Flute advice.

I just enjoyed the honor of accompanying a talented teen in a flute contest.  Here is a summary of the judge's instant feedback, a nice lesson in itself:

Never breathe during a trill.   To prepare, find a place to breathe where you'll have plenty of air to do the notes leading up to and away from the trill, the alternating trill notes, the termination notes, and all the way to the end of the last note.

Trills match the tempo of the music around them, faster in fast tempos and slower in slow movements,

Nerves take the breath out of you.  Flute takes a lot of breath;  trills are especially inefficient.  In practice, give yourself more than enough breaths so you're ready for nerves in performance or competition, and still have plenty of breath.

Tune long notes, especially octave leaps, carefully.  Why do composers do that to us?   It easy for anyone to hear tuning issues when the note lasts a long time.

New skills, say you've just learned double-tonguing, won't be consistent.  Even so, don't give up on them, keep practicing, and use them.  If you don't use it, you lose it.

Exaggerate  dynamics.  You are doing them, but they should be more.  In a large hall, for an adjudicator who is far away, you'd need to shoot for far to much variation.   Practice doing far too much dynamic variation.   If you wonder if you're driving the audience crazy with your volume changes, it's probably just right.

Overall, it was a lovely performance.

I agreed.

Practicing Choral Music: Ten ideas for the singer who doesn’t think they can practice on their own

----------This is a mirror post from Doreen Fryling.--------------

Congratulations! You’ve now been told for the millionth time to practice your music for your next choir rehearsal. But if you are someone who hears that and thinks, “I don’t play piano. I can’t do this without someone helping me,” here are some ways you can practice on your own and improve your singing.
Grab your music and a pencil. Many of these steps can be done in a public place. No need to head to the practice room (stop using that as an excuse).

1. Start with the text. Make sure you know what you are singing. Think about the text. Find a translation if it is in another language. Write the poetic translation above/below the lyrics. If you want to go deeper, use a translation site to translate word for word (especially if there’s a word that you sing over and over again. You should know what that specific word means). Do you know who wrote the lyrics and why? Can you put the piece into historical context?
2. Listen to a recording. We live in a time of unbelievable access to recordings. Find them. Listen to more than one recording and compare them until you find one or two you really like. Follow along with your score. Listen while paying attention to all of the parts. Listen while paying attention to just your part.
3. Analyze your music. How is the piece organized? Does it have sections? Are there repeated parts? Does your part occur in another voice part? Are there key changes or meter changes? Is there a repeat sign/first and second ending/coda? How would you describe the organization of this piece to someone who has never heard it?
4. Find your starting pitches. For every entrance you have, figure out how you are going to find the starting pitch. Maybe another voice part just sang the note. Maybe it was just in the accompaniment. Do you know what note of the chord it is (e.g. I’m singing the root of this chord)? There is nothing worse than “sheep singing” (blindly following what the person next to you is singing). Take responsibility for being able to enter on your own.
5. Don’t just sing through the parts you already know. You’ll be wasting your practice time. Identify problem areas, analyze why you’re having a problem with that spot, figure out ways to solve the problem area.
6. Solve the problem area. Break it down to something you CAN do. Then add something to it. Practice with repetition, but only if you’re sure you’re doing it right! Start with just the pitches slowly (dare I say on solfege syllables?). Then add the rhythm to the pitches. Next, add in the lyrics. Make sure you slow down the tempo each time you add another layer. No need to practice with dynamics, articulations, and breaths until you have mastered pitches, rhythms, and lyrics.
7. Work backwards to forwards. How many times have you felt great about the beginning of a piece, but completely unsure of the ending? During your own practice time, work on the ending section and progressively add sections, each time going through to the end. If you think of your piece as “ABCDE,” practice E, then DE, then CDE, then BCDE, and ABCDE.
8. Audiate your part. Sing your part through in your head. Do this while you are walking somewhere. Do this in your car while you’re waiting for someone. Do this before you go to sleep. Do this ALL OF THE TIME. (Friendly reminder: Audiating is virtually impossible if there is other music playing. Carve out some quiet time in your life.)
9. Use your pencil. Mark your score while you’re in rehearsal so you remember what was giving you problems. This will save you time when you plan out your next practice session.
10. Just practice. 99% of the time I don’t want to practice. No one does. But 99% of the time, once I start practicing, I get stuff done. I stop when I lose focus or I run out of time. I NEVER regret spending a little time practicing something. Do yourself a favor and make it part of your daily routine.

You have the ability to do these ten things. Do them. You will reap the benefits of being more confident with your part, which will allow you to contribute to the ensemble in a more meaningful way. And your own vocal technique will improve, because you’ll be able to concentrate on how you sound instead of always worrying about how your part goes. You’ve got this.

-Doreen Fryling (lifelong practice avoider)

Voice Lesson One

To improve consistently,

• Warmup every day. Five minutes is often enough.
• Workout thrice weekly. Forty-five minutes is enough.
• Vocal rehearsals, lessons, and concerts count as workouts.

Warm-ups only remind you how you sing best.  They will keep your voice in shape on quiet days and prepare your voice for busy days.  By themselves, daily warmups won't make your voice strong, fast, flexible, enduring, or accurate.   More on how to do these later.


Workouts will improve the voice, but only if you keep doing them.   Doing just one workout a week is enough to tire you and get you some improvement, but several in a week will definitely improve your singing.

Please do not sing far too much.  Singing when your voice and body are tired open the door to get bad technique and vocal injury.   For beginners, three workouts a week is almost too much.  As your voice gains strength and stamina, it will thrive on three to four or even more workouts weekly.  Just don't push yourself too hard too fast.  The above is going to get you where you want to go.

Yours, Gary.

Affordable Voice Lessons

Real simple:

For a live vocal teacher, I have really low rates, but even those can be too much for regular lessons for young singers and struggling artists.

This little offer is a good-looking prospect:




I have a few occasional students who pay them a one-time fee to buy and use this, then contact me for a short lesson when they get stuck and are not improving. I put them back on track with my online voice lesson (seven minutes is usually enough) and away they go.


Keep in touch.

Voice Lessons Online

While most subjects must be taught face to face, music performance is successfully taught online. Is anyone else doing this? I tutor a score of folks each week this way now from my website, some of them local (even through Wyzant), but many more of them are from all over the world from places I could never physically visit.

Instead of connecting to a student in a physical space, we connect in a virtual space. My student and I are both at home on our own computers, with an audio headset, a common chat channel and sometimes a mini-camera active. We can tutor over Google-Talk, Second Life, There, MS Chat, or Yahoo Messenger, but my favorite music-teaching platform is Skype. Skype service is free for all, the sound and video stream is fantastic and I can inhibit new callers so the student and I are not distracted by incoming calls during our session.

I always spend the first few moments of the tutoring session making a good connection so we can hear and see each other clearly. If static, break-up or background noises interfere at all, we spend a few moments taking care of those, checking connections and setting levels. After that, the online tutoring session is very like a live face-to-face tutoring session.

There are some differences, of course. We can see and hear each other clearly, but I cannot point to a symbol on a physical paper page to direct attention to a detail. I cannot touch the student to correct a posture or hand position. However, I can instantly send a link to a website video, picture, or article that we can look at together and talk about right then. I can chat notes about an exercise while the student is singing or playing without distracting her and send it immediately on completing without distracting her from focusing on her performance technique. Using a recording program, I can make and upload short clips of our session so the student can review them after our session. In trade off, I think the online session offers the student more resources than the face-to-face.

I do not think this practice is widespread yet, but it’s effective and economical for teaching vocal and instrumental practice and technique.

Your first voice lesson

A new student request contact:

I am interested in experimenting with my singing ability. I am 23 years old and getting a late start with my desire to sing. I have no other prior experience with voice lessons of any kind or music lessons. With you have some time in your schedule I would like to possibly sign up for lessons with you. Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you, [Name withheld]

Hi!
Gary Shanon, Oregon Portland/Gresham voice-mentor here.
This is a great time to get started. 23 is hardly too late! Chances are that you've been singing your whole life. You've already started if you've sung in a choir or karaoke with a good host. We'll take that experience and build on it.
In your first lesson, I'd like to find out what your dreams are, hear you sing a song and find out what you need and want to learn. Then we start practicing and really mastering what you need and want. Toward the end of the lesson, you'll get a homework assignment. Then we'll schedule your next lesson.
This 2008 summer, I normally teach during the day, since evenings and weekends are reserved for my gigs and my family. We'll also need to pick a place to meet: we can use your home, we can meet online or by phone, or there are places we can use near my home near I-205 and Powell Avenue.
As soon as you complete your contact/billing information, we can start!
Gary Shannon
Portland, OR
45 minute rate: $37.00*