Week Five

Daily exercise for week five – humming

We practised a humming exercise during the session – humming increases the release of nitric oxide in the nasal passages. Nitric oxide is a molecule that widens capillaries and increases oxygenation, so humming can be really beneficial. Try this at home:

• Breathe normally through your nose and hum on your outbreath – hum any note, breathing whenever you need to. When you breathe in, keep your mouth closed, and don’t rush the breath.
• Next, practise humming one of the songs we have worked on together, breathing through your nose – as we did in the session. Below are links for All The Pretty Horses and Summertime – have a go at humming these.
• Try humming for one minute every day – use a timer / stopwatch to keep you to time.
• Remember to take a break if you feel light-headed.

Extra exercise to try in week five – vocal re-set

Watch the clip below and follow along with Suzi to try some straw phonation to combat vocal fatigue. This is a warm up we have done together during our sessions.

Concentrate on the beginning section of this warm up (ie the speaking experiment) – and as per the humming exercise above, have a go at this every day. Remember to lift the glass and straw up to you, rather than bending down to it.

You can of course move on and try the sirening and singing parts of the video if you feel up to it, but start with the speaking experiment and see how you go!

Lullabies for you to sing: All The Pretty Horses and Summertime

We first sang All The Pretty Horses on week three, and re-visited it as our warm-up song this week.  You can find a link to the song sheet and karaoke track in Week Three.

And here is a karaoke version of Summertime for you to sing along with, together with a downloadable song sheet which has the lyrics:

https://soundcloud.com/eno-breathe/sets/week-five

Download tracks (right click, save as):
– vocal
– instrumental

Download the PDF song sheet here

About Summertime: This song, from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, is a standout hit – and has been much recorded as a jazz standard. We are privileged that this version has been specially arranged for us by Martin Fitzpatrick, Head of Music at ENO and was recorded at the Coliseum with members of the ENO orchestra (responsibly distanced of course), conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

A lullaby to listen to: Summertime, Porgy and Bess, Gershwin

About Summertime in its original context: Clara sings Summertime to comfort her baby towards the beginning of the opera, Porgy and Bess.  The film below shows Nadine Benjamin singing the aria with ENO’s orchestra – Nadine played Clara in ENO’s production of Porgy and Bess in 2018.

You will also find this music in the calming playlist created especially for ENO Breathe.