Observation #4

For my final observation I observed Dr. Hepworth giving Jill Stara a lesson.  Jill is in her Junior year and is working for a field endorsement in K-12 music education.  She is a very talent musician on trumpet, piano, and voice.  Her voice is very unique and has an over active mouth, so instead of focusing on just opening her mouth she must focus on not opening it too far and shaping it correctly.  She also has great resonance which is great for projecting, although it also hinders her.  She starts to be shy about how loud to allow her voice to get, and then she tries to control her voice.
The lesson was conveniently  right after choir rehearsal and Jill was already warmed-up.  They started right in on solos to practice for NATS competition Friday.  She had her pieces memorized perfectly and a lot of the help she needed was with nit-picky little things.  Jill does have great propioception, I could tell because while she was singing she would place her hands on the side of her face.  You could also see her thinking while she was singing.
She sang while watching herself in the mirror which seemed to help this also.  "Mush mouth" was used a lot to explain what Jill need to think of.  This helped her not open it too much and keep the vowels from becoming way too bright.  Another thing was hitting a bulls-eye on the beginning of words, or flicking the the words, which helped the consonants come out.
I think Jill will do great at NATS she has such a powerful voice.  It was very interesting to observe a lesson with her unique voice.  It really showed how you have to teach specific to the student's needs, and how they are not all the same.