Learn a song in 15 minutes

During the new client's session (see previous blog) we worked on "Funny".

I took him through the whole "Learn a Song in 15 Minutes" routine that appears in the Successful Singing Auditions book.

Reading the words as text does not normally hold any mysteries for an actor, but it is astonishing how few actors actually do it. Many are seduced or alarmed by the singing aspect of a song, so forget to use their current skills on the material.

Reading the words in rhythm is an interesting one. Even with actors who read music (and many don't), it is rare to find someone who reads EXACTLY what's on the page. As an accomplished sight-reader and accompanist, it's what I've done for a living for a lonnnnng time, so it's really "second nature to me now" (a round of applause if you can name the song that contains that line - answer at the end).

The purpose of reading the text in the rhythm of the song is to discover what changes to the natural speech cadences of the text the composer has made. So watch out for long words, stresses on weak syllables, and normally short vowels that are attached to long notes. The only way you can do this is to speak the words in exactly the rhythm that is written, including holding all the long notes for their correct values, even if it sounds odd!

Humming or sirening the melody is the next stage, and for this I prefer an ng to an mm, because it keeps the lips open and flexible (you'll see why in the next stage). I prefer the client to slide around between the pitches, rather than moving cleanly from one note to the other, because it seems to train the voice to negotiate the leaps in pitch more accurately. Also it is best to keep the ng sound small - it's not singing, so think of it as sirening quietly to yourself.

The next one confused my client temporarily - it's mirening. This is sirening (humming) the melody while mouthing the words using the front of the tongue, lips and teeth. The ng sound is continuous, but the lips teeth and tongue can still make all the movements necessary for the consonants and vowels in the text.

When clients first try this out, the temptation is to keep the mouth as still as possible, meaning that the bilabial consonants (m, b, p etc) simply don't happen. This just means that you have not yet isolated the separate areas of the articulating mechanism. There's a demonstration of mirening on the Vocal Process website if this description is too confusing. Click on this Mirening link to go to the relevant page.

And finally, we put it all together. As the client pointed out, by this time, most of the words and the melody structure will have started to go into the memory anyway, even though from my point of view learning and memorising are different things.

One thing that does become clear having finished the process is how few errors you are likely to make in memorising. Anything that might be a problem - complex words, strange rhythms or difficult pitch leaps, have all been dealt with in the separate stages of the learning process. With a short song, it is perfectly possible to complete the process in less than 15 minutes.

The client was able to sing the song accurately by the end of the session, and I have left him to go through anything that feels uncomfortable, ready for the next time.

Incidentally, the quote comes from "I've grown accustomed to her face" from My Fair Lady.

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
Looking at a Voice (endoscopy video download)
Constriction and Release (opening the throat on video - the latest endoscopy video download)

Vocal Process is running a day course on Practical Phonetics in November. Click on the link to find out more.