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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