The vocal workshop focused on exploring vocal techniques for musical theatre repertoire. Participants warmed up their voices with scales and exercises. They discussed proper posture and breathing techniques, including keeping shoulders relaxed and filling the lungs fully before breathing out. The group also learned about engaging the hard and soft palates for reaching higher notes, such as lifting the soft palate when yawning without sound. Individual coaching helped one participant push a high note by thinking about engaging specific muscles.
1. Vocal workshop
Focus: To practically explore and show an understanding of how the voice can be used when preparing to sing a piece of musical theatre
repertoire.
Warmup: After, we discussed vocal warm up. Mrs Guy said if you have been talking all day then it is not necessary to do a vocal warm up, but if
you are singing early in the morning it is can help you voice. We did a vocal warm up using scales to vowel sounds along with E and ME, then we
did ARH. At first, I found this weird because I have never warmed my voice up properly, however as the session went on I felt a difference in my
voice because I had warmed it up. This then meant I could reach higher on my vocal range.
Posture & breathing: In the workshop, Mrs Guy started discussing our posture and breathing. Our posture should be, feet shoulder width apart,
our arms and hands relaxed and head held slightly high. Mrs Guys said that when singing you need to fill up your lungs, not take short breaths to
refill. When breathing I have to think breathing out to the side of the ribs not up and down. Keep shoulders down and relaxed when breathing in.
Hard & soft palette: We then discussed the hard and soft palate. The hard palate is the front of the mouth behind the teeth. The soft palate is
the back of the mouth, and if you lift this you can reach higher notes. To lift the palate, you have to think about how it feels when you yawn with
your mouth closed. After, we sang bring it on (our showcase song) to Mrs Guy (our singing
coach) and she said she would like to work with us individual because she will be able to
concentrate on the specifics of each individual. This is when we worked individual and she told
me to think about pushing the high note on the word “middle”. This helped me achieve a
slightly higher note but it was not an easy note for me to achieve.
In this image, I am taking part in the warm up Mrs Guys has set us. I found the warm up
challenging because it wasn’t something I was us to doing. My peers told me to just be
confident in what I was doing.
Strengths: In my opinion, my strength was listening to what Mrs Guy told us and have an
attempt at exploring it. I also found that this session helped me achieve my areas of
improvement on my skills audit. This is good because I have never had a singing before. This will help me in the industry because it will allow me
to learn things that a vocal coach will tell me quickly.
2. Weakness: However, my weakness was understanding what Mrs Guy was asking, and then getting it correct the first time, but I have learnt from
this that I need to expand my vocal technique terminology. To do this I will work on what I know and lot at videos on YouTube and work with my
peers and teacher to develop my knowledge.
