Unison vowel production in Music Education

I have been through many exercises for unison vowel production, and the best I have found was taught to me by my own vocal coach, Dr.Jan E. Bickel, D.M.A at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.  She gave it to me as an excellent way to practice a smooth phrase:

Take the phrase we used last time, “In the land of the living, I will walk with God all my days.”

• Take away the consonants, and now you are left with:    “I  e  a  o  e  i  i, i  i  a  i  o  a  y  a”     (In the land of the living, I will walk with God all my days).                                                                                                 
•  Have the choir pronounce the vowel sounds as they appear in the phrase (no  diphthongs):     i      uh    a     uh        uh  i   ee,      ah    i     aw    i     o    aw    ah    A  (In thuh land uhv thuh liveeng, Ah will wawk with God awll mah daze)

OK, get ready for mutiny….this takes a little time to master; visual handouts for the choir, or even the vowel sounds written on the board are essential; but what results!

• Now have the choir sing only the vowels on their correct pitches and then have them connect the vowels to each other, sing in a very legato manner to produce a smooth phrase.
• Finally, have them put the consonants back in (they’ll be soooo relieved), but lightly!  Just touch the consonants.

This is a wonderful way to get your choir to produce a lovely, smooth, truly unison phrase.  This same exercise is helpful for unlocking the breath.

….more later!

Music Education: Now the vowels….

Now that we’ve got the choir taking breaths simultaneously and completing phrases before taking the next breath, it’s time to move on to vowels.

Forming a unison vowel sound is harder than you think; before you even attempt to ask the choir to “enunciate”, you’d do well to make sure everyone’s vowel sounds are homogenous. The world we live in today is multicultural; the days of everybody in a community producing the same accent are over….besides, any trained singer will tell you that a spoken vowel is indeed produced differently when it is sung.  This student of the voice has learned to produce vowels, and can lead their choir in simple vowel exercises.  Be sure not to skip or be slack in this…remember, unison singing is far more than just all the voices of the choir singing the same part !

 A wonderful exercise next time……

Music Education and Birdie Notation

Ha!  Take that, Twitter!

There was a commercial on TV not too long ago where a composer, having a bad time with his work at the piano, looked out the window and saw birds sitting on wires.  They were positioned just so;  their little birdie bodies looked like musical notation on a staff.   Remember it?

Well, here’s a little treat for you…a composer actually did it!  Click on this link:    Birdie Notation    to view this video and see what the composer came up with.

Well, Jarbas Agnelli is certainly not the first to try making music in that way, but it’s fun to see and hear someone’s efforts on an old music education technique.  Don’t pass up reading the comments…they’re a hoot!

I would love to hear from you about this….go on, give it a try!  It’s an excellent assignment to give your music appreciation class.

Michelle

When To Breathe: Unison Singing in Music Education

Practicing when to breathe sounds like a no-brainer; the beginning of every phrase, right?  Well, usually….take this phrase:  “In the land of the living, I will walk with God all my days”, sounding like this: 

 “In the land of the liv-ing—–, I will walk—- with God—– all my days—–“. 

 Most choirs, without proper direction, would sing the phrase in this way:  “In the land of the liv-ing—–,   I will walk—-   with God —– (breath)   all my days—–“.

Always tell your choir to let punctuation be their guide.  Ideally, the above phrase should be sung on only one breath; but as this is a good exercise for learning to work as a unit, have them practice taking a breath at the comma after the word “living”, and then practice singing the rest of the phrase without breaking: 

“In the land of the living—-, (breath) I will walk—- with God—-all my days—- (breath).  You can see here that practicing not taking a breath is just as important as practicing when to breathe.  You can also see that you, as the music educator, need to be extremely prepared; every single breath must be planned by you and executed by the choir, knowing that there are occasions when the time they should take a breath can be unexpected. 

Now, I do not advocate breathing at each place of punctuation; I know that this is a methodology used by some, and it is not for me to say what is artistically correct.  I prefer to use the punctuation so that a breath can be taken without disturbing the phrase.  However, this is a personal choice, and you must decide for yourself how you will use the punctuation to help your choir achieve a beautiful phrase.

You can’t assume that the choir will just know to carry the tone to the next piece of punctuation…they won’t!  This is especially important when you are teaching hymns; the choir will tend to phrase each verse exactly the same way as the stanza before.  After all, they think, they’ve sung hymns all  their lives; they know the formula…..But it is your job to convince them to step out of their comfort zone, and pay attention to the punctuation.

As always, I invite comments on this subject; I would love to know your methods!

Unison Singing in Music Education

 I cannot stress the importance of unison singing in music education!  Learning to sing as a single unit is the most crucial skill a music director can teach a choir.  I have heard many choir conductors say, “Now, make sure you really pronounce your words”, but exactly how to pronounce those words is not taught; likewise, I have also heard  “Make sure to put on your endings”.  Well, yes, that is important….but if it’s overdone, or if not enough attention is  paid to formation of dipthongs, we could be headed for a mess.

But let’s first discuss breathing and phrasing; just as there is no way you can teach your choir everything they need to know in a few sessions, neither can I impart the steps of good unison singing in one post.  Teaching your choir how to take a deep, quiet breath without letting all the air go in the first few words will have to wait; today you need to teach them when to breathe…..and by extension, when not to breathe.

Often we hear from our excellent instructors that the breath is everything in music production, no matter what the instrument. They will say that correct breathing, maintaining support throughout the phrase and learning to use the body correctly is the alpha and omega of learning to make music, and I couldn’t agree more.  But when we take the first step in choral singing, we first have to learn to sing, and breathe, in unison….

Music Education and Mr G

I was under a director once, Robert Guenzler, when I was in high school.  After spending a good portion of the first few sessions of the school year in practicing good unison singing, he always taught a piece to the choir in this way:

 

 

1. Everyone was given their pitch.
2. We went entirely through the song (unless we just fell down so badly we had to be given new pitches for the desecrated section) ; we did our level best to sight read the music, even though most of us were newbies!
3. After we finished, Mr. Guenzler would then break the song into its phrases, and teach each voice.

Certainly the song wasn’t wonderful that first time through,. Often at that point we were nervous, and we thought we would never make it sound just right; but after a little experience with the material under his direction, we would
become more comfortable with the piece. 

 

After working on several pieces with him, we gained more and more confidence in our ability.  We also knew that with Mr. “G” conducting in front of us, we would never fall on our faces at our concert; we felt assured that we were in good hands, and that he always had our back.

From Bob Guenzler, I learned how to be a good conductor; not how to “conduct”, that I learned in college.  But he taught me that it is your job as a conductor to make the choir, or any performing group, absolutely sure that they can depend on you to hold them in your hands.

The best part is…I didn’t even know I was learning that!  Being a music educator, at that time, was not part of my plans; but Mr.Guenzler was an influence, nevertheless.  He may not have been the first music teacher I had, but he was definitely one of the best.

How to advertise yourself as a music educator

Several years ago, I grabbed a friend of mine, John Clark, to play piano for me while I sang at a another friend’s recording studio.  I was able, then, to give a CD of myself  to prospective brides.  In order to advertise myself online, I had to convert the songs on the CD to MP3 wav files.

For the uneducated among us (and I include myself in that category), here is how I did it:

I entered “how to convert CD into MP3” in the search bar.  This gave me a whole bunch of sites to choose from.  I went with

http://www.eusing.com/CDRipper/CDRipper.htm – you can download it for free.

After downloading , insert your CD into the CD/DVD player of your computer:
 
1) select desired track
2) click “extract” – it extracts and automatically encodes
3) click “folder” to see and hear your selection,
4) left click, chose “send to”, then select “MyDocuments” 

From there, I put the new wav file into “My Music” – or you can create a folder and title it yourself
 
…and then I upload to whatever site I’m working on (instead of  an”upload” button, some websites may have buttons that say “browse”)

It was far easier than I thought.  If you don’t have a CD of your own, I strongly suggest you have one made; it’s a very handy tool for internet usage, and going to a studio and recording yourself is quite an experience!

Tempo and Music Education

This morning I heard Fred Childs on NPR’s “Performance Today” speak about tempo.  He used as an example Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”; he contrasted two renditions: one was a very slow adagio, and the other quite a bit faster, more of an andante performance.

Tempos can vary from performer to performer; andante to one means a walking pace; to another, it could mean a leisurely stroll with some rubato!  Just take a look for it on YouTube. Try Moonlight Sonata – Beethoven.  This is an example of a quicker rendition of Moonlight Sonata, but it will get you “in the neighborhood” so you can compare renditions.

Interpretation needs to be taught as part of music education.  Of course it’s of no use to fly before you walk; reading the music and playing what’s there is crucial!  But afterwards, students need to be encouraged by their music teachers to express themselves and not just spit out a “cookie cutter” version of a piece.