Courtney Practice Journal 1/13/2022

 

    Today I started my practicing with mindfulness, as I’ve started doing the last couple of months. I focused on affirmations that encouraged me to be grateful for what my voice was currently able to do and excited about the problem-solving process (rather than absolutely terrified). Focusing was a little difficult today as I kept getting distracted by a lot of other thoughts that had nothing to do with practicing. I came up with a strategy to help with this. I put my planner (or other notebook) within easy reach so that if my brain did remind me of something I needed to do or worry about, I could quickly write it down. This way, I could save it for later.

Then I actually started into singing.

·       Warm Up Discoveries

·       54321 on a lip buzz, focusing on feeling any jerking or tension in my throat. Realized that as I get up to the higher notes, I engage the root of my tongue just slightly before I start singing. Focused on hearing the pitch and then just trusting the air move the folds.

·       54321 on [a] I decided to try something similar to the exercises we read in the book this week. I recorded myself so that I could really hear my onset and offset tendencies. I definitely found that I had a glottal onset and offset the first couple times. I continued my recording and added an [h] to beginning of my [a]s, and tried to feel my entire throat releasing for the offsets. It was tricky because I either added too much air and things were unstable in my middle range since my folds weren’t closing all the way or I sometimes added a glottal after the [h]. I definitely felt like by the end it was approaching more balanced place, and the idea of the silent [h] was helpful. Still, if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

·       132435421 “Why not” with exaggerated diphthongs. I remembered this exercise from a teacher a while ago and how they had me start with a puffy [wh]. I realized it was for the same purpose as the [ha] exercise; to get the voice and air in a ready place.

·       123454321 on [ʒ] making sure the tongue was against my hard pallet and the pitch changes were happening on air. Also noticed a tendency here to involve my tongue in stabilizing my larynx. When I focused on feeling one line of air with the throat still released it helped a lot.

·       8531 [fa] and crescendo as you go down. I focused on keeping the sound feeling like it was outside of my body, this helped it stay energized and kept the sensations from sitting in my throat. It also helped the breath flow without me having to consciously control it.

·       Repertoire

·       Laurie’s Song: paid attention to my onsets and offsets in the first section. Started them with a silent [h] and took a little extra time to feel if my throat released between phrases.

o   Is there a better way to practice this?

·       La Spectre de la Rose : focused on a tricky melody in one section by hearing the phrase in different chunks, and guessing the next note before I played it.

Comments