Beginning Singer

Break the Ice Daily

Your voice is the result of actions taken by your body, and that body is always in flux and changing over time. Therefore, literally, you have a slightly new voice every day. You must take time to relearn it.

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Vocalise of the Week: Ascending Diatonic Scales

This is a common upward-scale vocalise found in daily exercise books such as those by Concone or Lamperti.

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What Do You Call This?--

What do you call “Autotune the News”?

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Back to School for Singers: Freshmen Sheet Music

With all the music out there for young singers, what do you buy? Beginning Singer is here to help.

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Vocalise of the Week: Descending Arpeggi

This is an excellent vocalise for register balancing.

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Twitter during Auditions?

Is it appropriate at all to publicly comment about auditions?

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Weekly Gathering

A collection of noteworthy blog

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Thrill ‘em with Consonant Cut-offs

Each phrase you sing can be mangled, gracefully brought to a close, or made totally thrilling by your cut-offs. Rather than an afterthought, your cut-off is the final impression of each phrase and each song that you present to an audience.

If you have final consonant cut-off, in particular, you must make choices for its placement. You must also decide how loudly to sing it and how long to sustain it. Different choices will get you different results so you’ll have to play around with them to see what works best in every situation.

These suggestions apply to solo classical singing, musical theater, and choral singing. Pop music is usually more lax in this area.

Where do I put them?

It’s best to think about the actual notes as notation for vowels. The consonants inhabit a separate rhythmic world. In that world, ending consonants should happen on the rest that immediately follows the note.

If there is no rest, then simply write one in (see picture for examples). Usually an eighth rest will give you enough time to clearly enunciate the consonant and get a quick breath. If you rest isn’t long enough, or is awkwardly placed, then again write in whatever

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Review: The Art of the Song Recital

Authors: Shirlee Emmons and Stanley Sonntag
First Published in 1979, re-issued in 2002

If you have a song recital approaching, whether it be junior, senior, graduate or beyond (or before!), then please read The Art of the Song Recital. Since I discovered The Art of the Song Recital, I have consistently referred to it for guidance, scholarship, and inspiration not only for song recitals but also for teaching and all-things-singing. It has an overwhelming amount of information that inspires as quickly as it informs, and I want to explore the recital genre to its farthest ends every time I read it.

The book begins with this prefatory statement:

Our purpose in writing this book is not only to share with others our genuine love for the song recital but also to give extensive, thoroughgoing, and definitive insights into the attributes that can render it at once a great art and a magnificent entertainment.

With those goals in mind, the authors do exactly that with practical guidance, historical perspectives and a lot of inspiring encouragement.

Practical Guides

The guidance offered is extremely helpful. Subjects include:

Program assembly guides with plenty of example programs and consideration for different types of audiences. I find this very useful, and the

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Vocalise of the Week: Two Octave Tonic Arpeggio Up, Dominant Seventh Arpeggio Down

(A .png for those without Scorch)

This is a very common vocalise, and it is very valuable. Low voiced singers should give it a shot, though they might want to transpose it down a little bit. The Scorch plug-in can help you with that.

Be sure to keep each note part of legato phrase. Don’t allow choppy-ness to enter unless you are specifically working on staccato.

Beginning Singer is about the challenges of becoming a professional singer.

My name is Ian Sidden, and I have been performing since I was a very little boy. I have always sung, and whether it was in musicals, rock bands, choirs or operas; I just couldn't shut up. I just completed graduate studies in Vocal Performance, and now it is do or die time to attempt a professional career.

Within this blog there will be writings on my own singing experiences as I live them, writings on singing technique and pedagogical observations, interviews, book reviews, and all sorts of singing related material.