SCIENCE
Foundation for Singing
Anatomy and Physiology for Singing
This session will guide you through understanding anatomy and physiology as the foundation of technique across genres and how this knowledge serves to avoid faulty motor practice when singing. The four subsystems of voice and speech; Respiration, Phonation, Resonance, and Articulation will be outlined as related to singing function.
Systematic Voice Teaching
The voice teacher is both practitioner and diagnostician. As our understanding of voice function continues to develop, our ability to assess vocal faults should become more specific to the Respiratory, Phonatory, Articulator, and Resonator Systems. Systematic Voice Teaching is designed as a diagnostic tool for you to learn to quickly isolate the potential singing system at fault [symptom,] determine the issue [cause,] and provide tools for fast and lasting, efficient results.
Breathing for Singing, One way? No way!
Breathing for singing is often a complex and confusing function. This session will have a deep focus on the respiratory anatomy and physiology and the ever-changing demands of our breathing patterns when singing and/or influenced by emotional stimuli. Discover fact from the fiction, learn to recognize the potential for individual variance, and acknowledge the various genre requirements assisting effecting breathing technique.
BODY
Getting in Touch with the Body
Posture, a Discovery of Alignment
Posture is often one of the most discussed concepts in the voice studio. What is good posture? For decades teachers have been prescribing “ideal” alignment to their students without taking the time to stretch, activate, and cultivate a posture that allows for access to respiratory muscles, and release of accessory muscles. Through a sequence of movements bringing the student from the floor to standing, you will learn how to help your students find a posture that allows for flexibility, freedom, and vocal access.
The Sounding Body
Singers are generally focused on creating sound in what I refer to as the tension triangle, shoulders to nose. This course is designed to help you become organic with your body and to experience broad resonances throughout your body. This work, influenced by prominent Voice and Speech teachers Kristin Linklater, Catherine Fitzmaurice, and Arthur Lessac includes floorwork, stretching, and noise making to help you to connect your voice to your entire body.
Breathing Bootcamp
The Breathing Bootcamp is bodywork designed to access and bring awareness to the muscles of respiration and their relationship to the entire body. Through a sequence of stretches and breathing exercises you will become organic in your relationship to the spine and the muscles of respiration and their variances for different singing tasks and emotional stimuli.
PEDAGOGY
Voice Development and Technique
Securing Belt, Mix, and Legit
Today cis-female singers in musical theater are required to belt to a D5, mix to G5, and sing legit to a Bb5. This requires a sustainable technique and balanced voice cultivation in the studio. Through specific vocalizing, “calling,” registration awareness, vowel modification, emotional stimuli, and speech organization of the voice your students will learn to navigate standard and mixed belt as well standard and contemporary legit musical theater sounds with ease!
The Bari-Tenor
Contemporary musical theater has created vocal demands of cis-male singer to have access to over 2 octaves of range, often in the same song. This session is geared toward how to teach access through the top and bottom of the range without carrying unnecessary weight. Through a series of vocal exercises, calling, flow and resistance, and vowel modifications you will learn to cultivate the open and closed sounds of the male belt while also developing the legit musical theater voice.
Freeing the Larynx
Laryngeal flexibility is paramount to successfully navigating multiple genres, styles, melismatic passages and riffing. Through a series of accessory muscles stretching exercises, lite laryngeal massage, and non-traditional singing exercises your students will feel access to all of the colors and resonances their voices can make.
Freeing the Speech
Freeing the speech is an important task in all voice studios. The success is two-fold in that you are taking care of speech habits that tax the voice in daily speech interactions, as well as cultivating a healthy speech placement in Musical Theater singing. Working on the balance of flow and resistance with breath, resonance efficiency, laryngeal neutrality and flexibility, and articulator freedom your students will learn to positively reinforce their singing in their speech.
The Warm Up and Down
Singing is a full body activity and singers are athletes! Taking time to organize posture, access breathing muscles, and stretch the vocal mechanism and articulators not only enhances the productivity of a voice lessons, but ensure that your students have flexible, healthy voices for a lifetime. The Warm Up and Warm Down process introduces simple exercises your students can do anywhere and anytime to rebalance their voices after singing.
Developmental Repertoire
The Musical Theater canon is vast ranging from Golden Age to Belt to Rock/Pop. There are legitimately thousands of songs we can use to help our students grow and prepare for the industry. Developmental Repertoire takes a direct approach to using repertoire to assist in voice cultivation. You will learn how to assess repertoire considering text, emotion, tessitura, range, sustain, and rhythmic and melodic complexities. You will learn to cultivate repertoire lists that help with different technical challenges for your students.