Rock & Roll 101

December 3rd, 2019

We continued working on some songs for the Messiah - we found a video that Ross could practice with, which I emailed to him.

November 26th, 2019

We continued to work on Messiah songs today.

November 19th, 2019

Ross had his first practice with the other singers on Saturday - he came with a list of songs they're doing. We worked on Amen together - wow, a hard one!

November 12th, 2019

We continued working through Messiah songs.

November 5th, 2019

Jason sick today.

October 29th, 2019

We reviewed another song from the Messiah.

October 22nd, 2019

October 15th, 2019

We continued working on the Messiah, and looked at adding two new songs to the list.

October 8th, 2019

We worked on transitioning through the falsetto and getting to the high D note. Using the diaphram to pull down while you sing high can really help.

October 1st, 2019

Continued with the Messiah, dropping down an octave when the notes were too high.

Near the end of the lesson Ross was able to get those high Ds, so perhaps more air is the key.

September 24th, 2019

We started working on the Messiah today - I suggested Ross format his parts by photocopying so that only his parts are on the page - or just remove the piano parts.

September 17th, 2019

September 10th, 2019

September 3rd, 2019

June 25th, 2019

June 18th, 2019

June 11th, 2019

June 4th, 2019

May 27th, 2019

May 21st, 2019

May 14th, 2019

May 7th, 2019

April 30th, 2019

April 23rd, 2019

April 16th, 2019

April 9th, 2019

April 2nd, 2019

March 26th, 2019

March 19th, 2019

Ross is sick today.

March 12th, 2019

March 5th, 2019

February 26th, 2019

February 19th, 2019

Ross and I had a good lesson, working through Barret's Privateers in Bb, which seems like the best key.

We talked again about where to breathe, and also pronouciation of certain vowels to make it easier to sing really high notes. I wrote out some notes on the sheet, and gave it to him to work on.

I also recorded the song in Bb for him to practice with.

Next week we're going to start a new song - he'll send me the right recording by email.

February 12th, 2019

lesson cancelled from the snow.

February 5th, 2019

January 29th, 2019

January 22nd, 2019

We continued with Barret's Privateers - because the melody was hard to follow, we found sheet music and used that to work out the notes.

There is a high B and C (4) that we focused on a bit to work out those notes.

January 15th, 2019

January 8th, 2019

Good job today! We talked about music - expression of the melody and lyrics.

Stan Rogers, Barret's Privateers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwzRkjn86w

December 18th, 2018

We had a good lesson today - we warmed up with the Doe through Sew scale, then worked on 5ths (Doe - Sew - Doe).

We also did breathy singing through Hallelujah, something that may help develop variation in singing, and to increase breath.

I realize now that I saved last week's notes under December 18th, so you're going to get two emails today.

December 11th, 2018

Ross sounded stronger in his singing today, and did much better staying on the note. When singing too, there were fewer places where I heard him go off note.

We went through Hallelujah together (in Eb), and then The Boxer, in G.

His comfortable singing range in this song is from a low G (g-2) to an octave above that.

December 4th, 2018

Good job today!

Here's the piano we found:
http://www.keithwhor.com/music/

Also the program was called Vocal Pitch Monitor.

Remember about punching notes (not to), and adding some sentencial expression to your phrases, as if you're a really interesting reader, you know, the people who can make the telephone book interesting.

One thing you can do is to listen to other vocalists and see if you can identify a few different ways they express their meaning with volume, intensity, pausing, etc.

November 27th, 2018

Here's the app that shows the line for your pitch:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tadaoyamaoka.vocalpitchmonitor&hl=en_CA

Today we continued with warming up on 5 note scales, starting on a low G and moving up to about an octave higher, a bit more, then back down. We just did "Ahh" for most of it, a bit of Eee.

I recorded a slower version of the scale for him.

We also recorded the lesson so he could sing along in the right keys.

November 20th, 2018

Ross has come along quite nicely - the singing of Hallelujah was fine, with staying in tune and on melody.

We started the lesson with a warm up, doing some scales, and I though perhaps his voice was tired, as he struggled a bit more than he has other times.

We then did chord note singing, where I play a chord, and then encourage him to sing each of the notes of the chord.

That went quite well, and I think it might be a good way to develop an ear for staying on pitch.

Ross, this is an app which might help with visual feedback of pitch:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tadaoyamaoka.vocalpitchmonitor&hl=en_US

We added a new song, by Simon and Garfunkle called The Boxer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LFML_pxlY

November 13th, 2018

Ross I continued to work on the scales, first with Ah sound, and then combining Ooo and Ah, and Eee and Ah. We went through the scales up and down from about the key of A up to about B flat or B.

We then added "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen as our first song to apply some of these ideas to. We did it in the key of D, nice and low.

Some things to remember and work on:

1. diaphramatic breathing, using the lower tummy to support the sound.

2. singing with open vowel sounds - try to get really pure EE and AH sounds that don't contain any other vowel sounds (your EE sometimes sounds a bit like IhE)

November 6th, 2018

Today in Ross' first lesson we started by determining his ability to sing in tune and hear what he is singing.

This was not a problem at all- he is able to hear and make adjustments to find a note. Sometimes it's hard to get the starting note, but usually after that he's fine.

We did a few excercises and scales, and talked about singing with 'punching' notes at the top and bottom of each section (scale) of the excercise. I recorded it for him in his range (which is about low E flat to mid F sharp.)