Danny Miller

MUSE 258
Dr. Ester
4/5/17

Case Study

For the Case Study assignment I chose to work with my younger

sister Jenny Miller. Jenny is 15 years old and she has Down Syndrome.

Because of her disability this assignment was very interesting. Jenny

has a lot of really great potential but she also has some obvious

setbacks when it comes to her singing. In terms of strengths, she has a

really great tone quality and good projection to her voice. Her voice

was not airy and was fairly full. She had little issues when it came to

phonating and she was very comfortable singing with me, which made

the assessment easier.

In terms of weaknesses, Jenny has a very difficult time matching

pitch. I believe this has to do largely with her disability but also partly

her hearing. Jennys right ear is not as good as her left ear and doctors

believe that it is sometimes distorting sound for her. This made it

difficult for her to match pitch because her ears were hearing two

different things. Because of this, I made an effort to sing each pitch

directly into her left ear and when I did that, she had a much easier

time matching my pitch. It also seemed to me that the higher I sang in

my falsetto, the easier it was for her to match pitch, because she never

sang in her chest voice with me.

 Another weakness I noticed was her respiration process. She was

breathing before she sang but she has never been taught the correct

way to take a low breath. This could have been affecting her

phonation, but there wasnt enough time for me to see if she could

learn how to breathe from the abdominal region rather than lifting with

the shoulders.

I think Jenny would benefit from a respiration exercise where she

lays on the ground with something placed on her stomach. When she

goes to breathe I would tell her to lift the item on her stomach so that

she could learn where to take a proper breath. Another exercise that I

think could work for her is some basic level 1 tonal echoing so that she

could start building up certain sound associations to help her match

pitch a little better. I think she could also benefit from some more aural

activities that involve ear training such as an exercise where she is

asked to close her eyes and identify where in the room a certain pitch

is being played by pointing in that direction. This could really help

some of her struggles with sound distortion and could help instructors

isolate the problem with her right ear.

Another exercise could be a basic vocal warm up that has the

descending five-note pattern (sfmrd) so she could go down into her

lower register or chest voice where she has trouble phonating. Lastly, I

think she could use a diction warm up such as zing-a-zong-a-zing. This

pattern is presented with the pitches smfrd and as it goes along, the
beginning consonant changes to try to help with more precise diction.

Her speech is obviously something that is a setback of her disability,

but this exercise could help her improve in her talking and singing.

Overall Jenny has great potential to be a good singer and I hope to

keep working with her to help her improve.