Hello again!
Proud to say I completed Level 2 of certification training in Somatic Voicework the LoVetri Method yesterday! I also had a wonderful 1-on-1 lesson with Dr. Barbara Streets from the University of Central Oklahoma. Knowing of their wonderful Musical Theatre and Voice programs I sought her out early to make sure I got to work with her and I'm so glad I did. Not only was it great for my voice but she made me basically teach myself, choosing which exercise to use next and where to go from a SVW standpoint.
Level 2 was all about putting the theory from Level 1 into practice. We had break out sessions where we taught each other in pairs, with help from a faculty member. We had to warm each other up, and then based on what each singer wanted to work on and what we observed in the warm up decide where to go from there. Balance is the name of the game. The methods I've been teaching and using personally which have gotten me a lot of success thus far get to the same place that SVW does, but from a different road. I've worked from a place of strength. If an exercise if tough, you make it as easy as you can, but essentially you keep practicing it until you become stronger and it gets easier. Like I said before, this has worked for me. I learned to belt using this method. I can mix an F5 using this method. SVW takes the opposite approach. If something is tough you back off, you start small and incrementally add range or intensity or whatever until it gets easier, then repeat. Imagine you'd like to lift a 50lb weight. Now you could try, and keep trying, and possibly hurt your back in the process while building strength to lift it or you could start with a 5lb weight..then 10lb..then 15lb..you get the idea. Once your registers are balanced and the body is supported and relaxed correctly your possibilities are endless. As I discovered when in small group work I mixed a high C. And it was easy. Seriously.
In my lesson I was able to dive deeper into my voice. Turns out all those years I spent thinking I was singing too legit or in my head voice I wasn't. I was in a mix. Then I learned to belt using only strengthening exercises for another few years. And now I have a voice that is predominately chest register with very little head. That's not to say I can't sing soprano songs, I can, but it means that the reason I struggle with going from pure chest to mix and through my second passaggio has very little to do with my chest voice and everything to do with my underdeveloped head voice. They have to balance. Balance. Balance. Balance.
It seems like a simple, clear statement except you would not believe the issues singers (and voice teachers) get into getting there. Classical teachers teach a mix because it creates resonance and many MT teachers have classical training so they don't teach belting or they're confused about what belting is. So Level 2 was about doing it. Bring the chest up. Bring the head down. Meet them in the middle.
We had a great lecture from Dr. Wendy LeBorgne CCC-SLP who in addition to working with 2 private practices is the Singing Voice Specialist at the Cincinnati Conservatory and was also interviewed in Joan Melton's book that brought me here "Singing in Musical Theatre." (As a VERY COOL side note Joan is also here teaching one of the postcertificate courses.) #voicegeek Dr. LeBorgne lectured on Acoustics which for a BFA MT person like me was a lot of new material. Formants..and hertz..and lots of other things I am going to have to research more to feel like I have a handle on them. She's here also to teach a postcertificate course on Vocal Pathology..a course I would very much like to take in the future. Watching Jeannie work with damaged voices has really lit a fire in me to become a Voice Specialist myself and as there's no set path to get there it looks like there's a lot of reading and question asking in my future. Which is fine with me.
We began Level 3 today, but I'll save that for another blog. To wrap up my ramblings, I feel like I have been given such a gift and such amazing new tools to add to my tool box. As I make my schedule for next week I am so excited to get back to working with my students. As different people here get up to work with Jeannie I can't help but notice similarities in each voice to the voices that I work with and I feel like I will be that much better at helping all the students I work with truly find the sound that is uniquely their's. And that's pretty fantastic.
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