Starting Point:

Henya was preparing for auditions at several top musical theatre programs in the US.

Her singing and acting were already strong, but one of her songs, Quiet, contained specific technical challenges, such as singing certain high notes (B4) in her ‘mix-belt range’ with a clean speech-like tone (i.e. not breathy), but at varying and sometimes relatively soft volumes—her initial expressive options were either a bit loud, or a bit breathy, in a way that didn’t sound congruent with the rest of the phrase.

Process:

First, we used specific exercises to help her find more connection in ‘mix range.’*

Second, we also chose to put one of her songs, Quiet, aside, temporarily, and worked on snippets of new songs she had no pre-existing habits with, but were well-suited to serve as further baby-steps to get her singing with more clean-yet-quiet tone in the range required.

After a few weeks on the new exercises and song snippets, she could now access the new coordination and ‘mix’ the note cleanly at the desired lower volume in her audition song.

The final steps were to give her brain and voice some time to truly own the new coordinations, so she could better rely on them in a performance situation. We also used new, subtler exercises to fine-tune the degrees of volume and timbre she used in mix range, throughout the song.

Results:

Henya auditioned confidently and was accepted to several schools and programs, and ultimately chose NYU Tisch for her BFA degree.