Thursday 13th September
Unit 30 Singing Skills for Actors and Dancers

Today in my lesson to start with we all were told how the next term is going to run, splitting the class into 2 and working on either singing or production. I am in group B and will be working on singing skills for the next three weeks, production arts for the three following weeks after and then a singing workshop with group A. In the first hour group B worked with Lena. To begin with we gave a quick background of our personal previous performances. This enabled Lena to have a rough understanding of our experience and level of singing. We then went through unit 30 and we discussed each aspect of the unit so we all understood the criteria and process.

Be keen to develop and improve your vocal abilities in 3 specific ways:
*how well you sing in tune and reach the high and low notes
*understand what your tone is and how to improve it
*how to project the voice and how to control and use the breath
Need to develop our musical memory for learning song melodies without having to read the music.

Understanding the rehearsal process of the song your going to sing

Learning the music and words and how to characterise it

And finally the last stage is the performance of three songs, solo and ensemble

We also spoke about tones. Tone is the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound). We spoke about 2 different shows to enable us to compare different tones. The first show is Annie, in Annie the tone is very strong and high, a high amount of projection is used where as in the show Les Miserables the tone is very soft and delicate.

For the practical side of this lesson we did sang 'vee-ay-ah-oo' and went up semi tones. This was good for warming and using our voices. It also enabled Lena to roughly be able to tell how our range is. This then led onto work about our diaphragm. Lena taught us how to breathe in using our diaphragm. We had to stand with our shoulders down, head up, and we then breathed in without raising our shoulders, held the breathe for 4 counts and then slowly released the air through the 'o' shape created by our lips. This image shows inhaling and exhaling of the diaphragm. The expanding of the rib cage.

I found this lesson very beneficial for creating a stronger understanding of the diaphragm. It also gave me slightly more confidence in singing.