Unit 64 - Singing techniques in performance

Tuesday 30^th January

To start off the session we carried out a full singing warmup as a group. This included shaking out the body, stretches, intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise, scales, arpeggios and the technical exercise.

For the main part of the session today, Molly and Kellyann were learning the harmonies which Cara and I worked on yesterday. They already know the harmonies in the chorus which they will be singing but they don’t know the ones in the verses yet.

The first harmony is in verse after the first chorus on the line ‘is the day we’ve waited for’. I am singing the tune and the girls will be singing a harmony which will be higher than the tune. The next harmony is on the line ‘I remember you this way’ in the last verse. The last harmony is in the piece at the end of the song where we will be singing ‘ohh’. The three of us will be singing the same part for this part except for the last 2 notes of each section. The harmony will be created by Molly and Kellyann dropping down an octave at the end of each section for the last 2 notes. We repeat the section 3 times and on the last time, we hold the note. Each of these harmonies really adds dynamic to the piece. Cara and I sang through the song once so that we could show the girls what this was going to sound like and then we started teaching them these parts. There was only 1 of the harmonies which they were slightly struggling on and that was the last one. The reason for this is because it wasn’t very clear as to where we could breathe to enable us to hold the last note. However, after some discussion, we figured out a place where we will be able to take a breath to enable us to sing the very last note for as long as possible.