I'm not a teacher, but in terms of my own experience....
I can't think of one instance when a technical vocal term
has been of any use to me in learning how to accomplish what
the technical term described. Whether it's "support" "low
breath" "high palate" or whatever. The only thing that has
worked for me was the teacher finding me making the right
sound, telling me about it, and me doing it more often. Or
learning to become of aware of how my body felt when I sang,
whether what I was doing was "right" or "wrong", because
then, I also was aware of what my body was doing when a good
sound came out, and I could reproduce the good sound. Only
when I became aware of how my tenseness felt, did I stand a
chance of learning how the other way felt.
When my body had actually learned to produce the desired
result, then the word that described it become useful to me.
For example, once I learned the feeling of the right kind of
high palate, the words reminded me of that feeling. But
before I had learned the feeling, the words either had no
meaning for me, or caused me to do the wrong thing. If
you'd said "support" to me back then, I'd just have pushed
out more breath harder.
Now, my learning was never intellectual - intellect often
got in my way rather than helping. The effective learning
was visceral. It was achieved very gradually, little by
little, until one day the skill was there. Seemingly out of
the blue, all by itself. But of course, it would never have
happened on its own - at least not with me.
So my advice to Isabelle is to drop the word support, and
encourage the student to make the good sounds in some other
way. By making silly sounds like a siren and then singing
on that tone. By pretending to smell a rose and then sing (I
know that's high palate, but it's amazing how the two things
go together). By doing exercises that require a long
breath, or a crescendo/decrescendo, in which the only way to
successfully sing them is with the correct "support". By
singing while lying flat on her back (only way to breathe IS
the right way).
Other approaches can be to find unwanted visible tensions
that the student can see in a mirror or videotape, and then
ask her to sing in a way that the look improves. The right
things may happen all on their own, and there's no
preconceived notion for the student to resist - everyone
likes to look good when they sing!
Peggy
--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...
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