Congratulations! You moved on to step 2 of my singing course. Now we can actually make sound! Woohoo!
Before we start singing - can we just quickly talk about how important vocal health is? I can talk about this all day, but I'll be brief for the moment. I have so many students riding the struggle bus with summer allergies. 2020 is an insane allergy year, peeps. It isn't fun. Your nose hates 2020 just as much as you do. So it's time to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF! Get a nasal spray. Take an allergy pill. Steam. Drink some hot water. Do whatever you can to reduce inflammation in your throat/face. If you don't have a steamer, boil some water on the stove, cover your head with a towel, and get in there! But like PLEASE don't burn yourself, though. Be careful.
This exercise will help you transition your student (or yourself) from your straw work to actual singing. The trick here is to make sure it feels the same. This is where body awareness really needs to show up.
Make sure your breathe moves the same way as it does in the straw. Feel that slight resistance in your cheeks with the air pressure!
Keep the same height in your soft palate as you had when you were blowing bubbles.
Side note here:
You might feel like you're making a "breathy" sound. Record yourself and see what you really sound like, because chances are it just sounds that way in your head. What you hear in your head is usually NOT what we hear out here. So turn those negative voices off when you're doing this exercise and just focus on how it feels.
You're going to need to do this exercise a BUNCH of times alternating with the straw. Once you have a grasp on how it feels, try one with the straw and then two without. Repeat this until you can do them all without the straw and have it feel the same.
Now, go treat yo self because you're amazing. Let me know if you have any questions!