Amelia Kearl- Voice lesson- Oct 14

 This week at voice lessons, we talked some more about posture and she had me do an exercise that I thought was very interesting. While I sang a phrase she had me balance a book on my head. Apparently I sometimes tip my head up or down when producing low or high notes. So the book forced me to stay in good alignment the whole time and made me very conscious of when I had tendencies to do that. In the practice room this week I tried this again and it was interesting how aware of my head position and alignment it made me. I think this is something I will use for a moment now and then to realign with or sing phrases on, but if I don't think it would be good to do for longer than that. I tried it on a longer chunk of my song and I think some tension started to creep in. 

We also talked at my voice lesson about a musical theater placement for my song "All That Matters". I have a really hard time creating a resonant and full sound in my lower range and the only way I could do it was by thinking of opera singers and placing it similarly. Up till now I've avoided musical theater because I really only know how to sing classical, but chose "All that Matters " because I decided I needed to learn. In my lesson I really struggled finding a sound that wasn't classical. Venicia would give me a thumbs up if I was in musical theater and thumbs down if I went classical. She had me try doing a whiny voice and a crying voice and then sing and that helped a bit. This week in my practicing of this song, I actually applied what I saw in Master class a couple of weeks ago. Cindy Dewey showed Kat the cartoon voice using the phrase, "I ate applesauce for breakfast". I said that a couple of times and then would say my lines from the sound in the same place. I would try to match the pitch that I had to sing on with the words I was saying. Then all the sudden I started singing the words still using that placement. It was night and day. My sound was much clearer and I had no problem finding the musical theater placement. I'm definitely going to remember this exercise and keep using it!