Meditation, Time Management, and Autonomy.

The following is part of a series of journal entries of my experiences and reflections using LearningMethods in my private voice teaching. The two students followed are “Emilie” age 14 and “Courtney” age 13. Both students began lessons with me September 18th 2018, and the journal entries continue until December 4th 2018. All lessons were audio-recorded for the purpose of these reflective journals.

Informal Meditation

This week I had both students begin with a sort of informal meditation.

Students were guided to close their eyes and listen to the sounds in the space.

Their attention was then directed inwards as a way to register their current state of being.

Students had the option to share their experience/state of being with me should they choose.

Neither students chose to share with me any feelings on that experience, but it was only the first time I had them do it and they are both very young, so it might take a few times before they notice anything.

I believe taking the time to register one’s current state-of-being will help to inform both educator and student how our state-of-being may influence how one responds to lessons that day. It is also a healthy reminder to the teacher that a student may enter lessons in any sort of state-of-being and we must welcome them as they are in that moment.

Emilie, lesson 3.

Today Emilie and I continued to explore songs in order to decide on an audition piece for an upcoming audition. Her audition is for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and the audition piece is required to be a Disney song.

Although I have been at the studio for three weeks, I find I am struggling to navigate a 30-minute lesson. The time it takes for students to arrive and settle in the space and the time it takes to gather our things at the end takes at least five minutes, and if I am spending time googling songs to print out so that I can accompany the student, a 30-minute lesson easily becomes 20. Because LearningMethods often involves a lot of conversation (talking about meaning of the repertoire, the system, attention, etc.)

I struggle to decide whether we dig into discussing things such as misconceptions, or we only lightly cover it so that we have time to do more actual singing.

I am especially struggling with this with Emilie because she shares a lot of opinions and beliefs about her voice and what is considered “good” singing. I want to help her explore her current beliefs, consider the reality of her expectations, and examine how these misconceptions may be creating blocks.

Courtney, lesson 4.

We started a new song and immediately Courtney informed me that this song has low notes that she “can’t hit”. We sang it through a couple times and whenever I asked her for her opinion, she solely addressed her concern with the low notes in the piece. Before addressing the issues with the lower notes, I also had her think of some aspects of her singing that she thought went well, to which she commented on her tone calling it “pretty good.”

I felt Courtney was not recognizing the success and skill she was demonstrating in many aspects and so I decided to share my opinion with her (something I try not to do often). I told her how I felt this song beautifully suited her voice, at which point her face lit up with a smile and she even slightly sat up in her chair a bit.

I want Courtney to recognize her successes within herself without my or anyone’s comments, however when communicated with a clear moment of successful criteria, hearing positive feedback from your teacher helps give constructive affirmation. Sometimes trying to create a sense of autonomy can be a challenging balance.

In terms of her low notes, I asked Courtney what her attention was on when singing those notes, “I try to keep them up so that they have the same tone as my higher notes.” She said. I suggested that we try the opposite approach and try going down low when we get to those notes and see what happens. (I had no idea what was going to happen, but it was clear that her current approach was not best serving her, so I figured let’s see what happens when we try the opposite approach)! When she went to hit the lower notes, I heard a stronger tone, but I wanted to see if she recognized that herself, so I asked if she heard or felt a difference. Courtney said she thought it sounded louder. To test this theory, I had her go back to the way she was doing it before and listen/feel for any differences which confirmed her suspicion that her old way was quieter. After playing around with differences, I then told her that the way she was doing it before had a breathier tone to it and when she truly went for the low notes it had a fuller sound which is what she heard by “louder”. Here, exploring contrast seemed to really help Courtney recognize a notable difference in her singing.

- October 2nd 2018