Practice of 'Take Me To Heaven'

This was the one song that I ended up practising the most on. This was a particularly hard song for me to sing as there was so many ups and downs, however it was a lot of fun during the rehearsal process.
Here is was what I sounded like to begin with:



One main thing which I struggled with was the high parts of the song which I found extremely difficult. I performed 'No Good Deed' to Alison during one of our singing lessons and I was struggling with the high notes in that also. Alison recommended for me to perform the song by using lip trills only and using my diaphragm for the whole thing. I found this tricky at first as my tensions were around my jaw, but I soon unclenched it and begin lip trilling through the song (with my nose really itching!). Soon after changing my song choice to this one, I found it difficult to hit some of the high notes again. With this, I used my initiative and used the same technique for the same reason. I used this gentlemen's do's and don'ts of the exercise and this gave me the support I need to make sure that I was doing it correctly.
Do's and Don'ts of lip trills
Here is me lip trilling to 'Take Me To Heaven':



When looking at the song and listening to the professional version of it, I've looked at different things which can help me add character to the song. I recorded myself doing a 'normal' way of singing this and then I recorded myself doing a 'character' singing it. You can instantly hear a 'cheekier' version in the second one, as I also used crescendo's in certain places and lengthened the amount of vibrato at the end of words. I feel that when doing it this way, it makes the lyrics more colloquial in a way as though Deloris is actually talking it rather than singing it. By also singing some of the lyrics all in one breath adds an essence to the song that it can keep flowing rather than stopping and starting.
Here is the song sang 'normally' first and then the range of different things added in. You can hear the difference:



When performing the song, I tried to add even more characterisation into the song. I looked into the lyrics as to where in this that I could do it and it was when she sing: "...I'll give you all I've got, because nothing's as hot as when you groove with me" and "...I just can't help surrounding you're so strong, you're so sweet, you're what makes me complete".
I tried to add a breathy quality on the word 'hot' and I raised my pitch on 'sweet'. This again, contributes towards the 'cheekiness' of the song and the 'flirtation' of when Deloris sings this to her boyfriend.
Here is me singing it normally:



Here is me singing it with the breathy quality and the high pitched 'hot & sweet':



From doing this, I then looked further into being able to lengthen my vibrato and lengthen the end of the words so they don't get lost for an audience. I never used to think about this until I started to record myself and hear the difference. I now try and make sure I do this so the note comes out stronger and as long as I don't do this too much, the note won't sound forced and awkward.
Something which I haven't spoken about in this song is that I'm going to be performing it in an American accent. What with Deloris being in Philadelphia, I felt that it was only necessary to replicate this. Also, the lyrics are written for an American to sing; for example: "I've been thinking about'cha" the 'cha' gives the impression it would be sung as 'about ya' rather than 'you' which is something a British person would never really say.
With this, I looked into something that could help me with my vowel pronunciations of the words and I found a really useful video to help me do this. She takes things slowly and really makes you focus on the shape of your mouth:
American vowel sounds

I recorded myself singing an 'after' clip of the song, having put all of this above together and creating a piece of my own. This song really required me to practise, and I rehearsed this a lot in my car on journeys to college, work and others. In this sound clip I've got a bit of a cold therefore there are some parts of it sound a bit different to how I will perform them in the assessment, but I feel that you can hear the differences that I changed when working on this song:




Targets:-
- Think about clear pronunciation when performing.
- Think about the character and how cheeky/flirty she is throughout it. Add this to the song.
- Rehearse the song in my car/in the house with lip trills more than anything to secure the way my body works and performs the song. (If you can lip trill the entire thing, you'll be able to sing it!)