Amanda's Lesson--Vocal Ped

For my first observation I chose to watch Amanda. She is a senior soprano. The first thing they started with were the lip buzzes. The first major difference from her lessons and mine is that she did a lot more warm ups than I usually do, but her lesson was at 9:00 in the morning and mine is in the afternoon pretty soon after choir. The next warm up they did was sliding ee vowels. She was having trouble finding the buzz because she recently got her tonsils out and she can't feel it anymore. In order to have her feel the resonance, Dr.Hepworth had her put her hand in front of her mouth. This allowed her to feel it bouncing off her hand so she knew that she was doing it right. This came into play a bit later in the lesson when she couldn't find the buzz and so she put her hand up while she was singing the song and it helped her bring the buzz back into it. After she felt it for a while she took her hand away so she could hear what it is supposed to sound like. Dr.H explains that after she does it right for long enough then she will just be able to hear what it is supposed to sound like versus feeling it. After she was warmed up, they went right into her songs for NATS. After singing through a bit of her first song, they discussed where the right places to take breaths so she wouldn't lose the resonance. The biggest comments Dr.Hepworth was giving her were to keep the sound forward and she kept asking her how it felt. After she sang her songs that were in foreign languages they went over some pronunciation. Another thing they touched on was the character she needs to be for one of her songs. Dr.Hepworth was quick to get up and give her a great example of what she needed to do. The last big thing they touched on was how she needs to get more nasality in her lower register which helped her lower notes become fuller. Overall, I was surprised at how different, but yet still similar to my own voice lessons they were. Some of the things they focused on were a lot of the same things I am working on, but some of the ways they solved things she was having troubles were different than I would've needed. Like the hand in front of the mouth I have done in my lessons before, but we haven't talked about hearing the resonance versus feeling it too much. I think one of my favorite methods Dr.Hepworth uses is being positive with everything she says. She was never short of shelling out a compliment, but if there was something that needed help, she would never make negative of it. She'd just explain how to make it better. I am looking forward to observing Adrian's lesson so I can see the contrast from a girl's lesson to a boy's.