First Lessons…

Posted 3 years, 1 month ago at 10:33 am. 0 comments

Well, I have a new student beginning lessons today.  What I generally do in the first lesson is talk about my three “rules” that I have in the studio.

1) You have permission to sing.  This means that even when we’re insecure as to exactly WHAT to sing, we still need to sing with our best vocal ability.  If not, then we’re sending messages to the voice that say “sing” and “don’t sing” at the same time.  Since the vocal chords are part of the automatic nervous system, what we THINK about making sound is more influential than trying to MAKE the voice sound the way we want it to.

2) If it hurts, STOP!  This should be self-explanatory, but all too often we get ourselves into trouble by thinking that we HAVE to sing, we can’t take a break.  For most students of singing, it IS okay to give our voice a rest.  For professionals, we need to have practiced “into the voice” all the best habits possible so that when it doesn’t work at optimum (allergies, exhaustion, whatever reason), the voice will still respond in a healthy manner.

3) Ask questions.  My job as a teacher is to give my students a “toolbox” of things to try when they run into difficulties in the practice room.  They see me once or twice a week.  Hopefully, they’re singing a LOT more than that (we are training muscles, after all).  So, they will run into problems.  What I try to do is get them aware of what is happening during lessons, how to determine when things could work better & then things to try to best affect the sound.  At the end of each lesson, I try to give my students several things to focus on during the week (keep the [a] vowel in place, mentally do XX with the breath, be aware of XX habit).  If the student doesn’t ask questions, they won’t be able to make the changes necessary on their own (and thereby reinforce the “good” habits for those times the voice isn’t in the best of health).

I introduce these three items (a LOT to think about!) and then we talk a bit about the physiology of breath & WHY & HOW we breathe.  More on that in another post.

What do you think?  Any teachers out there who have other studio “rules” that would be good to add?  I like to try to keep it minimal & have found this works for me, but I’d love to hear what anyone else thinks.  Let me know!

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