that you sternum doesn't move all over the place. I don't feel very stable in my own body right now. 

Overall, just a little frustrated that it's been taking me this long to find alignment in my voice, but I feel like I have more direction as to how to eventually get there on my own. Gotta watch out that I don't wear out my voice trying to find release, though.