Eureka!

There are those times in my practicing where I have an epiphany - a Eureka! moment - whether its feeling a new sensation with my voice, or more often than not, learning to get rid of sensations of tense and tightness. This evening I had my first Eureka! moment as a voice teacher. It is for those moments that makes this art so addictive. But I'll get to that later...

Name of Student: Brittney Johnson
Lesson Length: 40 minutes
Voice Type: In Progress

General Discussion: One topic of high importance that we discussed briefly was Brittney's TMJ. It was effecting her in our lesson today, but said it's rare that it affects her singing, maybe once a month. She insisted however that we proceed with the lesson. It was difficult for me to make a qualifiable deduction of her voice type given the involuntary tension in her jaw. I did not want to take her too high up in the stratosphere with that tension in the mouth. I did a brief, and probably insufficient talk/demo/lab on posture and breath. She has good posture for the most part- but the breath is something I will discuss further when I discuss our vocalises.

Physical Warm-ups: I think I may have failed at this one today. She had just got done with a large and difficult homework assignment, and I wasn't even thinking about doing something physical to wake her body up. All I had her do was something I read in a choral methods textbook earlier that afternoon - the basic stretch up, wiggle the fingers, bring the arms back down; roll the shoulders one way, reverse. Is that sufficient? What else should/could I be doing?

Vocalises: I was not prepared very well for responding to this - I did not write down where I began and started each vocalise, but I'm fairly sure that I remember everything. I first asked if she could do a lip trill, and she said that her TMJ today made it difficult, so I went with a hum instead. We did a 1-5--4-3-2-1 pattern, starting on the A below middle C. I took that up to the next A, and then brought it back down and modified the exercise to hum on the "1," and then had her open up on an [a] vowel for the "5-4-3-2-1" portion of the vocalise. I chose this exercise to just wake up the voice a bit on an easy hum, and to begin working with resonance and having her feeling those vibrations the hum makes and let her experiment with carrying those vibrations into a vowel. A problem we ran into was this: Brittney felt the need to move her jaw every time the note switch, even though the vowel didn't change. This was something that once I pointed it out, she could fix it on her own. By the end of the lesson, when I said "mirror," she knew I was telling her to look in the mirror and watch her jaw.

I wanted to do a two-octave glide with her, but she felt uncomfortable singing above E (top line treble clef) because of the TMJ, so I skipped the two octave glide.

From here I went into the Miller book and did some onset&release exercises. I don't have the book while I'm typing this, but we worked up to the one of 1-2-3-4-5 ' 5 ' 5 ' 5 ' 5-4-3-2 1 ' 1 ' 1 ' 1 ' 1.

(At this time, I was starting to get nervous. I hadn't really made any "corrections" to her technique thus far, and I started feeling like a failure. Then something finally happened.)

I began to notice two things: 1) breath. 2) tension. She was gasping for the breaths - I gave a demostration and short explanation on how breath should be the result of a release of her lower muscles, not the action of deep, labored inhalation. Her tension was in her lower neck/upper chest area- the "grunt" muscles. Every time she repeated the notes in the Miller exercise, I saw her scarf bump up and down. This is a tension issue I struggle with myself, and I worry I may not be able to help her with it if I can't help myself with it. One thing that did work for her was this - I simply told her to bend over and sing - and her tension went away. She was able to carry over the sensation of the absense of tension to her correct posture from our modified one.

I decided I needed to check one more thing with her breath - so I decided to have her do a 1 - 3 - 5 - 8 - 5 - 3 - 1 - 3 -5 - 8 - 5 - 3 - 1. The first arpeggio was staccato, the second was legato. My suspicions were indeed correct - she was unable to slide between pitches. We isolated just going from 1-3, and she really couldn't slide. I had her do a few sighs on pitch and explained that feeling of consistent air flow. I explained that what was happening was when it came time to switch to a new pitch, she just let the breath support and muscular coordination go, and then picked it back up after she got to her next pitch. Finally we were able to slide from do to mi, and then I moved the exercise up a half step. I really felt like I reached a break through here.

All of these vocalises stayed in the range of the A below middle C to 2 E's above it.

Repertoire: We didn't do any technical work on rep. this week; rather, we began choosing it. She was very skeptical about choosing music to sing, so I assigned her Deep River - I chose it for its opportunities of legato singing and registration coordination. I got 3 musical theater books (mezzo-soprano) from the library and gave them to her, she was excited to choose her own music from that genre. I'm not sure what she'll pick. I'm thinking of adding one more, but I'm not sure if I will. I was thinking something more classical, but I think Deep River will provide us with enough material to work on.

Reflections and Goals: I'll start with goals first: I told her to really work on the habit of not having labored inhilation, but rather just "letting the air" as a result of a release. I also told her to spend time on sliding from do to mi, and if that becomes easy, try sliding from do to mi to sol. My goal is to be more prepared with a list of Vocalises from the Miller text on the BRAPP. I'd also like to be more prepared in providing details in this report.

As I was saying at the beginning and in the middle, I really began to feel like a failure when I wasn't really helping her voice at all, but when I had the thought that her upper chest tension might be a result of restarting the breath support every time she sings a note or new pitch in melisma, I thought that the way to make her aware of that and to fix it was sliding between pitches. It was really phenomenal watching and listening to her really being unable to slide up and down a major third. It made me feel useful. And that is a good feeling.

Sounding off,

J. Stensberg

The First Lesson

Well, number one was not too bad.  My student is 20 year old Brittney Johnson.  She's a junior at Carroll University studying English. Our lesson was 20 minutes long, and as of now, I'm calling her a mezzo.

I was nervous about the first lesson, so I decided to not have a lot of singing - we mostly discussed what we were both doing here.  We know each other pretty well, but I went a little deeper into explaining why I was doing what I was doing (studying music, teaching these voice lessons, etc.) and she told me why she was willing and excited to participate.  

I asked her what she hoped to gain from these 7 lessons.  Her response was promising - she's unsure about a lot of things as an untrained singer.  She is unaware of what her possibilities are, as well as exercises and ways to achieve those possibilities.  

As for repertoire, she's very wary about that as well.  She's one of those intellectual people who has the mindset of leaving choices up for the people with more background, so she's very intent upon having me choosing everything she sings.  She said she's willing to sing anything.  My plan for this is to pick a classical song, perhaps something in another language.  I also plan on giving her a song in English, I was thinking Deep River.  I think the register changes in that will help her create a sense of consistency in tone and feeling.  Then I thought I might get a few musical theater books from the library and pick some I think would be good for her, and then letting her choose one from those.  

We did a short range test, and I would say the extent of her usable range is the G below middle C to the F two octaves above middle C.  I asked her how she was feeling that day, and she said that she was a little underslept, so her range will be something we continue to explore.  Her tone was a little bright - I attribute this to her choice of models.  Pop music, broadway, and "Glee" most likely contribute to her brighter "pop" tone, as well as the occasional habit of starting phrases from that state of vocal fry that is popular in the genre.  I tested her range on the syllable "da," utilizing the back consonant to bring it out of the nose a little bit (as opposed to using an M or N.)  Ascending in her range, we did a five note scale up and down (1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1) and descending we used just 5-4-3-2-1.)  As I sensed a more natural scuro in her voice, I had her only produce the "d" on the first pitch (to help avoid the fry-onset,) as opposed to using the "d" on each new pitch.

I'm very excited to work with Brittney.  She's an excellent learner, so I'm very excited to work with her voice - I see her having the potential to sound great in many genres of the art.  

Sounding off,

J. Stensberg