Observing Brett Dorcey's Voice Lesson.

I definetly was looking forward to doing my first observation with Dr.Lofgren because him and Dr.Hepworth have such different personalities. Brett Dorcey was the person I chose to do my male observation on with Dr.Lofgren. His primary instrument is tuba and voice is his secondary. This is his first semester of voice lessons, and he is a tenor. His lesson was at 9:30 in the morning, so warming up was a must for the beginning of their lesson. The first thing that was took me by surprise is that they had the lesson with Dr.Lofgren's office door left open. I thought this made the lesson seem slightly informal, yet Brett seemed to be very relaxed with it. The first thing he did was a few light sirens then they began singing knee on sliding fifths emphasizing the I sound. He was getting a very bright sound by doing this, but I did notice that he would set his mouth into the shape of the I vowel before he would sing it instead of just letting the sound come out. As he was doing the knees, Dr.Lofgren reminded him to relax his tongue, jaw, and face. I was kind of surprised to hear him say something about the tongue because he's never addressed it in choir that I can remember. After that  he got out a book called "Overtones of Bel Canto" by Burton Coffin. The first exercise they did was up five on woah, down five on a yeah and then switch to a woah at the bottom and add a messa di voce at the end. In this book, for each vowel sound it gives you a number and that number says how open your mouth should be when you sing that vowel. For example, a 3 would be hardly open, and an 8 would be open quite wide. He had a lot of control over the messa di voce, but was producing a pretty dark sound. Dr.Lofgren had him sing a couple knees again and told him to keep that bright, forward feeling when he's doing these exercises. Next he did yeah-woah-yeah where he was reminded again about how he needs to keep space in the mouth and to keep a forward feel. Woo-yeah was next, and this time Dr.Lofgren addressed which vowels sound dark, the oo, and which were bright-the yeah. He told him when he gets the right combination of light and dark then he has found the chiaroscuro which is something that Dr.Hepworth addresses quite often. He then did an I sound through a pucker which was very swallowed at first. Dr.Lofgren told him to feel like it's bouncing off of the hard palate which brought on a brighter sound right away. I had to laugh a little bit because after that Brett made a comment about how that felt weird. Dr.Lofgren started to laugh as well and told him that weird is good, and that was the chiaroscuro. As he was doing the puckered I sound his soft palate began to drop and Dr.Lofgren explained to him that that was why his sound was getting a little too nasal. He had him pinch his nose and sing woah which I understood right away because I have been trying to work on that as well in my lessons with Dr.Hepworth. Plugging his nose will force him to project the sound from his mouth versus his nose which causes hyperfunctionality. The lesson was about half over at this time, and I was kind of surprised that they hadn't even worked on any rep yet, but I got the impression that Dr.Lofgren is more of a teacher that focuses on exersises and technique by itself versus integrating those lessons into the student's repitoire. They began to warm up his high range with something that I am pretty sure works fairly similar to the sing-ah exercise. Brett put his arm up to his mouth and literally put his mouth on his arm and go up an arpeggio on an mm. Then he had him put his arm up to his mouth and he went up on an oh and then moved his hand and changed to an ah sound. There was a little bit of the lesson left, and they finally pulled out his rep. Brett is working on Mozart's aria "Dalla Sua Pace" from Don Giovanni. This was by far the most interesting part of the lesson for me. Right when Dr.Lofgren said get out your aria I was confused because since it's Brett's first semester of voice lessons, and he is obviously still trying to get a handle on some basic technique, I didn't think he should even be working on an aria. He asked Brett if he looked up the IPA yet, and he hadn't which I thought maybe he should've got a little slap on the hand for that because I know that he's been assigned that song for at least two weeks since he wasn't in attendance at his last voice lesson since that was the one I was supposed to originally observe. Dr.Lofgren just said okay and had him sing da da da on the notes and rhythms. Brett really wasn't prepared for this song at all so Dr.Lofgren sang through most of it with him. He told him that this song was going to call for a lot of catch breaths and he warned him that there was going to be a lot of octaves at the end that he was going to have to negotiate. He explained the text for the last line, and had him sing through it, reminding him the whole time to keep the sound in his nose. This was the most interesting part of the whole lesson to me...he warned Brett not to spend too much time on this piece because he'll develop bad vocal habits, and it's a real work out vocally. He urged him not to do too much in one sitting, and just do a part of it a day until he got it learned. This just really blew my mind because why would he assign him something that he has to warn against working too much on it or he'll hurt himself? I'm sure he has other songs that are much less taxing, but I just was really hung up on the fact that he was singing this song that is probably for an advanced singer. I definitely was opened up to a whole other style of teaching from this lesson. They are much less personal than a lesson with Dr.Hepworth is, and it almost completely consisted of vocalizing. It seems like Brett was more uninterested in his lesson versus Adrian and Amanda who were very engaged in theirs. I am looking forward to see if Dr.Lofgren's teaching methods differ for when he's teaching a girl.