Shift her focus to her buttocks. Most singers who are afraid to "clench"
the abdomen seldom object to clenching the buttocks. It's going to take
much longer to persuade her that allowing the necessary tautness to exist
in her pubo-coccyxial muscle and her intercostals is a GOOD thing and is
NOT the same as "clenching". Perhaps you should also shift the focus to
how she is taking in the breath, rather than on how she is starting and
sustaining the sound. Get her to work on "filling up" all the way around
(my teacher uses the image of an umbrella opening, with air filling it
underneath all the way around) - and feeling the expansion not just in
front, but under the arms, and around the back, and into her lower back.
The other half of this, is getting her to inhale not by sucking in the
breath, but by creating a vacuu, then releasing and allowing it to fill.
IF she does it this way, she won't start out with tension in the tongue or
throat. Then get her to start a sound immediately - no holding the breath
in for a moment. Get her to start the sound by giving her buttocks a
little squeeze - get her to associate that little squeeze with starting
the sound. No, of course the little squeeze has nothing to do with where
or how the sound starts. But what it does is focuses her thought process
way far south of the throat. I'd also suggest working on tongue trills
and lip trills a lot, again to start disassociating her idea of sound
production from the throat, and refocusing it on the lips and tongue. As
she sustains, tell her the only thing she can squeeze or clench is her
butt, and the only other thing she can move are lips and/or tongue. The
rest should be like a thick rubber tube that stands up by itself, allows
the air to flow freely through it, but which isn't so hard or rigid it can
bend if necessary.
Back when I was stil a very throat-bound, tense-tongued singer, I had a
coach who got me thinking entirely in terms of "below the waist" (and,
more specifically, "between the leg") support. Anatomically inaccurate as
this advice was, it did the necessary trick: it got me OUT of the habit of
doing all the work above the shoulders. And by focusing too low while
still having to respirate the only way the body can, the unconscious
byproduct was that I started taking deep, low breaths and supporting in
actuality from the lower abdomen (even though my mental focus was lower).
I even knew this was what I was doing - "psyching myself out" - no
matter...it worked, and was one of the major breakthroughs in my technical
development.
KM
===
On Neil Shicoff - http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html
On yours truly - http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
+-------------------------------------------------------+
| For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that |
| appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. |
| - James 4:14 |
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