Objectives for week 1:
Congratulate yourself on attending the first four sessions and extending your understanding and experience. Reflect on the first four weeks on flexibility and release and see what you can remember about it off the top of your head. If you sang 3+ times per week outside of the session together, you should be seeing some changes. If you didn’t get around to it, make a point of deciding when you will do these and schedule it. 15 mins is enough! And you can do it in 5 min chunks.
- Understand that the ability to use licks, runs, trills comes from building coordination at a slow tempo first between specific note distances. Think of it like practicing a tennis serve. You can refine the ease and fluidity over the long term, but your brain needs the opportunity to form the right connections first. The video below recaps this principle.
- Start working on the single note, triplet and minor pentatonic sequence. Make sure you use the slide audio first to do Ng, lip rolls, and at least one open mouth slide before moving on the style material.
- Record yourself at least once singing with the training audios, save it with the date.
- Record at least one song from your list. Your first priority is to make sure there are at least three different dynamic settings during the song. Note on the lyrics where you plan to make these dynamic changes and then record yourself and see if you can hear them when you listen back. It is very common that we think we are making a very clear distinction between different dynamic levels, but it’s not very obvious when you hear it back. Make sure you exaggerate it enough for it to be noticeable on the recording. Loud and soft is an obvious dynamic, but you can also think about different emotional dynamics as the progresses from the start to the end. Try singing each couplet 3-4 times embodying sadness, excitement, anger, joy, contentment to cultivate the ability to connect with emotion in your interpretations and performances.
- You can also experiment with adding extra embellishment using a triplet or note jump, or if it is very early in the process of building these up, listen through the original and see if you can identify any of these ornaments in the original.
You only need fifteen minutes to do this – but if you do it 5-6 times a week, you will see a very noticeable change in the ease with which you can make these co-ordinations by the end of the four week focus on style.
Use the audios on the right, and you can record yourself directly into this soundtrap project that has the audios one after the other.
