Fitting the song to the singer

I spend a good deal of my time as a musical theatre vocal coach helping my clients adapt the song to the audition.

Let me give you an example:
The client today was doing the song I'm a Woman - W.O.M.A.N (see previous blog Help! The accompanist's deaf!). After we had sorted out dealing with the pianist, I decided to work on matching the song to the client and her casting.

This particular client has quite a wide range of casting possibilities, from soft-grained Carolina granny to New York business woman to Cockney girl in the street. It's impossible to find one song that will fit all of those characters, but this particular song can work in more than one way.

Bearing in mind that the rhythm and speed of the song are pretty much set in advance, we changed the character who was singing it. The first version was the one she had used in the previous audition - the cockney. The director had given her a clue as to where he wanted to go with the casting, so my client picked up the information and ran with it.

Changing the accent to proper Cockney (East London, born within the sound of Bow Bells) made her characterisation sharper, slightly more up-front and sassy. With this client it also had the effect of changing the body posture and body language, and the sound she made. It doesn't always work that well! For the technically minded among you, she used a thicker fold mass for a stronger, slightly darker version of speech quality, slightly more twang, less breath flow and more pitch drop offsets with shorter notes.

The second version was American businesswoman. More twang, slightly thinner folds, more clipped delivery, and a completely different body language - tighter, more upright and a higher energy.

The third version (my personal favourite) was the Jamaican nurse. The different accent caused the words to have a different accentuation - almost as many glottals as the Cockney ironically. The body language became heavier and more into the ground and the sound got slightly thicker and more relaxed with a wider vocal tract, with more underlying humour.

I chose these three types because I've heard her audition speeches and I wanted to match her sung performances with spoken ones. I believe it's important in an audition to give a matching package. Beward of the "I can do this, I can do that" auditionee - showing everything can end up causing confusion.

Because we've done this type of work before in lessons, when the director at the last audition gave her the acting cues she was able to change in an instant the vocal characterisation she had prepared without either throwing her concentration or upsetting the feel of the song itself.

I'm doing a lot of this type of work now, and the recall rate in my client's auditions has certainly increased.


Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

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)

The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

Help! The accompanist's deaf!

It happened to me in my first college audition as an oboist.

You may not know that back in the 19th century I played the oboe, and applied to the Conservatoires in London, Birmingham and Manchester as a first-study oboist.

This was my first audition in Manchester. I had gone through the speeds with the accompanist (andante and allegro for the Bellini oboe concerto). The first movement is long, long phrases, and the second is a chirpy staccato frivol. In the audition I nearly died. And I think I mean that literally.

The opening movement was soooooo slooowwwwww I was on the floor. And I was determined to play all the phrases in one breath. I know more now. The second movement was so fast that my fingers and tongue were a blur. At just 17 I didn't know how to deal with that, but it has to be said that I rise to a challenge, and I managed to get in all the notes, all the articulation, and all the breaths. I was offered one of only three places at the college.

Now if that situation arises for my clients, I take time to help them deal with it.

It came up today with one of my clients. She has been working away from London for several weeks, and came for a 'wash and brush-up' session. The first ten minutes of the session was spent talking through some of the auditions she's done between the end of the last job and the session. Although talking in a lesson might feel like a waste of time (and money), it was vital that I heard what had been happening for her out in the real world.

In fact, I learned a very interesting piece of information about one of her songs. She does "I'm a Woman (W.O.M.A.N)" as one of her character uptempo songs, and had had a problem at the last audition. The pianist had not played the accompaniment in rhythm, and it had completely thrown her.

The thing about this particular piano part is that there are very few notes at all in it. Most of it is silence. All it really consists of is rock "stabs" at the end of every two bars. The singer has a fast string of words (not necessarily even sung) between the stabs. Now the whole thing is actually in tempo, but if as a pianist you are used to playing Handel recitatives, you'll see the written rests and ignore them. Because in Handel recitative the rests are not there to be counted or played, they are there to make up the proper time of the bar between notes and can safely be ignored. (Before all the opera singers start writing to me - again - yes, I know that accompanied recitative with orchestra is played in tempo.)

But in rock music or Motown, that simply isn't the case. It's as if there's a drum beat going throughout. So the 'down and dirty' pulse is there all the time. Think of the Diet Coke ad on television at the moment with the song "I just want to make love to you" and you will know what I mean.

So back to the client. What I discovered is that she didn't know what to do if the pianist got her music wrong in an audition. This is a situation that happens a lot. After all as an actor or singer you are "duetting with a stranger" whenever you do a singing audition. There's a whole section on duetting with a stranger in the Successful Singing Auditions book.

So being the good, supportive teacher that I am, I made her go through the piece again, and I played as badly as I could.

We decided that the problem was that the pianist did not know the piece or the style, and just needed guidance. In this particular piece the 'down and dirty rhythm' is so strong that there is an easy solution. Click your fingers to the beat. If you hear the pianist doing something strange with the rhythm while you are singing, just start clicking and swinging and he should pick it up. Be sure to make it part of your character's persona; don't just glare at him and stamp your foot in time.

We experimented with me playing faster, slower or arhythmically so that she could experience how each one felt, and how easy or difficult it was to take control and alter what was happening. As it happens, she was so secure on the speed and feel of the piece that it was really easy to follow her clicking and swinging, and all was well.

I also suggested that in her 15 seconds of talking to the pianist beforehand (speed, feel, map-reading advice) she added "This piece is absolutely in tempo". We thought that would probably do the trick.

Incidentally, in the audition she was describing, she actually got the job. Sometimes you just can't tell how it's gone.

One word of caution: if you do come across a pianist who puts his head down and closes his ears, and nothing has changed within about 5 seconds of you starting to click, there's only one thing you can do...

Abandon hope.

A three-ton truck in the small of the back wouldn't shift him. Just grit your teeth and do your own thing. At least everyone else will have him too.


Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

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)

The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

Collaborative pianists unite

I've got various Google Alerts set up that tell me if there is anything interesting out there in internetland. The alert told me that my blog has been discovered by another pianist and blogger.

Christopher Foley is professor of collaborative piano and chamber music at the Royal Conservatory of Music Community School in Toronto. He's also the author of the excellent Collaborative Piano blog

Collaborative piano is the new name across the pond for piano accompaniment. I rather like it. It sums up far more accurately the job of a pianist who works with other musicians. One thing an accompanist does NOT do is follow. Whatever music I am playing, whether it's opera, lieder, Victorian parlour song or musical theatre, I don't tag along with the singer, three steps behind with a bowed head.

Accompaniment is essentially the art of working with people. In my experience, I take what someone gives me and work with it to improve, support, lead and co-create. This is also a feedback loop, in that whatever I do will cause the performing partner to react, improve, support lead and co-create in return. In a good duo or trio partnership this can lead to some extraordinary performances.

As a collaborative pianist both by training and by inclination, I have a certain bias. I think to be a cp you have to have wide-ranging musical tastes and be flexible enough to accommodate and incorporate another's strong desires and decisions. Most cps I know are excellent musicians who are (on the whole) extremely reliable and consistent.

They are also usually nice people to know.

But then I would say that.

There is a fine article on Chris's site that lists the preferred skills for the collaborative pianist. It's a long list. And as someone who has worked in most branches of the music business, I can say that it's pretty accurate. There is one more thing I would add - a strong sense of self-worth. It's one job where the better you are, the less people notice you. Sad but true.

And one more thing - yes, I AM good enough to be a solo pianist.

I simply prefer co-creating with other people to being locked in a room for 6 hours a day in front of a keyboard. Mind you, I've written a blog, a website, an ebook, articles and reviews for magazines, scripts for vocal physiology videos and a book.

Maybe I've just swapped one locked room with a keyboard for another...


Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

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)

The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.