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Has there always been a lag between education and the real world? Has it always been so that higher education in particular is insulated from the day to day pulse of life? And at what point, if someone is getting an “applied” degree, does the education of the student relate to the world where that “application” takes place?

I wonder all the time why it is that the world of vocal music education doesn’t RUN and EMBRACE new ideas and approaches, particularly when there are ever expanding music theater degrees being offered in music departments that were previously only classical. If the students are being wooed to come to these colleges by promises of “Agents’ Showcases”, “Meetings with Casting Directors”, and “Contact With Industry Professionals”, but the people teaching the courses in the department have no intention of “training to the marketplace”, how is that dichotomy being addressed? (Hint: it’s not).

I wonder, too, why it is that people who don’t sing well can tell other people how to sing. Is this because there is magic in the pieces of paper they hang on their wall? Is this because it doesn’t matter if you can’t do something as long as you can get someone else to do it? It is because they don’t know what to look for when they put up job notices? (Hint: all of these).

One of the oddest things about the human race is how quickly people want to blame the victim. It is also so that the teachers who do not have adequate means to educate a student to sing rock or pop music are very quick to say it is the student who is at fault. It is the student who is dense, doesn’t try, “likes to squeeze his throat”, “holds on to his jaw”, etc.

I read recently about an activist in coal country who went to battle with the coal mining company that owned the same mine in which over 20 people perished last year. The woman was fighting to stop mountain top mining, which leaves the mountain ruined, the water polluted and the ground contaminated. In some of the most beautiful rural areas of the USA, where people have been on the same land for 5 or 6 generations, the mining companies come in to lay waste to the entire area to get coal, one of the dirtiest fuels to mine, to process and to use. Did the neighbors join her? Did the people around her rally around her and help her fight the mining company? No, they threatened to kill her. They threatened to harm her family. She passed away last week from cancer (which is how I read about her), leaving as her legacy a new school far away from the noxious fumes that blew through the last school. Why attack her? Why not attack the bad guys? Because they saw her campaign as something that might cost them their jobs. Jobs that basically kill them. Every miner eventually dies from mining.

College teachers have to eat. They need a job. They don’t want anyone to know they don’t know. They are not going to speak up on behalf of the students if that might open up a debate they could possibly lose.

Students who intend to go to college to study music theater should be aware. Where you go and what you learn depends quite a bit on luck in terms of what you will get. You could get lucky and learn a lot, but you could also have much trouble and learn stuff that is not useful, or even harmful.

Most schools are behind the times. Remember that.

If you are an opera singer and have no experience and/or training in music theater, but you teach it, how could you possibly approach it without using classical tools? Would you even know that you don’t know? There are a lot of teachers in this category, as we discovered this in our research (2006 and 2008, JoV).

I noticed today in “Classical Singer Magazine” that the summer opera programs are offering all varieties of classical training……early music, Wagner, Italian opera, lieder, operetta……and, in some of them, oh yeah, there’s music theater (stuck on the end, like dessert). What, I wonder, are they teaching? Rodgers and Hammerstein? Lerner and Lowe? Sigmund Romberg? GREASE???? RENT??????? SPRING AWAKENING????????? ROCK OF AGES??????????????????????????

Cheez, Louise!

Why not hire people who are on Broadway NOW to teach music theater? Why not hire people from Broadway who have been teaching professionals on the Great White Way for decades? (There are quite a few of us here.) What good is it to stick “music theater” in with all the other disciplines, as if it were just something you could toss off or doodle around with, if all you have to offer is teachers from the world of opera?

Perhaps I’m wrong. I don’t know. Maybe they make it work. I have never been to one of these summer opera festivals and I have no knowledge of what actually happens in them. Still. It makes me wonder.

And.

That’s not the only thing that makes me wonder.

There is an INTERNATIONAL CABARET CONFERENCE at Yale that offers training that costs about $3,000 every year. People come there to work with professionals (who often ARE from Broadway) on how to do cabaret. The brochures says, “Learning how to touch the heart may be the main goal of the conference. But the students also learn how to dress and do their hair and makeup. And they learn about sound, lighting and marketing.” MARKETING????????

You have to know, folks, that there are NO, and I mean NO professional venues for cabaret performers who are unknown. Here in NYC we have a few places like the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, Feinstein’s at the Regency, and The Café Carlyle where NAME performers do acts but please realize that only those who are famous or have a large loyal following can work in these places. There is also a separate Cabaret Convention every year in NYC, and the people who are performers in that Convention are only known to the other performers and to the small group of people who come every year to the Convention. You don’t know them and neither does anyone who doesn’t go to there. Philip Officer? Karen Akers? Not household names. Yet, the International Cabaret Conference program charges THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS for a short summer course…….guess who benefits from that? I think they should offer a course called “How to lose your shirt by attempting to perform cabaret in a dead market.” I consider this entire enterprise borderline un-ethical, as teaching people to do something that has no outlet, and hasn’t had one since the 1950s is outrageous but every year they advertise and every year people go. OK, you want to do it for fun, as a hobby, but WHERE? In your church basement? You can RENT “Don’t Tell Mama’s” on 46th Street here in NYC, which is a bonafide cabaret space, but it will cost you a bundle and then, when all your family and friends have come to see you, that’s it. No career to launch, as there is no marketplace in which to land. The person who thought up this “training” is raking in the dough, people, and no one can stop him. Hokey Smoke, Bullwinkle!

Makes my head spin.

I heard today about someone who has just been hired to take charge of a music theater program in a New York City college who has stated out loud that he hates music theater.

This is not the first thing like this I’ve encountered. I can only imagine how that will help the students, never mind the teachers.

I also know a person who is in charge of another college music theater training program, also here in NYC, who has no musical training, no background in music and no training in voice. All of the music theater students study with this man and he stages the agents’ showcase at the end of the year, frequently with no clue of how he absolutely kills the musicality of many of the songs, and of the kids’ expression of same.

I know teachers who continue to teach kids to sing all music, no matter what kind it is, in a classical vocal sound.

AND, if you think about it, the main classical critic of the NY Times, Anthony Tommasini, has no clue that the world has progressed past “masque resonance” and “diaphragmatic breath support” as an indication of “vocal technical skill”. He does not know the least about how to evaluate any music but classical but has tried a few times to discuss “crossover” with clearly no idea about how to address that issue. This man is probably one of the most powerful critics in the world, but when it comes to singing, he is way behind the times.

In the opposite direction, I know at least one R&B vocalist who has been ill, has lost her voice and doesn’t want to take any lessons, for who knows what reasons. The R&B artist (or jazz vocalist, or rock singer) does not necessarily understand that functional training isn’t going to make the sound become operatic, or that “losing the voice” is not permanent, or that it is possible to again learn to do something you could once do in your sleep with no effort, in a deliberate manner. A sad state of affairs but not all that unusual.

The hardest thing is breaking through all the walls of ignorance. Ignorance is dark, it closes out the light of expansion and locks the door to growth. Any analogy works. Look how long it took for human beings to figure out how to fly, something that humanity had dreamed of for thousands of years, and look how quickly we went from the Wright brothers to putting a man on the moon. Thinking that there is just one way to sing and one standardized approach to classical singing that meets all vocal needs is much like being the Wright brothers before their plane got off the ground at Kitty Hawk. In good time, all training will be functional and everyone will learn how to sing all kinds of sounds for all kinds of music. We aren’t there yet, but wait a hundred years and these days will look like the ones just before the famous brothers made their historic flight.

In between, we need to face down stupidity whenever we encounter it. If you are stuck in a department that hires people who don’t know music theater or hate it, and you have to work under those people, see if you can help to open their eyes to what they do not know. Pierce the darkness with your own strong light. That’s all we have.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We enter life with a cry, we go out with a sigh. Sound is our pathway, coming in and leaving.

In a human being who is free to express, emotions often come with sounds, released spontaneously. Laughter, tears, screams, shouts, grunts. This is the universal language of humanity. Laughter and crying are the same in all languages. We all understand the sound of someone giggling. A scream can be one of joy or pain, one of surprise or one of anguish. Moans, too, can be ones of pleasure or of pain. It is interesting that some of the sounds we make that are wordless are not as clear cut as others.

If singing is a magnification of speech, if it is an expression that combines both words and music, then it is a bridge between the mundane day to day world and the one in which our emotional life is amplified. If it brings together the same kind of freely released sustained sound as that of spontaneous expressions of life, then it is a special kind of sound making that is in itself unique.

Much of what we hear today as vocal music is lifeless. Canned, electronically manipulated, distorted, messed around with. Where, really, can you hear live music that isn’t affected by the machinery available to us? How are we to know about this special magical thing called singing if few of us are exposed to it in a live, immediate way? And what of the people who have those amazing, one-of-a-kind voices that can only be experienced in person? How do you describe what it is to hear Luciano Pavarotti live, unamplified to someone who has only heard that great voice over a piece of machinery?

I recently sang in front of one of the younger groups of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus in a teaching session with them. I was demonstrating my range, explaining how it is that some people can sing higher than others. Mind you, I do not have an impressive voice, and I have no delusions that what I do is “world class” in any way. Rather, it is just a well-trained light classical lyric soprano and I am fortunately enough to still sing, at 61, rather easily above high C. I was amused to see the expressions on the young faces in front of me, and it made me realize that a good percentage of these kids, probably most of them, have never been in the presence of a trained voice, standing in close proximity to their ears, singing without help from a microphone or speakers. Their faces were a delight to see and their reactions (“Cool!” “Wow!”) were even more delightful. I had forgotten what it was like to hear a trained classical voice right in front of me for the first time. It was an unforgettable experience and I was not a child, but a young adult. Prior to that, all of my teachers both in school and privately were either musicians (pianists) or retired teachers who no longer sang. The teacher I had in New York was in the prime of his life and still performing as an operatic tenor. Hearing him sing in my lessons, from 5 feet away, was thrilling. Yes, I had been to many performances, and had heard many recordings by then, but the distance between me and the stage was just enough to make the sound rather less intense than it was in a small voice studio.

Someone with a trained, distinctive, unique voice, fully connected to emotion and a clear intention, singing beautiful music live, without amplification, is doing something special. Some people never experience hearing and seeing such an event. In fact, I would venture to say that MOST people do not get to have that experience, or the one of hearing well trained children singing together live, without any outside help (except maybe being conducted).

We have all these experiences in living. Simple sighs, everyday sounds of laughter or tears, and the magnified sounds of trained voices expressing powerful feelings. The smallest and the greatest, the alpha and omega of what it means to be a sound making human being. Something to contemplate and to appreciate all year long.

It really is amazing when you think of it how much energy goes into Christmas in America. The decorations, the concerts, the symbolism, the MUSIC. We are surrounded by it, whether we are practicing Christians or not. No other holiday comes close, and we have a lot of them. Why is this celebration so big? Is it just the commercialism? That’s part of it, surely. I think, though, that the energy behind and underneath Christmas would make anyone want to celebrate something, and celebration is always, ALWAYS accompanied by music and singing.

I am “generically spiritual” in that I believe in something larger being underneath and through everything, and in everyone. I have a problem with the rules and regulations of religious dogma of any kind and I have a really big problem with any negative precepts that are cloaked in righteousness under the name of “God”.

Christmas represents the birth of the man called Jesus. It ought to remind us of ideas in his teachings like peace on earth and good will to men/people, but if you have ever stood on a long slow line of grumpy customers in a crowded department store a couple of days before the holiday, being waited on by exhausted underpaid sales clerks, you may not much encounter those bright feelings, in your own heart or in the hearts of those you see. It takes an act of will to be full of peace on earth in those circumstances, but isn’t that the point?

What good are any kind of teachings if one does not try to live them on an hour to hour, day to day basis? What good are any kind of teachings if they do not guide you to be more accepting, more tolerant, more compassionate? Why would anyone want to participate in anything that pushes you to close up, pass judgement, and regard your fellow beings (both two and four footed, as well as those with no limbs at all) as being “lesser” in any way? Why would anyone want to make the world colder, nastier, and more hostile, when that is the easy way? It is much harder to look at the world with a positive attitude without being foolishly sappy or blind.

Praise of life, praise of all of what life contains — good and bad, ups and downs, suffering and joy — is wrapped up in the bundle that we call Christmas. The child in each of us is born out of the darkness (in the northern hemisphere) or prepares to enter the darkness (in the southern hemisphere) to begin again, with the innocence of a babe, to engage life in its most basic way. The mundane, simple repetitive tasks that we all do every day are the keys to the kingdom. Finding that, and rejoicing in the depth and simplicity of it, the heart bursts with hope and with satisfaction. Surely, this is the message, that each of us is free to find within that which saves us from the pain of life itself. This discovery, which is utterly miraculous, can only burst forth in ecstasy…..in lights, color, and generosity of all kinds and in the most universal expression of all — the sound of the human voice making music.

So, it makes sense to decorate the outside (trees) and the inside (fireplaces) and to share our abundance, joy and commonality and what better way to do that than to sing carols with others, or to attend a concert of music that is familiar and has been heard by millions for many years? What better thing is there for us as singers to do than sing? The holiday itself, representing the birth of Jesus, but also representing the mystical reason for a Jesus (and all the other great spiritual teachers) to live here amongst us, is worth celebrating. The reminder is that the teachings attributed to Jesus admonish us to “love one another” and “treat others as you would be treated”. What better lesson can his life teach us? What better experience can each of us come to comprehend?

Tonight I had the great privilege of hearing Jenny Burton sing. Jenny is a wonder. I can’t imagine anyone seeing her perform who does not recognize that the amount of talent in this one human being is stupendous. You can’t take your eyes off her when she sings and her voice is capable of many kinds of sounds. (Listen to her at www.watchfiremusic.com)

She moves constantly with grace and beauty, joy and freedom while she sings. She never ever stands with her arms hanging limp at her sides, as so many now do, and her face radiates the beauty that shines from deep within her as she pours forth the music from her heart. It’s as if she goes directly to heaven and links us up to the source of all music through her voice.

I do not know why Jenny did not have a major international career such as the one Whitney Houston had when she was in her heyday. I do not know why everyone does not know this woman, but I do know that singing such as this graces the world, makes it a better place and lifts up the weary to give them strength to go on going on. Even if you never hear it, it makes you a better person, somehow, in that it sends such juice into the molecules of air around her that they get carried into the ethers with more spin and sooner or later, all that energy bounces back to each of us.

When I hear Jenny sing, I remember that I, too, sing. I remember the many people I have known in my life who also sing, and I remember how many of them are wonderful, special singers who have never been recognized by the world. They do not have careers, you will not see or hear them, they are not going to be famous and they may never even make a professional recording. They may have given up their dreams, or been forced by life to go in a different direction, but in their hearts, that love of singing, that commitment to song — words and melody — never diminished. Those people are Jenny’s kin, they family that she has all over the world.

Those of us who sing, who are deeply commited to singing and what being a singer gives us, understand. That the soul can be fed by singing, and by listening to singers who understand how to dive deep into the ocean of sound that is in us and around us, is something singers deeply know. We realize that singing is not a material possession, we know that is cannot be weighed or measured. We comprehend that we cannot hold onto it or bequeath it to others when we die. We know it is alive moment to moment and then gone and we recognize that every singer, every song, every time, is unique and special. We live knowing that it is something to be cherished nonetheless, because the singular experience of hearing someone sing while living in each second as a carrier of the most potent force in the universe — sound — is unforgettable and always a gift.

Thanks, Jenny.

R & B or Rhythm and Blues, a form of rock music that has its roots in jazz, has very specific characteristics and you have to have a feeling for what they are. As with any style, in order to do it effectively, you have to have the sound “in your ears” which takes a lot of listening. If you do not grow up with this music, or grow up singing it, you don’t really just “do it” without help. This is true of Broadway stylistically as well. Many classically trained singers/teachers just don’t have the feeling for Broadway, even when they think they do, and even when they teach it. It’s hard to explain in words. Even the true jazz folks often don’t do well with Broadway, as it isn’t improvisational but you don’t always play what’s written exactly as it is on the page either. Some things adjust more than others. If you don’t have the difference in your ear, you can’t fake it. This has to do with how much listening you’ve done to any particular style (but under the guidance of someone who can teach you how to hear) but also how much you have sung in those styles.

The sad thing is that the people who “crossover” without working on style with someone who actually is expert in that style, often don’t know that they don’t know. I’ve seen this more times than I care to think. Young people sometimes think singing something in a different manner (a guy singing a girl’s song, making a serious song a parody, etc), in other words, taking a song and standing it on its head, is OK because is it. “Different for its own sake as an end in itself.” They think it shows how creative or talented they are but I always find this pointless. It takes a lot of skill to pull off a switch of this kind and many people try and fail. (Just ask Renee Fleming or Michael Bolton.) This is why I typically am against teachers in colleges having students sing material that the teachers do not do, because the teachers often don’t know what’s missing themselves and that just adds insult to injury.

Anyone who did our gospel workshop, taught by Dr. Ronald High, at our Institute at Shenandoah Conservatory in July will tell you that singing gospel isn’t just about learning the songs and singing them with “emotion”. Until I sang with professional gospel artists for five years, I had no idea of what was and was not part of that idiom, but I learned. I still don’t sing gospel tunes like the great gospel belters (wouldn’t think of it) but at least I can hear and appreciate what they are doing when they are secure and expressive.

There has to be a connection between the voice (or the vocal instrument), the body (posture and breathing), the personality of the singer, and the kind of music being sung. They work best when they match. Anyone who is going to sing metal had better be an athlete. If you are going to sing folk songs, maybe that’s not so necessary. If you like doing theater songs, you have to be able to act authentically but you need to know the difference between singing a song that was written in the 30s by Irving Berlin and one from the 80s by Stephen Sondheim. You don’t sing them the same way. The word “type” as it applies to theater is there for a reason.

If you are a shy 20 year old female and have a sweet light voice and no formal vocal training, and you want to sing like Christina Aguilera, you are going to encounter problems. If you are a a rock singer whose only experience with singing has been in a band, and get cast in a Broadway show, without any further training or adjustment, you will encounter problems doing 8 shows a week. It happens, and more often than you might think. If you are operatically trained and you have been hired to sing “Annie” in Annie Get Your Gun, unless you are really unusual, you will encounter problems, especially when you go back to singing opera.

If we need a specific example, let’s look at the song “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls. This song, popular now for decades, is one that’s for a vocalist with a really hardy, powerful instrument with a strong body. It’s not for a lyric voice unless that voice is no longer singing lyric material and has worked for YEARS to go in a different direction. You really need both vocal and physical strength to do it well. In Somatic Voicework™ I teach that everyone can make all sounds but I also say that the instrument matters, as does training (both type and length) and life experience (studying and singing, listening and performing). In this, we establish boundaries of both personality and function, of musical style and appropriateness. I think those things set SVW off from other approaches (although I could be wrong because I am not expert in other people’s methods). We teach body/mind, spirit/music, science/humanity. If they are all not there, we feel that the delivery is, basically, “weird” or “wrong”.

Functional training is very important if you have to work alone. You can sound fine, and feel fine, but not be doing what you need to do in a way that works. Sometimes checking for functional reasons is the only way to tell what’s going on. Listening won’t do it, acceptable musical results won’t do it, but functional evaluation will.

I am preparing at the moment to sing at a community concert for the holidays, doing a classical piece that requires a sustained pianissimo high Bb followed by a top of the staff G. I am also doing two jazz pieces. Getting ready for both of these at the same time has been challenging.

I sound fine but I don’t feel fine, although the voice is almost where I need it to go. The high stuff was always available. I could sing the piece but I thought it sounded frail or lifeless and I was working much too hard on the breathing. The jazz pieces seemed too high to do in mix but I didn’t want to do them in belty chest, either and I would never do them in head. The middle jiggled back and forth between too light, too heavy, unstable and stuck. Frustrating. Still, I knew better than to let that get in the way of practicing every day (something I do not do when I don’t have a performance pending….bad, bad). Today, for the first time, both sides of the equation were comfortable, responsive and not very hard. I know, however, that it can get better and do more. Good that I have another 10 days.

Most of the people I work with develop the ability to tell when the voice is “off” and generally can fix it themselves using the functional work we do. Sometimes, however, fixing your own voice is likely a bit like trying to fix your own teeth if you are a dentist…….

Learning what healthy function is can be a very important thing to a working singer but learning what your own healthy functional default should be is even more important and that is different for each performer, based upon what that person primarily sings. Balance is always first, but then the override has to be aimed at the material the person sings. The individual singers are the ones who have to say where their own voice needs to go. It takes me a while to find out what anyone’s voice is like when it is balanced and then a bit longer to discover how to counter-balance it towards that individual singer’s personal preference. I don’t tell the vocalist where that is, the person tells me. Sometimes it takes people a while to decide and sometimes they need to change their normal default for various reasons. They need to learn how to do that without harm and how to get back again when a particular gig or performance that demands the change is over.

Functional training is very important. It has almost nothing to do with “resonances” and “breath support”. If you do not know what it is, come to the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, in January and do the Level I training of my method, Somatic Voicework™.

Some overlap with the previous post here. Same things said a different way, but some new things, too.

Look at the song as a whole. Which phrase is the most important phrase in the entire song? Why? How many phrases lead up to it? Do any of them repeat, either in the words or in the notes, or both? Where? Look at the highest note in each phrase, locating where it is in terms of the phrase (beginning, middle, end) where it is in terms of the words (most to least important), look at how long it lasts and whether or not it has any dynamic markings. Compare this phrase to other phrases in the song, especially in terms of the form of the song (ABA, ABAB, ABC, ABCA, etc.) Make a diagram of this entire structure.

Notice the shape of the song in terms of the phrases. How many phrases lead up to the climatic moment? What happens as you go through the phrases (do they vary, and if they do, in what way)? What might the composer be suggesting in setting the music this way? Be sure to notice the density of the musical accompaniment (not a lot of notes underneath; moderate amount, but broken chords or running notes; moderate amount, but thick block chordal movement; lots of notes, lots of density with block chords, arpeggios, double octaves, extended range; a lot of notes, but not doubling the vocal line — mostly above or below the notes being sung). If the song is CCM then, can this be changed or adjusted in terms of an arrangement? Notice the dynamic markings in the accompaniment, paying attention to where they are and whether they differ from what is in the vocal line. How does this effect the overall tempo?

What other music has this composer written? Is this a typical piece? Is this typical of a certain period in the composer’s life? What do you know about the lyricist? When did they both live? What was happening then in the world, and in the area they were from? How might that have effected what they wrote/composed? What have other people done with this song in terms of how they performed it? Do you like what they have done? Why or why not?

What is the landscape of this song? If you were in a place, what place would you be in and why would you be there? Can you “walk around” (literally) in the room and see the landscape as you walk? Where is the stream, where are the rocks and trees? Where is your friend? Where is he sitting/standing? What does he have on? Where did he come from and how did he get there? Why are you there? When will you leave? Where will you go? Why will you go there?

Can you dance to this song? If it were a piece that was to be choreographed, what kind of choreography would be best? Ballet, modern, jazz, tap, ethnic music? Would you be dancing alone or with others? If you were to orchestrate it, what kind of instruments would you use?

If this song were to be painted, what colors would you use? What style — realistic, surrealism, impressionistic, romantic, cubist? If it were a sculpture, what materials would you use — clay, wood, stone, found objects? How big are they? Where did they come from? How do you react to those stimuli?

If the music were background for a film or video, can you “storyboard it” (that means make it into a cartoon, with blocks or squares for important points to illustrate the story)?

Are you tired yet?

There are so many ways to break down a song. Almost an unlimited number.

Here are a few, many of them well-known, but repeated, just in case.

Say the words out loud. Ask yourself what they mean, what they imply. Decide how you feel about that. Sing the words.

Say the words, paying particular attention to the sounded vowels. Elongate them, draw them out, very slowly. Linger on each sound. Connect all the vowels smoothly, running the words together without extra breaths in between them. Make the words into a spoken, intoned phrase. Sing the phrase with that in mind.

Say the words, noticing the rhythm of the words in speech. Pay attention to the places where the stresses are. See if you can speak the words with different stresses, even if it makes the words sound wrong. Then go back to the normal stresses, paying attention to them. Sing the phrase with that in mind.

Say the words on the rhythm, but without the pitches. Notice if that changes anything. Sing the phrase with that in mind.

Say the words gradually changing the volume, first as it seems appropriate, then randomly, without regard to the written phrase. See if you can increase and decrease the volume while also lengthening the vowels and slowing down the speed. Sing the phrase.

Sing the pitches on a nonsense syllable, paying attention to the melodic pattern. Do it several times to see where the highest and lowest pitches are in the phrase. Notice where you breathe or want to breathe or don’t want to breathe. Repeat.

Sing the pitches without rhythm on a nonsense syllable, making every note value the same. Sing the pitches the same way with the words.

Sing the rhythms on pah or dah, without pitch (stay on one note). Notice anywhere the rhythm is repeated, where the stresses (beats) are, where the patterns are. Say the words on rhythm. Sing the phrase. Notice any shifts in your own awareness.

Listen to the accompaniment separately. Notice its characteristics. Is it simple or complicated? Does it sit underneath the vocal line or is it a counterpoint? Is it musically difficult, in either rhythm or intervals or both? What range does it cover and where? Why would the composer have written it this way? Does it convey an image, a mood or a state of being (peaceful, aggitated, etc.)? Notice the rhythm, notice the stresses, identify the harmonic or chordal structure.

Think about the printed key. See if you can play or sing the song in other keys to notice if that changes the feeling or mood of the song overall.

Ask yourself why the composer might have chosen these words or this poem? What could have been his or her interest or motivation? Why was the poetry inspirational? Why was the music inspirational? What kinds of ideas or reasons would have been part of the creation of the piece overall? How do you relate to those ideas?

What can you say about the words as a story? If the song is traditional, what kind of story do the words convey? What might have been happening before? What will happen after? Where are you when you are singing? Is anyone else there? If so, where are they? Are they responding? If so, what are they saying? What made you say what you are singing? How do you feel when you sing the words?

If you are singing while standing, how are you standing? What do you look like to others? What are you doing with your body and why? Where are your arms, hands and feet? Why are they positioned the way they are? Do they stay still or move? Why? What should I know about the communication of the song by your body language? Are you congruent between your body, your movements, your words and your sound? [If the song is angry, do you look angry all the way down to your toes?]

Do you believe yourself when you are singing? If not, why not? What can you do to make yourself convinced that what you are singing about is real and important? If you are singing a sad song, do you feel sad when you sing it? If not, why not?

Has the composer asked you to do two contrary things? That is, has she set happy words to a long slow soft phrase? Has she set sad words to a jumpy fast rhythm and melody? Has she set a question with a descending vocal line? Has she written a climatic phrase in such as way as to de-emphasize the words? What does that suggest to you in terms of communicating the story or the music or both?

There’s more, but that’s enough for now. Have fun.