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Choosing Songs at Your Level of Expertise
The process of choosing a song which suits your accomplishment level can stump many singers. Once selected, starting a new song can be so much fun. Digging into the phrasing, the story, and the vocal challenges [more…]
Choosing a Song that Suits You
Finding songs that suit your interest and skill is not as difficult as you might think. The following list includes the three basic song levels from which you want to choose. [more…]
Determining Your Singing Level: Range, Leaps, and High Notes
Three factors to consider when determining your singing level are your range, your ability to take leaps and your high note range. Assessing yourself honestly in these factors will help you pick appropriate [more…]
Acting Your Song: Exploring Character
You want to make your performance well rounded and interesting to the audience, so you need to do some detective work on your song. Take a close look into the character singing the song. Every song has [more…]
Acting Your Song: Character Development
Answering fundamental questions about the character singing your song leads you to some specific details about how to portray that character when you’re alone onstage. [more…]
Determining Your Singing Level
When determining your singing level, you must consider several factors. These issues include how to battle fatigure, song speed, working effectively with your accompianist, story-telling, and working effectively [more…]
Determining Your Appropriate Singing Key
The trick when picking music is to read music well enough to know whether the song’s notes are within your range. You don’t have to know everything about what’s on the page; you just need to know enough [more…]
Singing to Your Strengths
You want to emphasize your particular singing talents whether you sing at your cousin’s wedding, at a family gathering, for an audition, in church, or as part of karaoke night at a local pub. [more…]
Checking Out Music at Your Local Library
The library is a great place to search for singing music. It’s free, and you can check out the book to try the song at home at your own pace. If you find that it’s not in the right key, you save yourself [more…]
How to Tackle a New Song in Steps
Many singers try to conquer all the details of a brand-new song in one session. But picking up an unfamiliar song and getting the words, rhythms, and melody right at the same time may take more than one [more…]
Memorizing Song Lyrics as Text
A good way to memorize lyrics is to look at the song as a monologue or a story. Write or type the words, including the punctuation, so you can examine the lyrics apart from the melody and take a look at [more…]
Musical Elements in Different Styles
Music written on the page is the same for any style of music. The notation is the same, but how the music is performed isn’t the same. In opera and classical music, singers sing exactly what’s on the page [more…]
Breath Control in Singing: How and When to Breathe
You probably already figured out that you have to pay attention to your breathing when you sing. In fact, proper breath control can make the difference between singing successfully and failing. [more…]
Paying Attention to a Song's Punctuation
The punctuation in a song tells the singer where the big thoughts are. As with written and spoken text, periods indicate complete thoughts and commas point to lists and auxiliary phrases. Punctuation indicates [more…]
Catching and Timing Your Breath while Singing
Learning how and when to breathe is an important ingredient in singing properly. Learning to catch and time your breathe for each song you sing is critical to a quality performance. [more…]
Changing the Tone for Each Song Section
Each section of a song must have a distinct feel or tone. To convey different tones in different sections, you need to make a change of thought to create a change of tone. Look through your song and determine [more…]
Using Musical Elements to Create Your Singing Arrangement
When you start working on your new song, how do you create the arrangement that works for you? How do you make the song yours? You can start by listening to other arrangements to see and hear the elements [more…]
Creating Your Singing Arrangement: Articulation, Dynamics and Tempo
Creating an arrangement for your song involves many musical elements which you need to assess. Among these factors you need to experiment with are lyric articulation, dynamics and tempo. [more…]
Creating Your Singing Arrangement: Vocal Variety
Use vocal variety in your song arrangement through variations in registration and resonance. If you make the same exact sound throughout the song, it sounds repetitive after the first few phrases. Gradually [more…]
Creating Your Singing Arrangement: Accompanist
When you decide how you want to sing your song, mark your music with the directions so the accompanist knows how to follow you. You can highlight the tempo and dynamic markings to make sure that your accompanist [more…]
Seeing the Song As a Story
Every well-written song takes the listener on a journey that uses text and music to tell a story. Well-written songs offer you an opportunity to create a partnership with the words and music. Working the [more…]
Acting Your Song: Accounting for Interludes
Your biggest job as a singer is to say something when you sing. Standing up and singing memorized words is just the beginning. Apply your acting skills to a song for a powerful performance. Give your audience [more…]
Create Your Arrangement: Comparing Songs
Determining which song arrangement to add to your repertoire depends on many factors. When comparing songs you need to at least consider the storyline and strength, the performance venue, and what sort [more…]
Where to Find Sheet Music for Singing
When you finally know what you want in singing music, you have to go shopping to get it. Choosing music may be the harder of the tasks. You have the choice of walking into a store and looking at the music [more…]
Nailing the Singing Audition: Do Your Prep Work
Knowing your style, choosing your song, and preparing your music are the most important steps you take in preparing for your audition. But you don’t want to let the small things fall through the cracks [more…]
