Lena- Singing Skills- 20th September 2012

 Today we went over diaphragmatic breathing, warm up routines, the geography of a keyboard piano and musical memory.

 To start with we did some warm up routines. These warm up routines were important as it put our bodies in the right position to start singing. There were two main focuses- posture and head/body. We did several 'posture warm ups' which included walking on the spot. Another one was to walk round feeling very small and then very proud to show us that the right posture to start singing with is upright and confident looking. Another routine which we went through was inspired by 'Elvis Prestley'. This involved doing pelvic thrusting. All of these techniques made us drop our shoulders and push our breast bones out. This was important as it gave us the perfect posture to sing as it opens up our lungs. The head and face excercises included rubbing our cheekbones and dropping our jaw to make ourselves yawn. This may sound silly but its very effective as it opens our throat to capacity which means more sound can come out. For head and face we also did neck and throat excercises which involved turning our heads side to side and up and down to release tension. We had to make sure that we did this slowly to ensure that we wouldn't hurt our necks or pull any muscles.

 We then went over the importance of diaphragmatic breathing and used this in our musical memory activity which we did after. Lena told us to make sure that we keep practicing it. Eventually, even if I am struggling with diaphragmatic breathing, it will pay off and i will be able to do it effectively and properly.

 We also focused on our musical memory. We did several different excercises all involving the sounds 'Vee Arr Oo'. For example, we had to hum these words to several different melodies. We hummed to rising and falling arpeggios (chord notes) on rising semi tones. Although i couldn't reach the high notes as Lena played in higher keys, I tried to hit them as one day I hope I'll be able to reach them!

 We also learnt where to find C,F and G on the piano. C is located left of the 2 black notes. F is located on the left of 3 black notes and G is right next to F on the right! If you were to start right at the end of the left side of a piano, each 'white' key goes up in the alphabet as it goes to the right. It goes A, then B, then C, then D, then E, then F, then G and then back to A again and so on.

 All in all, a very interesting and enjoyable lesson!