From a voice teacher diary…
Today arrived to me a new student.
At the beginning of the lesson he sang his song to me, he has a beautiful voice! but the energy in his body is very strong and he still doesn’t know how to balance it, so his singing sounded wired in a way, full of energy, but with no sense and doesn’t give much comfort to the ear.
In order to support him with that I started with an exercise in the low register producing short notes on ‘O’, ‘O’ gives us an oval shape as long as we don’t produce the ‘O’ in the mouth.
He almost did, but when I reminded him to take a deep low breath the breath itself helped him to get out of the mouth. He made the exercise in a satisfying manner and then I told him to do the same on ‘A’.
This was another world the ‘A’ and the ‘O’ were so far away from each other,
I explained that he should create the ‘A’ very close to the ‘O’ because when we sing we want our vowels to be as close as possible to each other the larynx should not change dramatically as we move from vowel to vowel. ‘O’ gives a nice position to the ‘A’.
He understood that and made the exercise correctly. I think because he was taught to sing in the mask everything goes too high and to the mouth, therefore I started with the vowel ‘O’ to teach him a sense of relaxation.
The voice should reach the mask but it should not be pushed to the mask, that causes problems and makes the sound pretty ugly, better makes the system work in balance, then the energy reaches the mask in a balanced manner and the voice gets the beauty of resonating in the mask.
I noticed that on the middle notes C sharp and D which are very easy to produce are notes he has a passage, switch of registers. he can easily produce those notes on one hand, on the other hand, he took them not In a proper manner and when he goes up it is influencing the quality of the higher notes,
So we worked on that, he understands and applies fast.
Then I checked again his singing and the influence of those exercises on the voice was tremendous. His singing at once sounded beautiful, connected and balanced, the over stress, over energy in his voice disappeared.
I kept on with Ma , ma made it challenging because he has to move his gaw, and he made it with too much effort, so I told him to invent ‘Ma’ exercises for me, every time a different melody exercise and because he had to be my teacher now, suddenly his production of the ’ma’ was much better- only because I told him to be my teacher he lost many of his mistakes, only because he had to be the boss, the instructor, the one with the responsibility. That was funny but it worked. He felt how it feels when the jaw moves smoothly and what ease it gives to the singing. it’s very important to know where is the joint of the jaw.
Then I went back to practice on short notes but on a terza and not only one note
He practiced it very well, I felt he understood, he sang again and his singing was improving even more – just by these few exercises, which made very good to the coordination of his vocalization.
Then I did the same thing but on legato, that was challenging, but he catches fast and practiced well, then he sang again and I noticed that short production of sound makes a much better influence on his voice for now. so no legato in the first lesson it’s not that efficient for now.
Then we worked on another part of the song where he has to sing high – again his voice was completely out of balance, but only one exercise which I repeated twice, helped him a lot to sing much better.
He sang it again, the difference was huge, after the practice, the same place sounded relaxed and beautiful to the ear, with balanced energy.
I told him the b flat b and c are not in a good state and its indication that he sings too much and not right, that he has not to exaggerate with singing those notes and higher till he fixes this issue by correct exercises, well, actually only second and third meeting will give me better clue because he said he was sick, it could also be the reason, though I would guess It’s not the reason, I think it׳s because he sings high in many of his songs and the lack of technique makes him strain his voice.
He had a beautiful lesson and I was happy to receive a student who is alert, catches fast, musical and has a beautiful voice, it will be great to go through his stuff and make it sound better.
He told me that he used to sing awful. I told him not to put too much attention on how he used to sing. pay attention to the actions he takes now and to the future, he catches so quickly and so efficiently, he won’t need much time to sound much better then what he sounds at the moment, as long as he continues and apply new habits in his body I believe the change of vocalizing will happen fast.
