Day 3: Freeing Vibrations and Soft Palette

I was on Facebook today and the image on the left was shared by my friend Rachel Williams. It was originally posted by New Jersey Theatre Alliance in relationship to Equal Pay Day (-which was yesterday April 4th). I found it very relevant to this project. While seven out of every ten stage managers are female, they are interacting primarily with male directors, set designers, lighting designers, and sound designers. I find this extremely accurate and it also inspires me to push these statistics. I love working on works by females and it makes me consider directing even more. It also raises some thought questions for me:

- Do I communicate differently with a male director or designer than I would a female director or designer? Why? In what ways?

-Are there times where I have been in a different position (i.e. as a props master) where I have felt lesser or not as valued because I was a female?

-What are some positives about being a female stage manager?

While I do not necessarily want to answer those here and now, they are things I want to consider. Stay tuned to this blog to see if I post share my answers later on in the next two weeks.

Time of Day: 6:00 PM

Location: My House

For day three of my voice exploration week, I started off with a spine alignment, some breathing and then a bit of touch of sound. I then went more into freeing vibrations and soft palate work.

Basic Summary of this Step: Freeing vibrations involves the lips, head, and body. This step is based on three ideas:

1. Vibrations are murdered by tension.

2. Vibrations thrive and multiply in an atmosphere of relaxation.

3. Vibrations love to have attention paid to them.

The soft palette work involves more specific work to limber up certain muscles. The palette is broken in into the:

-upper part of the mouth which is hard and bony

-the middle part which is hard and domed

-the back which is soft and fleshy

Without regular use of of the soft palette, it can tend to become lazy or stiff. The exercise listed below is aimed to restore and revitalize the connection that happens naturally on the involuntary level of the nervous system.

Exercise 1: Freeing the Lips

Brief description of exercise: This exercise starts off by sighing out vibrations and then shaking out sound from the belly. One continues this while moving their hand from belly to chest back to belly to face. One continues moving the hand on and off the lips to become aware of the vibrations. Then, one begins using the word I instead, followed by the word am, followed by the word me. This is to create a personal connection with one's voice. Then one releases a double bubble of sound and finding the closest pitch, let the sound happen on pitch. This is followed by a long sigh, still on pitch, but closing lips on the sound. Throughout this, one is to continue massaging their face and experiment with feeling vibrations on the lips. Step 2 involves working with the lip trill. Step 3 is blowing out through the lips on vibration on ascending and descending pitches. The final step in this exercise is repeating the first step and noticing any changes.

Reflection: Overall, I really enjoyed this exercise. I loved sighing out vibrations and shaking out sound. I think this week so far has reminded me that it is okay not to be perfect when warming up. While I always want to be strong vocally, warm ups and exercises like this are there to prepare you for what you are about to do. Shaking out the sound helps me relax as well because I let go of my anxieties and nerves and feel truly calm. It also helped to feel where the vibrations were coming and going. I am still struggling with the idea of pitch and it was definitely the hardest part of the exercise. I took a music class junior year and I still have a hard time with the idea. In class, it was a lot easier because I had a class with a musical theatre major, a music theatre major, and many others who had studied music in a greater capacity. This time I had nobody to follow along with so I did not know if I was doing it right. I was able to do the lip trill with a decent amount of success. Last semester, I had some difficulties with the lip trill when presenting my individual warm up because my lips were too dry. I did notice some change when I went back to do the first step again. I noticed more vibrations at the front of mouth. I also liked how the book mentioned to not force the sound out until you run out of breath. It should be natural and I appreciated this reminder.

Part 2 of Exercise 1: Freeing the Head

Brief description of exercise: This portion of the exercise starts with some work with humming. It asks one to play a mouth awareness game by working with the tongue by placing it in different places in the mouth. One thing that stood out to me that Linklater points out is that the world shoulder contains the word should. A great deal of shoulder tension is holding all the things we know we should do: our responsibilities, our goals, our ambitions. The next step is all about the neck- rolling it forward and all around-slowly, and picturing all seven vertebrates of the neck. This is followed by neck rolls with sound, in which the sound comes out when your head is down/ to the side and your mouth opens when your head/neck is back. After this one is to become aware of all parts of the head and experiment with pitches while doing these hums. Finally, one is to align the neck and repeat the hums with full awareness of all the vibrations from the head.

Reflection: This has been the most helpful exercise for me thus far. Last semester, I realized my neck is one of the places I hold the most tension. It helps to imagine each vertebrae of the neck because it makes me more aware of all parts on my neck. It also helps me to take my time rolling out my neck. Last semester when I was creating my voice warmup for class, I spent a good portion of my warmup doing neck rolls. I also did work sticking out my neck then repositioning it aligned at the top of my spine. Both of these exercises have helped me improved my posture tremendously. I think that I need to continue the working with my neck in order to keep up the improvement from last semester. I also loved the shoulder quote about our shoulders holding our responsibilities, our goals, our ambitions. I want this to start viewing this as a positive thing. Our goals and ambitions are something I should be proud of so I should hold my held up high and be confident in my dreams.

Part 3 of Exercise 1: Freeing the Body

Brief description of exercise: The final step of this exercise is freeing the body. The first portion involves standing with your spine long and head floating up and then sighing out a hum. While humming, one is to roll down the spine and then hang from the tailbone. After hanging upside down, sign out a new hum and notice the difference between the two positions.

Reflection: While this portion of the exercise was much shorter, it was extremely useful to play with sound while rolling up and down the spine. I noticed I was more open and my sound was more free when I was standing up after rolling down the spine.

Exercise 2: Soft Palette

Brief description of exercise: The first bit of the exercise involves looking in a mirror and discovering where all of the parts of the soft palette are located. One is then to whisper the syllable "kah" and recognize where it comes from. Then one is to work on yawning-specifically wide yawning. Yawning helps stretch your soft palette a lot. The next step is to repeat the exercises in step one, but to using the awareness of the yawn stretching. Step three is to breathe in cool air on a whispered "kaah" and then to release warm vibrations on "hi. As the sound releases out, roll the middle of the tongue forward and relax it back creating a "hi-yi-yi-yi-yi". Step four involves picturing you are on the edge of a lake and seeing a fish jump out of the the lake. Then you look across the lake and notice a person. You work on saying "hey there" to the person across the lake in various pitches and tones.

Reflection: It was extremely helpful looking at the mouth and recognizing where exactly the soft palette was in the mouth. I had a hard time with the "kah" exercises into tongue stretches because my mouth kept getting really dry. I also struggled with the horizontal yawning. I am used to vertical yawning and forcing myself to yawn in a smiling position was difficult. It isn't natural and so it is hard for me to keep putting this into practice.

I also had a interview this morning at 11:00 AM. I wish I had done my voice work prior to my interview because I feel like my interview would have been a lot stronger. I have another interview Friday at 4:00 PM so I will be sure to try this theory then.

Challenge Updates:

Number of Apologies: 2

Cups of Coffee: 1 8 oz. Half-Caff Carmal Machiatto

I'm looking forward to exploring the jaw and tongue exercises tomorrow.