She's definitely a lyric (lovely silvery quality) but everytime she gets
up
there in her range (from around E to A flat) she seems to slam down on
the
back of her tongue, and her larynx looks like it's going to pop out in
between her eyes (ouch!) producing a strangled, shrill sound and
subsequently gets fatigued easily. Major problem....
Dear Virginia:
I do better with helping people I can see and hear in "real time" as
I'm very intuitive in my teaching, but here are some ideas that may
help:
1. Let her know that this IS a solvable problem, even though it
seems insurmountable at the moment. When re-directing and training
muscle memory habits, time and repetition are key factors, and things
cannot change overnight. A reasonable expectation about the solution
may help the present frustration.
2. Can you find some kind of vocalization in which she produces a
sound without this condition? Try sirens, ghostly ooooo's (one of my
favorites), elongated speech (especially helpful if done up in as high a
speaking range as possible) or any other "sound" that is not
psychologically linked to singing.
Once she is making a sound correctly, she can do many "reps" so that her
body has another new model to learn. The more she does them, the faster
she will learn an alternative to the incorrect production. If the body
doesn't know what is expected of it, it reverts to what it knows best
(usually the thing you're trying to unlearn!)
3. Have you checked in with good old breathing? In my experience,
the tongue and other tensions often come into play in an attempt to
"help out" when
breathing is not doing it's job properly. When shown that the breath
can and will do the job very nicely without help, tension often ceases
to be such an
issue.
4. She may need some development of the proper placement for the
high tones (don't know if I really like the word, "placement", but in
lieu of a better
one.) If she's been concentrating on creating space at the back of the
throat, she may find the idea of bringing the tone or the focus more
"forward" of some help (once again, one might take issue with the term,
but I find it helpful with 80% or more of my students). This was
certainly an issue with me at one point when I was having some similar
issues. The "high speaking" is also a wonderful technique for this
problem, showing the student in a very natural way where the tone might
have to be experienced during phonation at a higher range.
Best of luck!
Sharon Szymanski
The Szymanski Studio - "encouraging excellence in the vocal arts"
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