Yesterday we started the lesson by going through the assessment chords, I personally feel as if im slowly getting much better at these. However Gavin gave me some feedback to make them much stronger, he told me to breath on the shape of the vowel. For example the first vowel is ‘e’ therefore before the exercise begins I need to take a deep breath in but with my mouth been in a shape of an ‘e’ sound. Gavin also told me not to use to much breath at once as I need to be able to get through the whole phrase. Therefore I need to slowly let the breath come out slowly and not all at once, to do this successfully I need to make each vowel sound smooth as it wont require as much breath. In this lesson Gavin and I also agreed on an order for my songs which i will be using for my assessment, below is the order that we agreed on:
1.I dont know how to love him
2. What it means to be a friend
3.Maybe I like it this way
We have decided this order is best as both ‘I dont know how to love him’ and ‘maybe I like it this way’ are emotional songs therefore from having ‘what it means to be a friend’ in the middle it will give split the two emotional songs up which will therefore make it much more exciting for the audience and it will also enabled me to show an immediate change in character.
13- What it means to be a friend.
I sang through this piece and I feel much more confident with it compared to how I did before half term. I still need to work on my overall confidence with the higher section and I also need to find the correct placement when singing the phrase ‘there’. Gavin said that the sound im creating is in my head voice but he said that the performance would be much stronger if the sound I created was more nasally. To do this he said I should sing a few phrases of the song using an ‘nya’ sound, from doing this I will find the correct placement which should then result in it been easier for me to make the phrase ‘there’ more stronger, nasally and not in my head voice. Also Gavin has advised me to have attitude when I perform this song, he believes it will make the piece much easier to follow from an audiences perspective and he also thinks it will show much more characterisation and I agree.
I do like this song however im finding it difficult to connect with the song as it is performed by a 13 year old girl, which I have discussed in a previous post. Gavin has asked me to try find connections to the text ( Paraphrase myself) when I have done this hopefully the overall performance will improve significantly.
Below is an image of where the nasally sound comes from and where the correct placement is:
The correct placement to create a nasally sound would be in the nasal cavity but I need to remember to also force sound into my chest cavity as I dont want the overall sound to be too nasally. I will know when I have the correct placement as I should be able to feel a slight vibration in my nasal cavity.
One weakness I have identified with this song and others is that I aren’t immediately confident with ‘Belty’ sections, it frustrates me as i know that i am more than capable of achieving. Gavin and I spoke about this in my lesson, I understand that the confidence will come in time.
ardenrjones 