What I Learned by Lip Synching with Caissie Levy
By Jenna Pastuszek
Tim and I have been taking classes with the JWS Online Studio since April, and we’ve been loving it (PSA the July session starts tomorrow!).
In April, I took an amazing class led by Billy Bustamante called Live Your (Physical) Life. The 4- week class was completely dedicated to physical exploration of the self-tape space…without making a single sound.
I found this constraint difficult at times, because I wanted to full on skrelt! At the same time, I was grateful for it so that I could be a responsible neighbor and reduce the amount of time I was singing during the day in our new “we all work from home” quarantined circumstances.
While mouthing along to "Let it Go", I had an A HA! moment.
This opportunity to solely focus on my physicality without the use of my voice provided me with the space to FEEL what my physical instrument was doing.
It let me focus on asking myself:
What really is this ‘support’ thing that we so often talk about in singing lessons? Can I actually feel my body helping me, hurting me, or doing nothing?
Can I concentrate on activating more physical sensations in my back, my arm pits, my legs, my cheeks, my feet while I lip sync?
Can I celebrate the opportunity to let the focus I usually place on listening to myself drift to whether or not I’m engaging my pelvic floor when I breathe?
The physical work I did in Billy’s class carried over into my own singing lessons. Suddenly, I found myself more interested in what my lats or the root of my tongue were doing than I was about whether or not I sounded “good”. As a result of this, my singing felt freer, easier, and sounded better. And the reframe on what to focus on made it more creatively fulfilling and frankly, more fun.
Many clients have expressed feeling creatively stuck, artistically depressed, and frustrated in their current living conditions. Many clients are wondering how to continue “working on their voice” if they can’t make as much sound as they would like. So, I created the (mostly) Silent Warm Ups workshop and taught it as a Lightbulb Learning course at JWS Online in May.
If you missed it, come join us on TUESDAY! And if you took it and would love a refresher, it’s back this week at IVS, and it’s newly improved! We’ve added two new sections on creating physical power and on breath support, and there will be ample opportunities to practice the tools as we move through the workshop.
Tuesday, July 7th
4pm EST