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Dave: This is working, I didn't know how far out of alignment I was. And there's a ways to go.
Roger: We get used to being sloppy, even if it actually takes more effort to stay standing that way. Most of us don't make a living from our bodies anymore, so we don't pay very constant attention to then. The trap we can fall into is to use them in whatever way takes up the least attention and the least thought, instead of whatever way is the easiest or best use of our muscles. We're saving brain energy instead of body energy, being lazy at a cost. Maybe that's okay for intellectuals or engineers, maybe, but it's not a good idea for singer's, who should have really fine body awareness.
Dave: Right.
Roger: So I'll leave you with two more homework exercises, what we're doing right now: repeat it, gently, a lot, and make sure you take plenty of time doing it each time. If you speed it up at all, you'll likely be doing yourself more harm than good, forcing things at least a little bit. It's boring maybe to repeat it just as slowly each time, but you are building body awareness you need.
Dave: And the second exercise?
Roger: Is to repeat this one, but with attention to ending up more on the balls of your feet, with much more back muscle involvement, using your back muscles much more than your belly or chest muscles. Start at the same place, however sloppy, don't start on the balls of your feet, but as you go along start shifting the weight there. Mix the two exercises, but do more of the first for now.
Dave: That last exercise sounds more useful. Can I get to where I'm doing mostly that.
Roger: In time, but I wouldn't do more than half as many posture exercises that put you on the balls of your feet right now. We don't want to get too ambitious too soon, because it's important to build up body awareness as we go here, and not settle really rigidly on a particulary posture too early.
Dave: All right.
Roger: Since we've done an exercise, now I'm going to get a lot more intellectual with you for a while. Just to let you know where all this is coming from.
Dave: Fair enough, I guess.
Roger: I mentioned the word resonance, when I was talking about resonance cavities, last week, but I didn't explain it, or go into the physics of sound. Now would probably be a good time for that.
Dave: Oh God. Okay.
Roger: It turns out that to understand how the brain and body work together it helps to understand the physics of sound and acoustics. So reviewing what I said yesterday, the vocal folds vibrate in all frequencies, softly, and our three resonant cavities amplify that just as drums or string instruments do, to produce a voice with three main frequencies. So far so good.
Dave: I'm following so far.
Roger: The frequencies of the human voice are pretty well matched, by no coincidence, to the frequencies the human ear can pick up. The range goes from maybe 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz.
Dave: Now I'm getting lost.
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