Six Progress [30/09/22]

General Progress:

In my opinion I feel like I have improved quite a bit in singing. The warmups have enabled me to increase my vocal range and its made it so I have haven't become injured during the rehearsals. We did a lot of warmups, and it wasn't just facial warmups. It was vocal, range, body, shoulders and breathing. We relaxed our body so it was easier for us to produce nicer sounds. We have been taking deep breaths in and out. Our teacher made us do this so we that we can reserve our breath and practise when to breathe in and breathe out. This helps me because I can see when I need to reserve some breath for dancing and singing and when to take a break.

Six Progress:

During six it is still a bit of a struggle to go and do the low harmonies during the song [Ex-Wives]. Its such a fast and technical piece that when I am out of breath or are low on breath I cannot place my voice deep enough to get that low harmony. So I tend to jump out of tone between middle and lower harmonies.  In the other songs I feel like I am in the right place and placed in the correct tone. Every day I practise the songs at home I feel like my range is increasing and I feel like my voice is becoming more powerful and meaningful. I also feel like my breathing is becoming easier.

Progress, singing, warmups and SIX

 What have I learnt about warmups?

Warmups are very important. It is mandatory that you do it before singing as damage and singing notes may not come out correctly. For me I have realised that not doing warmups can cause my voice to crack, especially when trying to hit those high notes and then to low notes. 

Some of the warmups we do are physically without our mouth, breathing and just relaxing our muscles in our face. We massage our facial cheeks and the bottom of mouth near the chin. We stretch our soldier and then make them relaxed. This helps to keep good posture when singing, We take deep breaths in and deep breaths out, this is too expand our lungs and also to make sure that when we are singing and dancing during the main hits of SIX, we know when to take a breath in so that we don't lose our breath. We also work on pronunciation and tone during our warmups. We start singing "Mee, mayyy, maaa, mor, moo". I feel like this is good and helpful because as we are doing this we are going up in the scales, but as well we are focusing on making the words as long possible

Do you feel like you have made progress?

So far, I don't feel like I have made progress in singing. I feel like ever since my voice has broken in highschool I can't sing properly anymore. I used to be able to sing extremely high pitched without having any voice cracks and was able to sing the top notes of Defying Gravity during my solo in Glee back in highschool. But ever since my voice has cracked I struggle to find the correct place to put my voice.

How are you finding the SIX songs?

I do like the SIX songs a lot, they are fun to sing as an ensemble as everyone has a part and I have different melodic parts with people, and its just nice to be a part of that with everyone. Learning the SIX songs is no problem, its like learning a script but learning songs is more fun because when your at home you can just sing when learning the lyrics.

Areas of development?

I want to know how to sing better. Currently I feel like im letting parts of the ensemble down because my voice keeps going up and down and I can't decide where to put my voice. Also to know where to put my voice, I don't feel like I am going to learn this while practising for SIX, I think its something I will have to research and look up on youtube about.