Hayley Thompson
Actress/Singer/Dancer
Singing
Below are are variety of warm up techniques, written songs and past productions we have taken part in.
They include
Midsummer Nights Dream, Oh What A Lovely War, Snoopy The Musical & Little Shop Of Horrors.
Warm Ups
Midsummer
Nights
Dream.
Oh what a
lovely war
Snoopy
We do the same warm up exercises in our singing lessons here is some what we do.
We will start of by breathing, placing one hand on the lower part of our stomach the other on our chest, feet comfortably apart and feeling relaxed.
We will then breath in for 8 and blow out for eight making sure our shoulders are relaxed and that our lungs are filling with air. To check this our stomachs would be getting bigger as we breath in.
Another breathing exercise is what our teacher called earth breathing. We would start with our feet apart and then we would flop to the floor scoop up the air with our hand hold it in with our hands on our heart, breath out to the air, scoop the air back in from above then release our breath back to the ground. We would do this about 3-5 times.
After our breathing we are then took to the piano to sing our la's. Our teacher would take the key up using the piano and we have to match that with our voice. Another would be the siren warm up. We would start on a low key then watch our teachers hand as it goes up our voice would then go into our head voice. Depending how long our teacher keeps her hand there we would hold the note until our teacher drops her hand.
There are two songs that go into our Midsummer Nights Dream production. One that Titanias fairies sing to her to go to sleep and one that myself and another student wrote to one of Jane's pieces. To come up with our own lyrics we wrote down on the whiteboard what this song should be about and used these words in the lyrics. Such as trees, dreams, moonlight etc this is what we came up with:
Sleep and dream the night by
Wake and see the stars shine bright
Spirits and Magic come be with us tonight
Leave the light of day to rest
Lead us on a romance quest
Love in the moonlight wrapped round us tonight
Loves pains are all around
Betrayal and bitterness are found
Trees breath love and whisper in the breeze
Sleep and dream the night by
Wake and see the stars shine bright
Spirits and magic come be with us tonight
Spirits and magic come be with us tonight
We still don't know what this piece will be used for but I am very proud at coming up with this piece.
We have started our singing rehearsals for our summer show Oh what a lovely war, It seems that there is a lot of music in this production and also lot of solo songs and group songs. We have started a few pieces and have been given solo songs. My solo song is called Il make a man out of you which I am very excited to perform. Jane had us to go through our solo songs but with the whole group to let us get the hang of it.
Throughtout our rehearsals we would have one to ones with our singing teaching to go through our duets. When attending our one to ones we would work on pitch, key and possibly any harmonys with other members of the group.
My song seemed to be spoken throughout the verses but rhymed to give it a good beat to follow. The chorus was very army like as i had the other girls to sing behind me. I did not sing much throughout this piece of music i used character singing to give it a good affect and to show what type of woman my character was.
This solo was a very good and fun song to sing and i had a great reaction from the audience when we performed this number.
My Solo Number For Oh What A Lovely War! Perofrmed by Maggie Smith
For this production i was given the part of Peppermint Patty who is a typical tomboy who has a crush on Charlie Brown a member of her friendship group and brother of Sally Brown. Patty loves to play any type of sport but her favorite is baseball. She is not girly in the slightest as she has her hair quite scruffy, wears a baseball jersery, baggy shorts and trainers.
I was over the moon to play this part as she comes across very funny and fun to play. For this part i was given two solo numbers :
Poor Sweet Baby
This song was sung to Charlie Brown as he is afraid to grow up alone. Peppermint Patty is telling him through song that she will be there for him which alos lets the audience know how she really feels for him. She spoils the song towards the end by letting him down that she was only joking in a nasty playful way.
For our production Charlie Brown was sat stage right on a box with his rubix cube. I had to sing around him but move centre stage for certain parts of the song and move back towards Charlie Brown when i was singing about how much i liked him.
From the beginning of this song i would character sing but then gradually sing properly so i could prepare for the big nice sounding notes towards the end . I used my head voice mostly as this peice had to sound soft and peaceful as if i was singing a lullaby.
Hurry Up Face
This song is about Patty worrying that the rest of her face will not catch up with her nose as she thinks she has a big nose. She also is singing that she is worried about growing up . This song is not in Snoopy the musical but because i thought this song could fit into the production well and that it suited my singing range i asked out director if we could use it and he agreed.
I was stood centrestage singing out to the audience and had hold of a hand mirror.
This song is good for character singing but also shows of your vocal capability.
I worked with Emma our singing teacher and she helped me find the right tone to use for Poor Sweet Baby and Darren our other singing teacher helped us with sheet music and played piano throughout rehearsals and also for the show.
Trench
Little Shop Of Horrors
Nobodys on Nobodys Side - Chess
Silent Night