My last lesson

My last lesson for the semester was pretty short. We really just went through my rep. I need to work on a couple diction issues on An die musik, and continue practicing O cessate to make sure that I don't go all nasaly and stuff. I am actually feeling really prepared for juries, which is actually a really weird feeling. I have everything memorized, and I know all the right notes and everything so I'm really just hoping that Dr.H and Dr.Lofgren pick the songs I want! It has been a pretty successful semester, and I'm really happy with the progress I've made. I'm finally starting to get vibrato a little bit which is super exciting. Maybe someday I'll have a real singing voice after all!

Aubrey's LAST lesson!!

Well, this was probably our worst lesson ever. Depressing, I know. We hadn't had a lesson for like 3 weeks or something like that from me being gone for convention and her being sick and stuff so I figured it would be a little rough, but I didn't think it would be that bad. Right off the bat I was irritated before we even started because she told me earlier that day that she'd lost her music. I now know how Dr.Hepworth and Dr.C and all the other professors feel when we don't come to lessons and class prepared. Luckily, she found it so that was good, but I could tell right away that she didn't really want to be doing this lesson. I told her that we were going to start with lip buzzes and she rolled her eyes and she didn't like even remember how to do them. Right then I got in panic mode a little bit. So we did some lip buzzes and after that we were going to do some sliding I's on a fifth. I had her do couple sirens before so she could remember where her head voice was. Then I changed my mind to do some of the sing ah talking and then sing ah singing. In hindsight, I really did not manage this lesson very well. She was lost from the start so I should've took things way slower. I just really didn't expect her to like forget how to do everything we talked about. After we did a few sing ah sing ahs  we did some mI on a sliding fifth. She did okay with the sing ahs. She would start out in the head voice and did a pretty good job talking in it, but once she'd have to go sing it she would tighten up and there just wasn't any resosnance and it was just all tight and pinchy. As we were going up on the mI I started telling her to think lighter because I thought maybe that would help her get into the weak feeling head voice, but it really just made her sing quieter which I really should've saw coming. I told her to get a lot of space in her mouth and do the head voice and I told her to get the buzziness in her nose. But she STILL tried squeezing her chest voice up as we ascended. So I just stopped with that and went to the sing ah. I told her not to open up to the ah until she she got a nice buzzy feeling in her nose. She was feeling the buzz until she opened up and then she said it felt tight. I told her that she needed to have a nice open throat and  a raised soft palate. I tried doing this thing that I saw Dr.Lofgren doing in one of his lessons. I had her do a siren starting on a note, but that really didn't work at all. She really hates dropping her jaw so I had to keep reminding her of that, and when I had her do puppy whimpers she still wants to use her throat to muscle up the sound but we got a few good ones in at the end. Then just to do a couple more warm ups we did some I ahs up and down five and she did okay with it. I know she doesn't like Is so I just let her do some ahs so she could get her jaw dropped. We started on the song and she was singing it incredibly nasaly and her vowels were really bad. Also, she was not really using her head voice at all. I wanted her to tell me what she thought she did right and wrong. We decided that she had good phrasing and we came to the conclusion that she was using her chest voice on the high parts. We also said that she wasn't opening her mouth very wide throughout the song. We also touched on a few of the vowels that she needed to fix. There is a couple spots that there is an a, c, e, f and we worked on it a whole bunch of times and she just could not get it into her head voice no matter what we tried. I told her to sing it like an opera singer and she mostly just sang it louder, but it did make her open her mouth more. We talked about thinking skinny when she got to the high notes and to hold her hands in front of her like a tepee and I explained because that will remind her to lift her soft palate. I had her read through the text in a head voicey sound and she towards the song she just started talking like normal. The last page she was just pure talking through her nose in a really nasaly voice. We went through the song for the last time and she actually did really well singing through it. She got in her head voice most of the times she needed to. Then we were finished and I apologized for having the last lesson so far away from the others because I really think that just caused a lot of problems for this one, but oh well. I think that if we would've had a consistent lesson time every week we could've acccomplished a ton more things. I think she did learn some stuff, but I don't know if she'll apply it to her everyday singing or not. She's stuck in the pop sounding world! But I told her she'd learn to love her head voice someday just like me :)

Aubrey's fifth lesson

We started with lip buzzes like usual. I didn't really want to spend too much time warming up because we really hadn't been working on her song too much, and we only had two lessons left! Then I had her do a couple sirens and some puppy whimpers. She has a really hard time with puppy whimpers for some reason. She just tries to do them with her throat and it is the weirdest thing. No matter how much I explain that she doesn't need to do it in her throat and it's all in her head and nose, she just doesn't like to grasp that concept. I explained to her that what she was doing was just making her vocal folds slap together and she gets a really hard sound coming out, and I know she can feel what she's doing is wrong. Every time she does get it right she hates the way the buzz feels in her nose so I don't know if that has something to do with it. Then we started doing the sing ah in a talking voice and then singing it like she did with Dr.Hepworth when we visited her a while ago. She really doesn't like to open her mouth up very wide and it traps a ton of the sound in. We tried doing sing-ahs down five and I told her to keep the buzz in her nose and when we went down that helped her keep the buzz a little better. I can't even count the times I told her that when she's using her head voice it's going to be weak. Then we did I vowels and we're constantly having to do sirens to feel her head voice. We did sliding I's going down a fifth and she did really well with that. She said it felt weird and I took that as a success. Then we went up five on an I and right away she started trying to pinch it off with her throat so we had to keep doing sirens on an I. I felt like she would start out with her head voice but as she ascended she would switch back into her chest or just try and squeeze the sound off. I tried having her do an ah vowel because I thought maybe it would make her feel a little more open. It wasn't really working. So I tried doing the thing where I had her sing like a 5 year old and then 15 and then like she was like 20 or something and then like she was 80. Epic fail. I don't know why I said 80 first of all, and second of all it just did not work like I thought it would. I was hoping that it would make her open up but it really didn't, and then I did it and I just sounded like a flipping idiot. But oh well. We started her song and I told her to think like opera singer and hooty before her entrances just so she doesn't forget about the head voice. First we just spoke through the rhythm of the song to be sure that she'd get all the note values correct. I told her to really over exaggerate her words and to connect some of them. Also, I am a terrible accompaniment player. She was singing very pinched so we spoke through the words in a hooty voice. There's an arpeggio in her song that's a, c, e and so we did some I's on it and she got in her head voice a little better after that. She was still singing very closed mouth so I had her put her hands on the sides of her face and watch in the mirror to be sure that her jaw was dropping. She got through the rest of the song really well. We fixed the word fly on the f5 because she was spreading out the word a little bit so I told her to make it taller. Every time we had to start the song we had to talk through it in a head voice which was getting a little irritating to me, but she'd always get it if we'd do that. She wouldn't get it at all if we didn't do that first. I told her to start switching into her head voice at an a4 so that she'd have an easier transition into the high notes because she wouldn't switch until she'd get up to about an d5. She did really well with that train of thought. Side note: It doesn't sound half as good on a recording as it did in real life. And I hate listening to myself on the recording. It gives me the creeps. Anyways, we ran through the song again and I had to remind her a few times to go into her head voice. She started out really well, but as the song went on she kept wanting to use her chest voice. It was definetly the best she ever sang it though. I tried to just really assure her that her head voice sounded really beautiful because I could tell that she was hating the way things were sounding. That was easily the best lesson we had, and I think she liked that we actually got to work on the rep versus just doing a thousand warm ups the whole lesson.

Observing Ashley Hecht's Voice Lesson.

For my final observation from one of Dr.Lofgren's students, I observed Ashley Hecht. She is a Spanish Education major and this is her first semester of voice lessons ever. Ashley is a petite, soft spoken soprano, and she wanted to take voice lessons for her own personal enrichment. As it was with Brett, the door remained open for the entire lesson, and she didn't seem phased by it at all. She was sick the past couple weeks so this was the first lesson her and Dr.Lofgren had in quite a while. They began with going up five on an I vowel and then back down 5 on an ah. She was having difficulties staying on pitch as they ascended, but felt pretty comfortable in her lower range. Since she was having trouble finding pitch he had her slide up on on the I and then open up on the ah. She really wasn't opening up at all, and she was barely producing any sound. Dr.Lofgren took that as an opportunity to talk about posture. He pointed out all the spots in your foot that form a "tripod" and told her to align her body into an ears over shoulders over hips position and she should be standing so that all the weight is on her skeleton and she shouldn't be having to do hardly any work. Then they began to discuss breathing and he kept telling her to feel like the breath is sinking down low in her body. She seemed kind of confused, but after a bit of trial and error she began to get a low breath. He had her do yung yung yo up on an arpeggio, and she was barely opening her mouth, but he didn't seem to concerned with that and had her look in the mirror to watch her breath. They continued with the yung yung yo and he wanted her to concentrate on setting up her breath with the ng sound. After doing that for a while she started going up five on a ho sound and on the fifth one she did ho five times and went back down. He told her that she was breathy before and doing stacatto can  help get rid of some of the breathiness. He told her that she was starting to sound better, but I didn't really think it had improved any. If it were me, I would've had her do sliding I's or even just I's on a five pattern so she can feel something of a buzz and little more forward of a sound. She started doing ya up and down five, and she wasn't getting a very low breath and the energy of the sound was pretty much dead. Dr.Lofgren had her do a z sound up and down five and told her to do the ya with the same amount of energy that she had for the z and she did a lot better after that. They kept going up the piano and he would tell her to get narrow and thin at the top and to make sure she's in her head voice and it's nice and light. The higher she got, the tighter and squeakier it was and when they stopped he told her that and he said that she just needs to keep the energy behind it. I think there was a few more things wrong than just the energy though. I know that she needed to open her mouth up more, she needed to open up her throat, and she needed to bring the sound forward because she didn't have any buzz. They started on her first song which was an Italian piece. The tessitura was really pretty low for a soprano, and the highest note was an f5. She sang through it once and it was very breathy and I couldn't hardly hear her because her mouth was so closed. Dr.Lofgren asked her about diction in a couple places and he told her that she needed to get some energy under the sound because it sounded pinched off. Then he whipped out some sheet that had to be from the "Overtones of Bel Canto" book because it was the same type of warm ups he did with Brett. They did some oo-ah-oo and uh-eh-uh sounds and he told her to leave everything open and relaxed and let her tongue move to form the sounds. They went up to about an f and he asked how it felt and she replied that it felt tight. I was kind of questioning if she was really in her head voice, but Dr.Lofgren didn't mention it. He would play a note on the piano and tell her to start on that note and do a siren down. She was doing a pretty good job of opening up for that, but she was still running out of air. They started on the song again and she started to open her throat up more and her sound was fuller, but it only lasted for a little bit and she closed up again. Dr.Lofgren told her to trust herself and it will be there and she needs to use more breath. I didn't exactly know what he meant by that, and I'm not exactly sure that she did either. What I think he was trying to get at was that she was just scared to let the sound come out, and even though I thought he was kind of overdoing the whole breath thing, she really did need to get her breaths under control because they were pretty weak and high. The part of the song where it gets the highest, they took it down and octave and after singing through that they took it back up the octave and he told her to sing with the same openess that she did in the lower register. She was still pretty closed up, but they were out of time so they were going to come back to it next week. One of the big things I noticed in this lesson was that after she'd do something incorrectly, even after he explained how to fix it, Dr.Lofgren would kind of get lost, and he wouldn't really know what to say or do next. I think his style of teaching for her lesson might have worked for some people, but I'm not sure she was really comprehending much of anything he was saying.

Big girl voice.

Well, the semester is finally winding down. Even though I say finally, it really doesn't even feel like it's the end at all. Actually, I wish it wasn't. Man, I would give a lot to just have two more weeks of just free time..not classes..just free time so I have time to accomplish everything I want to do exactly how I want to do it. Ohhh well though, I guess it is now time to engage crunch time mode. I sang An die Musik in recital yesterday, and it was easily the best I've ever done. I feel so much more confident since I'm beginning to figure out how to get my throat more open and produce a fuller sound. Today in my lesson we just ran through my rep, and we started with O cessate di piagarmi. As soon as Dr.Hepworth mentioned it I couldn't believe that I hadn't noticed it before, but there's a part where I tend to get really nasally. That is going to be one of my main practice focuses this week because I'm pretty sure that's the song I'm going to sing first for juries. We sang through An die Musik and fixed a couple diction errors, and I figured out my entrances again since I totally blew some of them off yesterday and made up my own. (Thank God for Mr.Phil) Then we did Love Has Eyes where I always mess up the turn because it's in a really dumb part of my range that I hate, but I am hoping that with time it will get stronger and then I can stop complaining about it. At first I thought that song was really easy to sing, but now I get kind of tired towards the end of it so that is kind of weird. Next we sang When I have Sung My Songs, which I really haven't liked to sing ever since Austin did it on recital a few weeks ago. He owned me, but it's fine. I really need to work on my counting a lot better on that song, and really add some musicality to it. That is something that I just need to do, it has nothing to do with my technique or anything like that so that should not even be a problem, but oh well I will fix it. Also, I need to work on connecting the words a lot better too. Finally, we ran through So In Love which is definetly my second fave after An die Musik. You know, I think I actually might do An die Musik for my first song for juries because I just really love it. But this can be discussed at a later time. Anyways, So in Love is totally the funnest song to sing ever basically because I love musicals and it's awesome. I am feeling very apathetic at the moment, so if this post seems to drone on that is probably why. I think I am going to get some coffee now. That is all, goodbye.

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.

Best lesson ever!

At the beginning of my lesson today I brought in my voice lesson student to see if Dr.Hepworth could get her to sing in her head voice because I could not figure it out. Well, of course, from the get go she was singing spot on in her head voice. After we got that figured out Aubrey left and we were just going to run through all my rep. When I was practicing last night I kind of thought I had a break through, but I wasn't really sure so I told her. We started with O cessate and it was the best reaction ever. Right away I started singing in my big girl voice and I saw a look of like surprise cross Dr.Hepworth's face and she looked like she wanted to stop, but we kept going til I finished the song and she was super proud of me. When I was practicing last night I didn't make my break through til like the end of practice so I was getting kind of tired so I only ran through a couple of parts of songs after that so I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep it up. Much to me and Dr.Hepworth's delight I kept singing correctly all through An die musik and the rest of my rep :) It felt sooooooooooooooooooo freaking good to know that my hard work is really starting to take shape, and that I figured it out all by myself. Well, of course I would be absolutely no where without Dr.Hepworth, but without taking the time by myself and playing around with my voice I still be stuck where I was a year ago. I was so proud of myself at how happy and excited Dr.Hepworth was. That was one of the greatest feelings of accomplishment ever. What I figured out was how to open the back of my throat. I thought if I did that then it would be too dark of a sound, but it felt so full that I had a pretty good feeling about it. This week I'm going to work on memorizing my rep, and I'm still missing some pronunciations on An die musik. Now I need to start focusing on consistency. When I had practice with phil it wawsn't as good as it was in my lesson, but my voice was getting pretty tired because I had went through practice, choir, and a voice lesson. I'm really excited for the direction I am heading in, and I love feeling like I know what I'm doing. Good things are happening, finally! It's so weird because just like last week I was feeling super discouraged, and now it's a complete turn around. Consistency consistency consistency! That is my main goal now.