Music 2: Sing your heart out!

The thought of having to sing infront of other MTeach students in today’s workshop was daunting, but surprisingly easy. The teacher took us through a variety of warm-up exercises, focusing on breath control, articulators and stance. These were fun and challenging, including tongue twisters and grouping the class to perform a variety of sounds.

Tongue exercise warm-up

Lips exercise warm-up

Breathing exercise warm-up

The teacher went through the elements of singing which teachers should focus on. More than just handing students a lyric sheet and pressing play, I now feel equipped with some starting skills I need to help children become pitch perfect, rhythmically harmonious and confident singers. Incorporating a variety of kinaesthetic and aural modes of learning would be important, such as percussion, actions, staging and movement that reflects the genre and structure of the music. It is important to pay attention to the music appreciation side, as well as performing – by highlighting the key points students should listen out for when responding to a song. Questions should focus student attention on the conepts of music which are specified in the syllabus such as, “what can you tell me about the way the song is put together?” (structure), “what sorts of sounds do you hear?” (tone colour) and “did any parts of the song get louder or softer?” (dynamics).

After this discussion we sang Wet Day Blues, splitting the class into different sections to layer the song.

Wet Day Blues songsheet

The selection of material to sing is important, making sure it does not breach copyright, is lyrically appropriate, encourages music reading and is challenging but achievable. The teacher gave us a variety of websites and resources. The website http://www.karaoke-version.com/ is a useful site for affordable instrumental backing versions of songs, with and without backing vocals. You can also change the key and the tempo. The material should also consolidate and build upon the skills taught previously so as to increase complexity in rhythm, harmony and so on.