Building Sequential Vocal Technique Skills: A Response
    
        This week in Vocal and Choral Methods we had two readings. One of which was James Jordan's Building Sequential Vocal Technique Skills. This article made me think about the two following things:
1) Vocal and musical warm ups are a lot like sports warm ups in that without them, we lose touch with the basic skills we need to continue learning. Just like in sports, without a proper warm up, you can easily get injured. The muscles used in the face to sing can also be strained just like those we use in running/sprinting/etc.  I think it makes a lot of sense that we need to have proper warm ups before we sing, and I question why anyone would argue otherwise (other than the obvious time constraints). 

2) I really agree with the assertion that basic inhaling and exhaling is crucial in a warm up of all kinds. When you properly breathe and get a chance to relax, the body is in a much more responsive state for performing. Singing is, in many contexts, not supposed to be physically taxing, and without the proper breathing, it is impossible to make singing simple.

This article also raised the following questions for me:
1) Would it be fair to say that the "sixth sense" is only pertinent to musical performance? Wouldn't it make more sense to say that it comes from any physical engagement? I know that in this context, it is being specific, however, I think it would make more of an impact if we put it into broader contexts?

2) I question their use of the word "spacious" to describe the sound we want to create with our singing. When I hear spacious I think more spread out than what he means, and I worry about how younger singers would interpret spacious. To me, spacious doesn't go together with "full", which is another characteristic of what we want to hear in the sound of the voices. Could we maybe use something like focused? Is that too narrow?