Year 1: P-R-O-G-R-E-double-S

As my first year at Leeds Conservatoire draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the transformations I have undertaken during these last eight months, whistling the classic Kurt Weill tune which gives my essay its title while Lerner’s lyric sings the advice I tell myself every day: “With progress, your chance to hit the top is great” (Lerner, 1948). Though I may be some way from ‘hitting the top’, I have made significant steps by building a stronger brain, body, and voice for the sake of storytelling which I am excited to demonstrate in this portfolio.

The Brain

Building the brain of a performer has played a key role in my overall development through setting a mentality, building a process, and expanding my knowledge.

Before this year, I had never studied drama as a subject. I was also very aware that, unlike others, I had not been interested in musical theatre from an early age and probably had a lot of catching up to do. These thoughts had a very negative effect on my state of mind which culminated in an immense fear that I had made a mistake coming here, that I would never be good enough, and I should study something I was better at. After a week of classes, I was able to challenge this mindset as I could see that talent was insignificant in comparison to the amount of effort it takes to be successful. Though ‘talent’ was out of my control, effort was not and so I used the negative feelings as motivation to push myself and reminded myself that being the best at something is even more satisfying if you used to be the worst.

Once I believed I could be good enough, I noticed that I was and I began to think much more positively about myself. I realised that my route to being here is no less valid than the person who has sung and danced their whole life. If anything, I saw my uniqueness as something to celebrate because musical theatre is a unique discipline to train in. It was no accident or mistake that I ended up studying it; what else would a piano-playing sportsman whose favourite subjects were Biology and English study? There was nowhere else I should have been.

In addition to developing a stronger mentality, I have also discovered that much of my progress is owed to building a strong process for each of my disciplines, taking the time to explore different methods of learning. This has been most notable in my dance training as I arrived here a complete beginner and did not know how to improve. At the beginning of the year, I struggled picking up the most simple pieces of choreography such as the ‘Welcome to Duloc’ routine from ‘Shrek the Musical’. Even though there is not a great deal of technical challenge in the piece, I still found it difficult to mirror what the teacher was doing in front of me to the level of detail required. Moreover, on top of copying this detail comes the challenge of remembering it all in sequence and then demonstrating it. For a brain which has never tackled dance before this was very overwhelming and it was evident that my progress was lacking in comparison to my peers, with me placed in the back of every filmed routine often doing the choreography incorrectly and a half-beat behind. The process of watching the choreography and attempting to replicate it was clearly not working and importantly highlighted that my brain was not wired for visual learning. Initially, I thought this was problematic for training in a visual art but my lecturers assured me that we would find a solution. With my brain preferring to process precise data, I chose to stop relying on my eyes and started asking questions to extract the information I needed such as which foot goes where with which arm and so on. In my technical jazz class, I now carry a notebook with me as I have found it more fruitful to write down the steps before I attempt doing them. By notating routines in a table, I can more easily understand and remember what I have to do and has led to me dancing more confidently and precisely. Here is an example from a recent technical combination.

Building the brain of a performer also included expanding my knowledge as much as possible. One goal I set myself was to listen to a new musical every week. While I did not achieve this, I have managed to significantly increase my knowledge of repertoire which has helped improve my understanding of style in my performances. Additionally, learning about the history and cultural significance of musical theatre dance has had a profound impact on my attitude towards my dance classes and inspired me to carry the torch lit by the legends we had learnt about. That was the moment I knew I wanted to be so much more than just an actor who could sing. I needed to do a lot more work on my body.

The Body

A paramount component of my development has been my physical fitness. This has played a crucial role in guiding my body through the demands of the course, just as it will have to if I am lucky enough to find myself performing eight shows a week professionally. Improving my physical fitness, will also allow my body into new positions that can add further skill to my performances.

While I would love to be practising elaborate tricks and complex dance moves, it is important to start with the basics first and so I have focussed on getting into shape with the hope that I can more easily learn those impressive skills in the future. This year’s work therefore started in our two weekly ‘body conditioning’ classes. To begin with, these were far from being my favourite classes of the week as it pushed me into uncomfortable positions my body was simply not prepared for. For example, it was my first time attempting a lot of the yoga poses we were introduced to and in some instances I was completely unable to reach them. In particular, I was having difficulty with raising and stretching my legs, maintaining a flat back, and opening up my hips. At first it seemed my body was resisting too much to make any progress but through perseverance in class, these exercises became more doable. Now, I enjoy doing the yoga-style workout every day and have observed a huge increase in my flexibility. Namely, these include: being able to touch the floor without bending my knees, being able to touch the floor with my heels in a ‘downward dog’ and being able to lift my leg up to a 90-degree angle while lying flat. Overcoming my tight lower back has been less successful and I still need to sit on a yoga block to fully access the floor exercises. However, as this is beginning to get easier I have faith that the incremental progress will soon add up to something more noticeable.

In general, I need to improve a lot more on my strength in order to find more consistency in these flexible positions and transfer them into sustained performances. This has long been a point of difficulty for me; I have been called out for being “too thin”, “weak”, and “built like a stick” most of my life. I have approached these three years of training as a massive opportunity to change that and while the results are still small, I can see things heading in the right direction. Three strength exercises we have worked on in conditioning classes have been planking, press-ups, and tricep-dips. I have laid out my progress in the table below.

Exercise	Repetitions/duration achieved
	Semester 1	Semester 2	Target
Plank	4mins	2mins 30secs	4mins
Press-ups	45	25	25
Tricep-dips	13	15	50

As the table shows, I have struggled with tricep-dips and I am disappointed to have not made more progress. The table also indicates a decline in my overall fitness which is slightly misleading but does highlight the extent to which I was inhibited after falling ill with glandular fever between the first and second semester.

The timing of this setback was frustrating because I had finished the first semester really happy with the progress I had made and had the strong belief that, with the groundwork laid, I could accelerate my muscle growth in the second semester. Instead, I found myself helplessly lying down for three weeks unable to eat or exercise, taking many more weeks to recover even after returning to classes. Furthermore, I made the situation worse by overworking my body in the hope of regaining my former progress which eventually led to severe burnout and a relapse of some of my symptoms – a lesson I never seem to learn but really must when working in this industry. Only now is the tide beginning to turn after I made the decision to go back to basics and build my strength back from scratch, a move which was wounding to my ego but has been very beneficial to my physique.

I began by taking a ‘little and often’ approach to my workouts to get my body back into the rhythm of exercise before I tested it too much. Incrementally, I have worked back up to a competitive standard and now do at least an hour of daily targeted exercises for my abdominals, arms, and legs which is even more than I was doing before I fell ill, proving that sometimes slow and study does win the race. Now, back on track, with a stronger and more toned body in reach, I have been researching how to get the most out of my gym sessions and have made some useful changes to my regime.

Firstly, I have taken steps to increase my protein intake after reading research which suggested I should eat at least 1.6g of protein per kg of body mass (Stokes, 2018). This has been difficult as my diet has always been bland and unvaried but I have managed to get to 1.2g of protein per kg of body mass so far by adding more eggs and nuts to my diet.

I have also altered exercises to train more efficiently. For example, I replaced inclined bicep curls with preacher bicep curls as this increases the strain of the muscle in its elongated position (Nosaka and Sakamoto, 2001) which targets more areas of the bicep and lower arm (Zabaleta-Korta et al, 2023). Similarly, to train my triceps, I discovered it would be beneficial to work on exercises in overhead positions to maximise muscle growth by elongating the brachii long head (Maeo et al, 2022). As my arms have long been the weakest part of my body, it may take some time before I see significant progress but I plan on remaining consistent with the hope of seeing results soon.

The Voice

Building a voice worthy of the songs it yearns to sing has been a key part of my development this year. I should start, however, by noting that this category is still an extension of the body: that is to say, body plus breath. I emphasise this point because it took far too long for me to cease viewing the voice as some ethereal layer you either did or did not have and begin seeing it as a part of my body that could be trained. This was motivationally helpful to begin the work I needed but has equally led to frustration upon the realisation that (unlike learning other instruments) the progress you make is limited by biological factors.

Of everything I have discussed in this essay, my voice is the hardest thing to be positive about. The desire to improve it is what gets me out of bed in the morning; it is what I think about between lessons; and it is what defines my day as either a failure or a success. This obsession is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, nobody has doubted my commitment to my vocal training; no matter how long or difficult a day has been, it is almost guaranteed I will be in a practice room singing until at least 10pm. But on the other hand, it places unfair and unnecessary pressure on a skill I have not had a great deal of training in, which is far from the healthy, happy mindset I have advocated for in this essay so far. Moreover, the sheer desperation for a strong and capable voice meant that I neglected a lot of the precision and technique I should have been practising. Nevertheless, my negative attitude towards my voice was so strongly ingrained that no amount of positive thinking could have changed it. I had to prove to myself that I was good enough by relentlessly practising exercises that made my voice as strong as possible. This successfully grew my power and range even if I was singing with all kinds of tension and strain. Most importantly, the result was that I began to like the sound of my voice which gave me all of the motivation I needed to practise using it properly.

I like to think of the metaphor of a man preparing for a date. It is not advisable for him to simply pick out a shirt that is roughly the right size; it has to be cleaned and ironed. Except, my ‘date’ is not with a person, but rather with the Royal Albert Hall and ‘ironing’ refers to the consistent and purposeful exercise of weak areas of my voice which I dream will land me that ‘date’ one day.

One of the main acts of ‘ironing’ I have incorporated into my practice is exercises to smooth my vocal tone across my secondo passagio which sits at an E4. This typically involves vocalising through a straw as I ascend through my range. Where I would previously just go from the bottom to the top and back to the bottom again, I now spend the vast majority of my time on the weak areas. At times this means spending ten minutes just switching back and forth between an arpeggio peaking at an E4 and one at an F4 and then a further five minutes between an F4 and an F#4. As a result, I have been able to achieve a much more consistent tone and am able to replicate the exercises on some vowels without strain.

Crucially, spending the time getting to know my voice in this level of detail has meant I have been able to figure out which singing methods work for me. For example, I had spent years following the advice of people who had told me to ‘think low’ when singing high notes, imagining them lower in my body in an attempt to keep my voice grounded. Now I have a better understanding of my voice, I can feel that this placement was actually over-engaging my thyro-arytenoid muscle which caused a strained sound. To remove the tension, I decided to stop placing notes in my body and started placing them outside of my head. While I need more time experimenting, this seems to be working so far as the resultant sound is feeling much more balanced. By imagining the notes in front of my head, I am hearing more brightness in my low notes. As I reach my primo passagio, I imagine the breath travelling upwards until a D4/Eb4 is coming vertically out of my head. Then, every note through to an Ab4 goes gradually further down the back of my head. This seems to be raising my soft palate which is creating more resonant space and also helping my tongue to sit further forward, allowing me to engage my cricothyroid muscle effectively to tilt the thyroid forward.

Despite this, a big problem I have is that these breakthroughs never make me happier for longer than a day because I am always thinking of the next challenge. At the moment, this is translating the progress I’ve made singing high on an ‘ah’ vowel onto an ‘ee’ as this is still not sounding clear. I have been attempting to use a technique known as the ‘Chiaroscuro Whisper’ (Bozeman, 2021) to practise the active vowel modification I require and copied out the following table to help me from Bozeman’s article.

Over-vowel Bright target shape Tune in the back room				Under-vowel Warm unshaped Imagine high and front		Tone colour of harmonic(s) being featured by the first resonance		Affects to help avoid excessive orality and sense pharynx locus
IPA	ENG	F1	F2	Imagined		IPA	ENG
ɪ	ee	D4	B6	ʏ	(rounded)	u	ooh	Scepticism
e	eh	A4	A6	ø	(rounded)	u-o	ooh-o	(What?!)
ɜ	er	B4	G6	œ	(rounded)	o	o	Possibly accepting
ɑ	ah	D5	D6	ʌ-ɔ-ʊ	uh-or-oo	o	o	Duh, I knew that
ɔ	or	B4	B5	ʊ	oo	o	o	Aw, cute puppies
Under-vowel Warm target shape, made front and close.				Over-vowel Brightened in the back room. Keep top corners high with pharyngeal grin		Tone colour of harmonic(s) being featured by the second resonance
ɒ	oh	A4	A5	ʊ	oo	ɔ	or	Amused agreement
u	ooh	G4	G5	ʊ	oo	ɔ-o	or-o	Flirting/ Mischief

It is clear that this is something I need to do further research on as I understand the science, but not necessarily what I should do with it practically. Furthermore, my abnormally short tongue is a big obstacle I need to work on first and so I am especially doing exercises every day to stretch it forward. Nevertheless, this research has been successful for the purpose of vowel tuning. By whispering the vowels in the first column into a microphone, I have been able to monitor the overtones of my voice which are now more closely matching Bozeman’s formants, helping to cement a more balanced tone into my voice.

The Finished Product?

The final stage is putting all of these aspects together to build performance. This is where my key area for growth lies as I have not done very much of this, having focussed heavily on improving individual skills. For example, at the beginning of the year I set myself the goal of being able to do a single pirouette by Christmas. By then, I had realised my naivety but kept on practising until by Easter I was able to turn on a fairly consistent basis and am now attempting them in routines.

Similarly, I never felt my voice was strong enough for my ‘acting through song’ to be worth anything, but having taken the time to improve my singing I now want to spend more time purposefully crafting my songs. Currently I am working on ‘Mama Says’ from ‘Footloose’ (Snow and Pritchford, 2000) where I have begun adding performance by learning a southern US accent, paying close attention to every single word.

LYRIC	ACCENT
Everythin’ I ever learned	ɛv.ɹ.ɪ.θɪn aː ɛv.ɚ lɝnd
That gets me through the worst	ð.æjə̯.t ɡ.ɛjə.ts mɪi θɹ.ʊu̯ ðə wɚst
I learned at my Mama’s knee	aː lɚnd æjə̯.t maː ˈmə.məz nɪi
Now, anytime I’m turned around	næjʊ ˈɛ.nɪ.taːm aːm tɝnd əˈɹæjʊnd
I turn to Mama first	aː tɝn tə ˈmə.mə fɝst
And you’d be wise to memorise	æjə̯nd jʊu̯d bɪi waːz tə ˈmɛ.mɚ.aːz
What mama says to me	hwat ˈmə.mə sɛjəz tə mɪi

In conclusion, I am happy with the overall progress I’ve made. Even something as simple as transitioning from never believing I would be accepted into a place like this to feeling at home here, is worth celebrating. Though my ambitions are big, and I have a long way to go, there is something very enjoyable about this stage of development where you can constantly see yourself improving. As Lerner said, “no greater love could there be than for P-R-O-G-R-E-double-S”.

Bibliography

Bozeman, K. (2021) Vowel Modeling with the Chiaroscuro Whisper. Lawrence University. https://faculty.lawrence.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/11/Chiaroscuro_Whisper_Vowel_Modeling.pdf [Accessed 11 February 2025]

Lerner, A. (1948). Progress [Lyrics]. “Love Life” [Musical]. https://genius.com/Alan-jay-lerner-and-lyrics-by-lerner-quartet-progress-lyrics [Accessed 23 April 2025]

Maeo S, Wu Y, Huang M, Sakurai H, Kusagawa Y, Sugiyama T, Kanehisa H, Isaka T. (2022). Triceps brachii hypertrophy is substantially greater after elbow extension training performed in the overhead versus neutral arm position. European Journal of Sport Science, 23(7), 1240–1250. https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2022.2100279 [Accessed 6 April 2025]

Nosaka, K. and Sakamoto K. (2001) Effect of elbow joint angle on the magnitude of muscle damage to the elbow flexors. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 33(1), 22-29. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-200101000-00005 [Accessed 6 April 2025]

Snow T. and Pritchford D. (2000) Mama Says, “Footloose” [Musical score]. Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library.

Stokes T, Hector AJ, Morton RW, McGlory C, Phillips SM. (2018) Recent Perspectives Regarding the Role of Dietary Protein for the Promotion of Muscle Hypertrophy with Resistance Exercise Training. Nutrients. 10(2), 180. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10020180 [Accessed 12 April 2025]

Zabaleta-Korta A, Fernández-Peña E, Torres-Unda J, Francés M, Zubillaga A, Santos-Concejero J. (2023) Regional Hypertrophy: The Effect of Exercises at Long and Short Muscle Lengths in Recreationally Trained Women. Journal of Human Kinetics. 88, 259-270. https://doi.org/10.5114/jhk/163561 [Accessed 6 April 2025]