Unit 64 - Singing techniques in performance

Tuesday 27^th February

To start off the morning session, we carried out a full comprehensive singing warmup. We started with some stretches which was followed by walking around the room with our arms out to the sides and moving them in small circles. We then did some punches out to the sides and up and down. After this we then carried out the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise, abdominal press and long note on ‘ha’. We then moved over to the piano where we carried out scales, arpeggios and the technical exercise. Now that our voices were nice and warm, we were able to move on to the main part of the session.

The main aim of this session was to start working on the song ‘The lion sleeps tonight’. We have decided that it would be nice to perform another group song as the other group song, ‘The sweet escape’ is mainly sung by me on lead vocal. Therefore, ‘The lion sleeps tonight’ will give us an opportunity to sing more as a group. We started working on the harmonies in the song. Most of the song is filled with the line ‘A-weema-weh’, and this line has great potential for a harmony. We therefore started trying some 3 part harmonies with me on the highest note, Kellyann on the middle note and Molly on the lowest note. We each tried singing our harmony line separately and then once we were all comfortable with our notes, we put them all together. After some practicing together, the harmony really started to take shape. In some places, Molly was struggling a little with sticking to her note but I think that the more she practices this, the better she will become at it. For the verses, we have split them so that we sing a verse each – first verse sung by Molly, second by me and the third by Kellyann. We ran through the whole song a few times so that we could start to learn the lyrics. We will need to keep practicing this song but it is taking shape quite quickly.
At the end of the session, we had a small bit of time to practice some of the other songs for the performance. Here is a video of me singing through 'In the summertime':

Here is a video of us practicing 'The Sweet Escape':

We were then able to have another session in the afternoon because our normal lesson was cancelled. This would then give us more time to practice for the singing performance.

We started the session this afternoon with some listening tests. This gives me a chance to practice these and also to help tune in the ear ready for singing. The first listening tests that we carried out were identification tasks where we have to listen to what was being played on the piano and then say what we thought it was. This included major and minor chords, identifying 2, 3 and 4 note chords and 3|4 timing or 4|4 timing. We then also carried out some melodic phrases and finishing off the tune.

We then moved on to practicing through the songs for the singing performance. The first song that we practiced was ‘Mr Blue Sky’. We didn’t get a chance to practice this this morning so we now had a chance to practice the harmonies with Molly and Kellyann. We then ran through ‘In the summertime’, ‘We’re going to Ibiza’ and ‘The sweet escape’. All of these songs are coming along nicely and don’t need much more work to them before the performance.

For the rest of the session we were joined by Sam who will be playing guitar for us during the singing performance. We therefore ran through all of the songs slowly so that Sam can start learning the chords for each of the songs. This took a while because we would sing a part of the song and then have to stop so that Sam could write down the chords. However, we did manage to get through all of the songs and Cara and Sam have arranged a time at which they are both free so they can work on the chords together.