[Menvi-discuss] a question regarding vocal concepts

[Chris Smart]

can you meet with her privately?

So, if I said "make your lips into a circle, like the letter o", 
that would be confusing?

Also, I'm guessing she wants you to breathe from the diafragm, from 
the belly. This means that as you inhale, your belly expands. AS 
you exhale, it shrinks back down.
Inhale - gets bigger
exhale - gets smaller

Babies breathe like that naturally, as do we when we are asleep. 
It's only during the day when we get stressed out and anxious that 
many of us tense up, and draw the belly in when taking a breath, 
when really, it should be expanding.

Perhaps visualize your belly as a third horizontal lung taking in 
air and expanding as you inhale.





At 07:09 PM 1/22/2013, you wrote:
>Hello,
>I may have posted a similar question before, but here goes.  I am 
>in two choirs as well as taking lessons privately with one of the 
>vocal performance majors I know.  The women's chorus director is 
>new to directing the group and is still learning.  She does a lot 
>of work during warm-ups on breathing and vowels.  Since I can't 
>see what she is demonstrating, I asked her if I could feel what 
>she is doing and she said that was fine.  However, I am starting 
>to think that she feels uncomfortable with letting me feel her 
>stomach during rehearsal in order to feel correct breathing and 
>what it feels like.  She also tried to explain in words about how 
>to bring the lips forward when singing a vowel.  However, I am the 
>type of person that needs to be physically shown how to do 
>something before I can grasp it, simply describing verbally does 
>not help.  If any singers have ever had with experience, how did 
>you handle the situation? It is a similar issue in my voice lesson 
>where he was trying to explain how to shape my lips but I was not 
>getting his verbal descriptions as well as his breathing 
>descriptions.  Do you think this may have something to do with the 
>fact that my voice teacher is the opposite gender and he is afraid 
>of engaging in the necessary physical contact for me to understand 
>what he's talking about? If I brought one of my friends to the 
>lesson, would that maybe make him less anxious about the situation?
>Thanks in advance and I apologize for such a long post.
>P.S.  Guitar seems to be going fairly well except I'm still 
>struggling with changing strings when playing.
>
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