cannon.appstate.edu

Summer Masterclass Series July 2021

The Premier, Comprehensive, Music Camp in the Southeast

Cannon Music Camp is a three-week music-filled retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, with intensive college preparatory work in performance and music theory.

cannon.appstate.edu

cannon.appstate.edu

• I am Dr. Gennard Lombardozzi, Assistant Professor of Voice and Director of Opera in the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University. At the Hayes School, I am responsible for directing and producing our opera productions, and teaching applied voice to undergraduate and graduate voice majors.
• Personal Note: To me, singing is all about communication. I started singing as most of us do; copying sounds I heard and looking up to certain artists that I admired. Early on, I learned that good singing isn’t limited to a certain style of music, but that an honest and free sound

production, in any style, has the ability to reach an audience.

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Welcome to Our Vocal Masterclass!

cannon.appstate.edu

• Caring for your instrument
• Preparing for rehearsal and practice
• Performance tips

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Today’s Talking Points

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• You’ve probably heard that, as a vocalist, our entire bodies are our instruments. The vocal cords are just a small part of where you need to focus your care, so to care for your body is to care for your instrument. This is obviously true for all people, but singers especially should be aware of the amount of water they consume, the kinds of foods they put into their bodies, and the amount of exercise they are getting. If your body remains healthy then your voice has a better chance of achieving clean and vibrant sounds. There is nothing worse than coming up on a performance and having an illness to contend
• with. Get ahead of it by taking care of yourself and avoiding
• stressful circumstances!

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Caring for Your Instrument

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• General Health
• Allergies/Illness
• Avoiding fatigue

Caring for Your Instrument

cannon.appstate.edu

• General Health for your body
• Eat Well
• Balanced nutrition
• Drink plenty of water
• Keep water with you so you can drink it all day
• Exercise
• This is different for everyone. We all have our limits and goals when approaching exercise. Be sure to move your body everyday in whatever way is best for you.

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Caring for Your Instrument

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• Allergies/Illness
• Unfortunately allergies and illness can really be an issue for vocalists. I have students coming into my studio every week with complaints about illness and allergies. The only way to avoid them is to get ahead of them. If you know you have allergies that come up in certain seasons, see a doctor that can help you find some relief. Allergies cause swollen vocal cords, and swollen vocal cords can make singing difficult and extremely frustrating. If you have the option of eliminating that frustration, use the medication
• necessary to do so. For illness, the best defense is just taking
• care of yourself and avoiding illness by washing your
• hands and getting plenty of sleep.

Caring for Your Instrument

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• Avoiding fatigue
• Young singers have the habit of overusing their voices which causes fatigue and leads to damage of the cords. Be mindful of when your voice begins to feel fatigue and don’t be afraid to GIVE IT A REST.
• If your voice hurts in rehearsal, let your director know and rest your voice.
• If you have an important performance coming up, try not to use your voice (speaking or otherwise) for most of the day leading up to it.

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Caring for Your Instrument

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• Planning your practice time
• How to warm up and what that means

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Preparation for Rehearsal and Practice

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• Plan your goals for each practice and rehearsal
• Often times we go into a practice room and don’t really have a plan as to what we’d like to accomplish. Make your rehearsal efficient by structuring your time. For example, if you have an hour to practice, divide that time into sections.
• Warm up - 10min
• Practice technical issues in the voice - 20min
• Learning repertoire and application of technique - 30min

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Preparation for Reheasal and Practice

cannon.appstate.edu

• Warming up
• Warming up is important for a successful practice or rehearsal. You are preparing your body and voice for singing mode, which is different from your everyday/normal use of the body. Everyone has a different approach for warming up, so, with your teacher, come up with a routine that works for you. But no matter what exercises you use, the most import thing to keep in mind is the goal you are trying to achieve in a warm-up, which is preparing the voice for singing. If you go through vocal exercises without intention, the
• warm-up session really doesn’t help.

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Preparation for Rehearsal and Practice

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• Warming up
• Goals of a warm-up.
• There are a tremendous amount of vocal exercises that can get the job done in a warm up if you’re keeping 4 things in mind as you do them.
• 1. Posture
• 2. Use of breath and “support”
• 3. Throat space
• 4. Tone

Preparation for Rehearsal and Practice

cannon.appstate.edu

• Goals for warming up
• Posture
• Most of us don’t spend all of our time in the day practicing good posture. We sit at desks, hunch over our phone and engage in other activities that don’t put our body in proper alignment. When you get into the practice room, keep this in mind, and establish good singing posture before you do your warm ups. (standing up with the sternum slightly elevated and looking straight forward)

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Preparation for Reheasal and Practice

cannon.appstate.edu

• Goals for warming up
• Use of breath and support
• One of the main goals to warming up your instrument is to find your support….something we don’t generally use throughout the day and is the most important component to healthy tone production. Exercises you use in warm up should address the breath and how it is used for singing.
• Ex. Lip trill slides - as you go up, think down with the breath

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Preparation for Reheasal and Practice

cannon.appstate.edu

• Goals for warming up
• Throat space
• As you do your warm-ups, set your throat space to where it should be to achieve a free sound throughout the voice. (the beginning of a yawn is a good reference of how it should feel). Everyone has a different sensation and it takes practice to find the optimal space, but your warm-up should be addressing some sort of throat space use.
• Ex. Lip trill slides - Keep the yawn space in the throat as you do the slides. If you use a warm up such as the trill without keeping the space, it isn’t as efficient of a warm-up.

Preparation for Reheasal and Practice

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• Goals for warming up
• Tone
• Allow your cords to become familiar with each other as they function in vocal production for singing. Our speaking voices don’t explore the entire range of pitch necessary for singing and we need to remind them what it feels like to sing through every part of the voice.
• Ex. Lip trill slides - feel the difference between a breathy sound and good cord closure.

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Preparation for Reheasal and Practice

cannon.appstate.edu

• Performing can be exciting, stressful, and sometimes glorious! It is so easy to get caught up in trying to make a performance perfect that we forget the communication part of it. Our job as a performer is to communicate our expression in every song we sing. That is why the audience came to see us. Sure, sometimes an expression comes in the form of vocal acrobatics, but regardless of what pitches are on the page, absolutely every time we share our voice, the performance needs to be some sort of communication with the audience. As a performer, I feel that keeping this mindset helps to alleviate stress and
• sets us up for greater delivery.

Performance Tips

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• Warm up like you would for practice
• In your preparation, find the “good stuff” in the text you are singing and show the audience how you feel about it. Find honest intention in everything and share your soul.
• Let your nerves excite you and ride that wave. Live performances are supposed to have flaws.
• Go out on the stage with the intent to communicate, not to wow. The wow is in the communication!
• Get excited about the next performance and fall in love with the
• challenges that good singing brings.

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Performance Tips

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Thank You!

Join me for

Cannon Music Camp Summer 2022

June 25 - July 16

Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

Dr. Gennard Lombardozzi, Professor of Voice

lombardozzig@appstate.edu