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In this article I will give a general outline of what I do in my lessons, obviously each lesson and pupil is different, but these are the guidelines I try to stick to!
Phase one: the physical warmup
Regardless of what you have done prior to the lesson, I will start off with stretches, first the legs, then pelvis, spine and so on up the body, even a little bit of tension in your back or chest can cause problems with your vocal production, stretches allow most of those kinks to be ironed out. We then move onto the breathing, one of the most important aspects of singing. A regular metaphor I use is a golf swing; you won't hit the ball correctly unless your club swing is perfect, its the same with the voice. We would then start to phonate, make some general simple noises (bwah, rrr, vvv etc.) until I felt the voice was ready for work. This should take 15 minutes. In a 90 minute lesson I take longer on this, as the voice will be working that little bit more.
Phase two: the vocal warmup
I call this phase a warmup but actually the voice will be working hard, sorting out issues which can be easily heard when singing a scale. Its very easy to hide behind words in music; scales there is nowhere to hide! I can get a real sense of what your voice is doing by listening. We will gradually move up your range (and slightly beyond) until we have covered the whole voice using various different scales and exercises. this should also take 15 minutes.
Phase three: the pieces
After we have learned so much from the vocal warmup, it is good to put the work into practice, so the singer can really understand why we did all that work! A new piece would first be sung with one vowel (say 'ah') so the voice can simply focus on creating the notes and not worrying about words or language. We then move onto the vowels in the piece, cutting out the consonants until we are ready to use them. Then sing through the piece with all words, dynamics and passion! We would then discuss the language issues, and any problem areas. This phase will take 30 minutes.
And thats what I do! Invariably I never stick to it completely, as some people have more issues with certain areas; I know that when I started with my current teacher we didn't singing any pieces for about a month! He wanted to sort my technique out thoroughly, and I don't blame him for this. In fact, sometimes that is the best and quickest way to sort the voice out. But, I don't want my pupils to not have fun, so we will cover pieces during lessons. I hope that helps give you an insight into my lessons, and feel free to call or email me with any questions you may have.
AH
