USU Pedagogy 3630 - F23

 Collegal: Rebecca Wright: I have always loved her voice! Her tone is so cool, but I feel like her soft pallet isn’t raised. I think raising it would help her on her high notes. They were still good, but I think raising the soft pallet would help her have cleaner transitions. Ashley Wallick: she has an awesome tone! It’s very forward. Very bluegrass/r&b. I felt like she did a good job controlling her voice, and not pushing. Emma Joy Diesen: I LOVE HER VOICE. She has really great positioning until the higher notes. Her low and midranges are so resonant, I can feel it resonating through her whole body. During the higher notes, there’s some tension and I can hear some air escaping. Personal: I’ve been sick, so I didn’t have a lesson this week :/

 Emma Diesen: I really loved her performance! She had some really nice float in her voice, sprinkled in with the belt. There were sometimes with some large leaps where should come off the voice a little bit. Not every time though, I think she nailed it on that octave leap on the word "somewhere". It's interesting to ponder though, I wonder if it is a question of breath flow, nerves, or something else. Overall, I found myself happily mesmerized by her performance In my own voice lesson this week, we talked about lift for high notes. Sometimes I am so focused on not carrying tension in my voice (something I've struggled with for a while) that I get too loose and the pitch will even sag a little. Thomas talked about remember to just sing bright and then darkening the vowel with the lips. he then recommended I watch Nicolai Gedda for an example of what "lift" in your face looks like. Man, watching that guy I am not even convinced it's him singing. His face j...

 In my lesson this week we went through pronunciation of my French songs. We made sure that I was pronouncing everything clearly and correctly. One note I got on my jury forms from my latest jury was that my schwa was not tall enough, so we made sure that those were pronounced correctly. We then went through the logistics of what I needed to do for my senior recital. We finalized my song order and organized what I needed to do this week to prepare. I need to get my venue and recital date reserved, and I need to start working on my program.  In VRH, I watched Justice Cruzan. She had a nice, clear sound, and clear articulation. It felt that if I knew the language I would be able to understand her. Her sound was very sweet and innocent sounding which seemed like it fit the piece well. I also observed Henry Silva. He too had a clear and beautiful sound. In addition to his sound, he weas also very expressive. There was a sincerity to his performance, and I could tell he knew and ca...

I felt like this week’s lesson was productive and gave me many things to practice. First of all, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that I tend to “swallow” the sound. As I watch the recording of the lesson, I can tell when I sing an exercise incorrectly—when I swallow the “ah” vowel or when the “ee” vowel is not sufficiently clear and forward-placed. On the other hand, the “new” way of singing sounds very strange to me. I think it will take some getting used to, and, in fact, the sound reaching my ears does not seem to agree with my previous notions of ideal singing. But these notions also appear to be false! It is apparent that my voice looses energy as I attempt to intervene to switch to a different register: my way is not quite right. I am excited to see what hard work under guidance gets me. In the lesson, we were able to achieve a “ring” in the sound at times—after reading chapter 5 of McCoy I’m inclined to think this has something to do with formants, but I’m not sure....

At first, I thought this chapter about resonance was interesting. Actually, I have previous experience with harmonics because of my amateur saxophone playing. When learning the saxophone, it is common to “finger” a low note—a fundamental frequency—while a note that primarily emanates from the instrument is a note belonging to the harmonic series for the note being “fingered.” It allows one to play notes higher than the highest note allowed simply by pushing buttons (“fingering”), and the practice is thought to instill control over the instrument. I wonder if the concept of harmonics explains, at least in part, why it is sometimes difficult for me to pick out the precise note that a baritone or bass is singing. Perhaps, as McCoy points out, the fact that a harmonic other than the fundamental frequency is stronger than the fundamental frequency contributes to this. Reading about the Male Passaggio, I thought about my most recent lesson. Thomas and I talked a bit about a type of “tran...

 I had a bumpy start to my lesson this week because when I walked in I was experiencing symptoms of what I now know is a stomach ulcer. This made me very anxious, so we just sat and chatted for a second to calm my nervous system (I'm assuming) and then jumped right into some easy and light warm ups so as to not exhaust my voice after these symptoms. I feel very foolish because I forgot to record this lesson, but I loved how those specific warm-ups released so much tension in my anxious voice and body. After that, we moved to the song I will sing in voice recital hour which is very much on the mix-belt side. I sang this last semester so we really just hit some of my trouble spots. Specifically, the D5 at the end. I was singing it with a very closed, juvenile sound mostly because I'm so frightened that if I don't close my mouth, it's not gonna come out the way I want to. However, voice lessons are here to challenge us, push us to be our very best and, thought it took me a...

 I'm going to be completely honest here: the first section went right over my head and I was very confused because I didn't feel like enough examples or explanations were being given. So, I was very relieved when section two opened with how singers can apply the information about the formants and harmonics we learned in section one. He used three examples which consisted of the male passaggio, the female upper passaggio, and a personal example of intonation. I love the consistent reference to the singer's vowel shape and how significant of a role this plays in producing resonance and harmonics. In the female upper passaggio, he talked about subtly shifting the shape of the vowel and in the intonation example, he discussed how vowels make a big difference in our ability to blend and tune to the other singers we perform with. I had a teacher once and during my time with them, I really struggled producing resonant sound through my passaggio and higher. This really confused me ...