This week was a little rough for practicing, but a lot of my discoveries and struggles unfolded through out the week so it made more sense to do a journal entry that reflected all of this. I started the week off in a really energized, healthy place vocally. Starting Tuesday though I experienced a lot of tension at the very back of my tongue. It really came out in Laurie's Song, which was frustrating because I am singing it in the aria competition and didn't have these issues a couple weeks ago. I tried to use tongue releasers to get my tongue root to release, and while it helped with the discomfort in my tongue, it also made it harder to find full fold closure around A4 and the unsteadiness in that area from last semester came back for a few days. Wednesday felt much the same as Tuesday and my voice and my voice felt pretty tight. I was able to find some healthier sounds Wednesday but it still did not feel as great as it was. Thursday I finally was able to get my voice back to a better place, and my lessons Friday was even better. To get to that point, I made a lot of discoveries.
Things I learned:
- If I focus on feelings I experience away from my vocal tract, it helps me relieve some of my tendency to push. For example, if I focus on feeling the sound in my forehead, I naturally let go of the muscles in my neck.
- When it's where I want it, I feel it go both up and forward and up and back from the top of my mouth.
- Sometimes I get so focused on singing as high as I did yesterday, that I create tension trying to push up there, instead of just focusing on everything I sing feeling good.
- It's so important for me to find joy in what I'm singing and how it feels. When I seek to enjoy singing it makes it feel so much better,
- When my breath is grounded and even, it feels like body is stretching up and down.
- [a] is a very tricky vowel for me-- especially in the A4 range. In my lesson on Friday we found that I was trying to posture it and it was setting my tongue super far back, however when I tried to make the vowel more forward it became spread. In my lesson and experimenting practice I found a couple of things that helped with this specific problem:
- thinking just a little bit of [ae] in the sound helped get my pallet up (too much [ae] makes it very spread)
- using a [j] from an a resonant [i] position to help me find the [a] was successful
- feeling it in the front of my face was also helpful
- It was easier to find a good [a] position in the upper part of my range, so that I could bring that down
- speaking words with [a] vowel with a cork between my back teeth to help keep things tall.
- I also learned this week that I quickly lose focus in my practicing if I don't have a goal, deadline and/or plan ahead of time, so I started this next week by setting a plan for the month about learning and memorization deadlines for new rep.
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