Learn to Sing

In my blog post today I’m going to take you through the benefits of taking singing lessons, and what happens in lessons with me. I’ve rarely met anyone who hasn’t dreamed of having singing lessons or working on their voice - but what do lessons entail? What happens in a lesson when you are a pupil, and what will you gain from lessons?

“The only thing better than singing, is more singing”

— Ella Fitzgerald

Why do people take singing lessons?

There are a number of reasons people take singing lessons, here is a list of some of the main ones I’ve encountered.

• For enjoyment. Singing is enjoyable, and it makes us feel good. Many pupils take lessons simply because they enjoy the chance to sing and make music together. This is something I love sharing with my pupils.

• To improve confidence. Many people feel vulnerable or self-conscious when performing, but lessons can help to give you confidence. Some people use lessons to help them learn and have more confidence to join or audition for choirs, musical theatre groups, sing with their guitar, or to join their local opera or Gilbert and Sullivan groups.

  Sometimes pupils feel more confident presenting and public speaking in their jobs through their practise performing in singing lessons.

• To gain qualifications through exams - school exams or College/University/ABRSM/Trinity/etc exams that progress through grades.

• To learn more about technique. The human voice changes throughout our lives, so even the most experienced singer will continue to work on their technique. Lessons can help to ground your warm-up and practise with up-to-date information and ideas to help you with whatever stage you are at.

• To explore different sounds. We all have the capability to make different sounds with our voices - and make different decisions about how certain phrases or songs should sound to communicate what we want to the audience. In lessons we can explore different sounds and choose which one you would like to use.

• To problem solve. Some pupils have experienced difficulty doing something with their voice, or conquering a certain technique or repertoire. Lessons can help you work towards your goals.

• To work on the performance or repertoire. Having a second person in the room can be useful to give you another perspective on your performance. Your teacher can guide you through portraying a character, showing journey, and making musical choices to ground that portrayal.

What happens in my singing lessons?

• Firstly, I’ll invite a new pupil to sit and we will have a chat. I’ll introduce myself a little, and I ask about your previous experiences learning music (if any), your understanding of music, the body, and reading music, and your goals for lessons. I may make notes to remind myself - for instance if you can read music a little I know you can find your own note to start in your practice. If not, we will find other ways to help you.

• I will ask how your voice feels today, check you have no illness, allergies, or feel tired. All these things may affect our lesson and what we sing together.

• I will sit at the piano because I can play/accompany you for your lesson. Sometimes I use recordings for you to listen to/sing with, but for live performance practise and technical work I prefer using the piano as it gives us more freedom to stop and experiment.

• Warm Up. We will sing a general/easy warm up of several exercises aimed to gently warm up your voice, and introduce the sung sound into our session. I know this can be a nerve-wracking thing for a new pupil (I’ve been there too!) so I will explain that these noises are for ‘play’ and experiment. They are not meant to be judged - in fact that isn't really my job at all!

  I will choose exercises depending on your voice type, how comfortably you are singing in our lesson, and if you mentioned something in your goals you wish to work on.

• We will sing a song. Either you will have brought music to sing together, or I will have music for you to learn. In regular lessons you may work on more than one piece for each lesson. The pieces you are working on will probably contrast - different emotions, different characters, different languages, different historical style etc. This avoids singing with the same style as it makes you sing out-with your comfort zone and make new muscle memory, helping you grow as a singer.

What will I gain from singing lessons?

This will depend entirely on you, and your goals!

• You will enjoy singing with a live accompaniment, learning a song from an unknown piece of music up to performance standard

• You will learn new ways to use technique and your voice to alter the sound you make

• You will learn how to negotiate different phrases to make them sound the way you want them to

• You will learn a variety of repertoire, including songs you may never have heard of before, broadening your knowledge and understanding of your voice

• You will learn to think about the interpretation and performance of your music, and develop your skills as a communicator

• You will become more confident in the sound you make from gaining better understanding of your voice

• You will learn a skill, with many different aspects that shows development and skill attainment. This will give you a sense of achievement and pride, regardless of whether you sit exams or learn for your own enjoyment

• You will learn a skill that you can share with others whether at home, with your friends or family, or taking part in performances

• You will learn the skills of how to use your voice so that you can problem solve technique and work on music yourself

I have a broad experience of teaching and have taught people with different learning styles and approaches, so please let me know if there is anything you would like to share with me about you before your lesson.

I always aim to teach in a way that helps each pupil achieve and succeed in their own goals, and I am open to altering our lessons to help you do this.

love

‘And the stars were shining, and the earth was scented. The gate of the garden creaked and a footstep grazed the sand… Fragrant, she entered and fell into my arms.’

translation into English, from Tosca, by Puccini

Love is the emotion we are probably asked to convey more than any other, in music. This month, my blog is going to give you some singing and performance tips and tricks on how to convey the emotion of love in your singing or music performance. Whether new to performance or a pro, these are some of the ways to experiment as part of your practise to leave the audience in no doubt of what you are trying to convey, without having to make a heart with your hands!

1 Text, context, character, historical research.

If you are singing something in/from an opera or musical, make sure you understand your character and the plot before and after your aria. You need to find out if your character really means it. Are they so madly in love as to make the eventual heartache/tragedy even more poignant? Or perhaps your character isn’t sure, they have some questions. Is your character merely full of lust instead of love? You might want to think of ways to convey this in your performance - is your voice or body language fully committed to the words you are saying? By experimenting in your own practise you will try out a multitude of versions, perhaps also trying out some different things just as a director might wish to ask you to do in the production.

If you are singing a song or playing an instrumental piece - what is the character you will choose for your performance? How do you choose to convey the meaning of the poem? Has this altered over the centuries? What are the ways other recordings and artists have conveyed the emotional message?

If you are singing or playing a duet, are you playing in harmony? If you are making beautiful music in thirds… love birds are in the air!

2 Thought: Breathe: Sing

Whether singing or playing, the thought must come first. Music and singing are the conveying of an emotional message using language both with and without text. We sang before we had language. We talk by first thinking of the emotional content before breathing and talking.

It will alter the tone and colour of your voice - just as when you talk your voice is different when you are saying the same phrase but with a different emotion.

• If your body is playing an instrument, it is also useful to communicate in your playing with your body - if you are impassioned, or full of enthusiasm you may move more.

• If you are angry those movements may be more staccato.

• If you are calm and serene your movements will be very legato and smooth, perhaps long and flowing.

3 Mirror Practise

It is hard to always know how successful our movements or facial acting are, so don’t forget your best friend the mirror. It not only shows you what you might not want to do, but also what you should do more of. Subtlety not usually connected with displays of love or passion! Whilst your subtlety may be beautiful in a small room - does it read in a Concert Hall?

As you observe your performance check in on these questions:

• Do I look like I’m in love? For instance: Smiling, happy, bright face, enthusiastic, long glances and holding eye contact with the other character

• Is my body language matching the emotion I wish to portray? For instance: open posture, hugging/selfhug posture, stroking/smooth movements when moving, wide arms and shoulders, legs routed hip distance or so apart not narrow, legs uncrossed, confident walk, relaxed movements or energised excited. We often talk about people who are in love walking around in a daze, or being in their own world. If this is suitable, perhaps you are staring into the distance smiling.

4 Showing emotion in the voice

Adding colour to the voice to portray different emotions is integral to your technical work. The work of breathing and opening into spaces is often done for you if you simply add an emotion, then breathe, then sing. That’s right: singing is not just a list of anatomical movements that will make you a good singer.

Arias and music of great love and passion are usually legato, rich, full, have swells of dynamics. So how will you use this in your performance?

Isolate a phrase or passage and experiment with these:

• Any legato passages make sure you are using every inch of space in your voice. Stroke those phrases like the bow on the string

• Crescendos and diminuendos in keeping with the era the music is from - always historically informed, obviously!

• To add or ensure you are using a rich velvety colour experiment with speaking the phrases with feeling

‘I loooove rich chocolate’ over emphasising the sung quality of the spoken voice, open into the space you will then sing your passionate phrase.

Gently sirening on an mmMMMMmmmm with a crescendo and diminuendo as though you love the smell of what is cooking, or a favourite perfume/aftershave.

As ever, the best way to work on communication is with a teacher who will guide and help you experiment to find your own true performance. What works for one singer or performer will not work for another - so you are looking for your interpretation and technique. This will ensure you sing with your own true voice and complete commitment to the music.

Happy Experimenting!

I’ve made a Youtube playlist on my channel with some of my favourite romantic arias, duets, and trios from opera and musicals. They were all recorded live - and chosen because they feature some wonderful examples of singing and performance. Enjoy researching and being inspired by these wonderful artists.

As always, feel free to leave your comments below - what helps you convey love in a performance? Did I miss something out? Did you find this post useful in your practise?

singing lessons: why do we sing?

Exploring some of the science behind why we sing.

There are lots of reasons that we as humans sing - as a teacher I’ve had pupils come for lessons for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes the reason they started lessons aren’t the same as the reasons they continue, but they are all welcome!

Singing has many benefits for us, some obvious, and some a little more hidden.

Which of these reasons do you recognise?

As a teacher, my job is to welcome you to lessons and help you reach your goals.

One of the first things I do is to ask you what your goals are, establishing some of the reasons that have brought you to my studio.

This is a valuable time for me to find out all about you. Some people wish to learn a certain song or have a goal of singing a certain type of music or for a particular performance, and others simply enjoy the process of learning about their voice and singing music with me each week.

When teaching adult learners it is unusual that someone joins me with no experience of music or singing, so it’s nice to know what that is.

How you describe your past experiences helps me understand what kind of experiences they were - were they all positive? Why did you stop? If there was a particular reason you might prefer not to talk about it, but it is usually apparent in the way you describe the past.

My job is to help you and your voice from our meeting onwards, without negativity or judgement. My studio is a positive space open to all.

So why do we sing? What makes us want to do that or encourages us to meet with others and sing together? Here are some of the psychological reasons why.

• Deep breathing

  Singing encourages calm, regular, deep breathing, and full exhalation. We know these things to all be helpful for both mind and body. They encourage a feeling of calm, relaxation, reduce stress and blood pressure

• Accomplishment

  Learning a skill, developing knowledge and ability, gives a sense of accomplishment and pride. We enjoy tasks with slow or fast development that challenge us

• Complex task

  Singing uses many parts of the brain all at once, particularly if you count performance and memorization as part of the process. Our brains enjoy complex tasks, and these are in turn good for our brains. It is an in-depth focussed activity that forces us to concentrate. If you are learning music to perform in a musical or opera you are also adding in movement and acting. We know complex tasks are good at keeping our brains working well as we age

• Connection to others

  The act of meeting with others, joining together to sing a song in rehearsal or performance, builds a feeling of connection and bonding that is positive for us.

• Communication beyond language

  A parent singing lullabies to their baby soothes the infant but also conveys that they matter. The act of singing a lullaby to your child releases the ‘love hormone’ Oxytocin in the parent, and decreases the stress hormone cortisone.

• Music makes us feel good

  Music has been shown to have a positive effect on people with depressions and anxiety, and to reduce cortisol levels

• Conveys Emotion

  Singing music helps us to process emotion - we access memories, we convey emotions, we work through our sadness/grief, and we celebrate with song.

  ‘we sing the blues not just because we are sad, but to give the emotion voice. I think all of us have had the experience of knowing the emotions of a performer by just hearing them sing or play’ - John Lennon, retired professor of Emporia State University

It amazes me that there are so many scientific, measurable benefits to singing! Teaching in schools and privately I have witnessed the joy and mood-boosting effects of singing and music and it is always a wonderful thing to be part of that.

I hope you have enjoyed this list, if you wish a more complex explanation, follow the links to some of the science. 

Why do you enjoy singing? As ever, feel free to comment below.