Sunday, 18 October 2015

References

The Guardian (2009) Pop Singing Advice [online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/may/10/pop-singing-advice [Accessed18th October 2015]

The Guardian (2009) Jazz Singing Advice [online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/may/10/jazz-singing-advice [Accessed 29th October 2015]

Become a Singing Master (n.d.) How Can You Master Rock Music
Singing Techniques?
[online] Available at: http://www.become-a-singing-master.com/rock-music-singing-techniques.html [Accessed November 13th 2015]

Philips, P. S. (2011) Singing for Dummies. 2nd ed. [pdf] Hoboken: Wiley Publishing Inc. Available at: www.ysa.yolasite.com/resources/Singing%20%20For%20Dummies.pdf [Accessed 22nd December 2015]

Follin, A. (2015) Vocal coaching for Musical Theatre [online] Available at: http://www.vocalskills.co.uk/Musical-theatre-singing-lessons.html [Accessed 28th December 2015]

British Phonographic Industry (n.d.) Catfish and the Bottlemen [online] Available at: https://www.bpi.co.uk/catfish-and-the-bottlemen.aspx [Accessed 2nd January 2016]

Pop Music

The first style of music I will be looking at is pop. Pop is short for popular, so pop music is usually what a lot of people like to listen to and is what we hear on the radio as chart music. Pop music does not always follow exactly what is written, singers add riffs, breaks, longer and shorter notes in order to make a piece of music there own. The intention of pop music is to communicated a feeling or emotion, therefore creating a different vocal arrangement can help to communicate your idea. After practising the techniques below I will sing a pop song and then analyse my outcome.

"All singing requires support, and pop is no exception. A good way to connect your voice to your body is to place a finger in front of your lips, touch them, and blow firmly. You should feel the connection to your stomach muscles, and the contraction of the abdominal area.
To work on speech quality, a vocal technique commonly used in pop that is closer to speaking than singing, try saying "uh-oh" with an edge on it. That's called starting a sound with a glottal onset, which means that the sound starts before the breath. If you say "ho-ho" with an "h", you can feel your breath escaping. Now say "uh-oh" again without the "h" and engage your abdominal muscles up a bit. The glottal onset is an important part of speech quality, which is the communicating factor in singing - it's what people recognise when we talk. Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morrisette both have terrific speech quality. Speech quality singing becomes much harder in the higher range. To practise this, try singing "ee", going up in thirds (ie do-me-so). The sides of the tongue should touch the insides of the top back molars. Add a glottal onset to "ee", then say "hee" with a big "h", and feel the difference - the former gives a clearer speech quality." (The Guardian, 2009)


Sunday, 11 October 2015

Introduction

This semester I'd really like to push my singing abilities. To do this each week I will be looking into different genres of music and working on specific techniques for that style. I will be focussing on five different genres; pop, rock, jazz, country and musical theatre. From this is hope to figure out which style suits my vocals the best and create my individual piece of music from my findings.