Tougas- Voice Overview- 10/26

 In VRH Isabelle John performed “On My Own” from Les Miserables. Her pitch and emotion was great! You could really see how much she had internalized the song and emoted it with her face. Also, she kept an aligned and clear posture the whole time! The tone had a nice quality, except a lot of breath escaped through each note. Instead of a pure tone, it became more gaspy. In thinking of the exercises we are preparing for our demonstrations, a glottal onset exercise could help her voice really break through that air! Perhaps on thee in a descending two-note pattern by holding out the ‘th’ till there is a resonant buzz and then releasing that air on the ‘ee’. This would practice glottal stopping and starting on a more difficult/ closed sound to phonate so that the sensation of the vocal folds pressing together can become more pronounced and easier to replicate in actual textual settings. Overall, great performance!

In my voice lesson this week, we worked on transposing one of my songs into a higher key which created a bit of a psychological hump to get over. However, something I found that really helped was still looking at my music in the previous, lower key! Even though, I was singing higher notes, I could half-trick my brain that they weren’t and therefore I could regulate my breath a lot more efficiently. We then also worked on singing in ‘weird’ positions such as in tree pose, half bent over in a stretching position, and even squatting with our forehead directed at the floor. It didn’t result in a lot of vibrato, rather a straight tone that was almost an arrow on the target of the high notes. Then, conversely when I was able to stand, I remember that space that was created and this time had the alignment for supported vibrato! It was actually quite surprising how effective it was to sing the entire song in these odd positions. Then, in my practice, I have been working through my chiaroscuro and the different placements for it depending on each song/style. I did one exercise in particular that really helped which was finding words that shared similar vowels to the ones I was axing in my foreign language pieces (for example: ah, the word ‘dog’). This exercises helped me breath in for that space because I better understood the placement in which I needed the note to go in my soft palate. 


PSA: Thomas- your demonstration of ah vs uh in classical and musical theatre singing was so helpful in where the sound has to go! Thank you! 

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