Private singing lesson

Today, following up my decision to have a piano acompaniment to I dreamed a dream, kim and I found some time after the tech rehearsals were over to rehearse my act and ensure I was comfortable with all of the notes.

The part in the song I needed to work on was from the line 'But the tigers come at night' until the end. Over the course of our rehearsal, kim taught me ways in which I can reach some of the higher notes in the song such as breathing properly from my diaphragm and singing with less breathe in my high range head voice notes.

The way in which Kim showed me, that I found most helpful, to sing properly was to hold my diaphragm and ensure I could feel it detracting and tensing up whilst singing high and long notes. This helped me concerntrate on how I was breathing and ensured I didn't use my throat the sing and breathe with. If the sound comes from the diaphragm, this is correct and is indeed the right way to sing professionally in both your head voice and chest voice.

There were two notes I struggled to reach during the song therefore, Kim picked up on this and we went back to them to sort them out. For this, Kim played scales on the piano and I sung the sound 'ah' and 'e' to them. I found that this helped me to recognise where my voice break lays and helped me build a strong and fluent transition between the two of them. When singing the high octave scales, I could hear and feel my chest voice was struggling therefore, Kim demonstrated how to push my notes out. She told me to imagine there was a piece of string attatched to my mouth that carried on all the way across the room. I was to imagine I was pushing the notes I was singing down the line of string. This was supposed to aid me in reaching higher notes as I have a bad habbit of moving my head in hope of reaching them. i felt this technique really helped me reach the notes expected of me and I will think about the string method when singing tomorrow in the show.

The final piece of advice Kim gace me was how to breath in to a note. This means how much breathe to take before certain notes and how much breathe to release, expecially on one particular section of I dreamed a dream that we focused on. This advice came in to play on the line 'and they turn your dreams to shame'. The word shame is held for over eight counts and passes through five seperate notes, going up their octave. Before my lesson with Kim, I was unable to complete this word wich end the verse as I didn't quite know when to breathe. I am to breathe just before the line and I found that Kim really helped me to realise it needs to be a very fast deep breathe. Also, I am going to use a technique in the performance tomorrow which involves me not letting out too much of my saved breathe and doing this at a steady rate.

Overall, my time with Kim today has been very benifical for me as I have learnt some vital techniques focusing on breathing and how to reach the top notes of I dreamed a dream. I will think about these tomorrow when performing the song to ensure I have the best chance of singing the song to my full potential.