I found that introducing school singing to young children is not really teaching singing as much as it is a question of emphasizing a few documentable physical skills and as well as employing the art of re-framing. I keep it basic when it comes to singing with elementary school children. There's a simple list of skills that I use in the classroom, skills that have worked and are tried-and-true.
1 no hands on face
2 no screaming
3 open your mouth
4 move your lips
5 move your tongue.
I’ll take these five points and elaborate in future blogs exactly why I focus on these skills and how stacking those singing habits one on top of the other creates successful and happy singers who can actually hear their improvement.
I would rely on those five points over and over as well as be relentless in calling out “violations” of those five points in class or in chorus.
“If you do those five things, you will sound like Mr. Holmes. You will be a BIG singer.”
Let me explain.
Over the decades, I have seen numerous music teachers admonish their students to sing louder. Rarely do they provide any concrete actions that would achieve their demands. The teacher keeps saying “Louder” and eventually the student thinks, “You want loud? I’ll give you loud.” And then the child proceeds to mockingly scream instead of sing.
All of that is avoided by framing the vocal act as “big”. Suddenly, we’re not focused on loud, or louder, but instead on “big”. By doing the five steps of big singing, a more rounded, musical sound is produced at all volume levels.
When I work with children in a more formal choral setting, I would also focus more on big singing and vowel sounds as well as a flattened tongue and eyebrows up, especially on higher pitches. There's something about having your eyebrows up that lends itself to a good singing physiognomy. I don't know what it is but I know it works.
To my ears, all singing, especially choral singing, is about vowel sounds. Consonants come and go but vowel sounds are forever, especially at slower tempos. The joke always was after the students sang a passage without paying attention to their vowel sounds, I would stop them and, in mock horror say, “Your vowel sounds! You sound like you live in Delaware!” To which they would all say, “But Mr. Holmes, we do live in Delaware!”
Vowel sounds are so crucial to getting a unified choral sound. When students focus and create good vowel sound habits, their phrasing becomes more intuitively correct.
One of the great resources I found that dealt with vowel sounds as well as regional phonation are the works of Sam Shwat, the dialect coach to the stars as he was often billed. In his cornerstone work, “Speak Up!”, he devised a curriculum to remove regional accents. It was primarily for people in business who wanted an illusory sound as if they were from a typical ivy league school and not East Ja-bip . It's an expensive course but worth the price if vowels and accents are important to you.
Another thing you would have observed and heard in my general music classes and choral rehearsals is I would sing in unison pitch with the children, meaning I was singing way up into my head voice.
I was very lucky to attend a rehearsal session of an honors elementary chorus that was conducted by Francisco Núñez, the director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. Francesco is an incredible clinician and if you ever get the chance to work with him, grab it. He would sing in pitch with his children and his tone was eerily like Leontyne Price. There was no mistaking his sound, vowel production, phrasing, and breath support when he performed a phrase in rehearsal. Nothing can supersede good modeling.
In general music class, one of the beauties of using the guitar is that children have nothing to rely on for following a melody except listening to you sing and chord pitches. Given that I am a male, that meant that they had to learn to sing an octave above me when I sang in my natural range.
Many teachers have a habit of accompanying children with a melody present at all times in the accompaniment and that becomes a crutch for their ears. Often times, they use a karaoke track that contains the melody.
When I accompanied on piano, I could quickly assess how much support the children needed from the melody line and would always work on phasing it out except for maybe a few crucial intervals.
Using a piano and guitar also allowed me to shift keys by transposing the key center and accompaniment. I did a two-part arrangement of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” which was in D major. When we first started working on it, I had them reading in D major while I played the accompaniment in C major. After a few weeks, they were still reading D major but without telling them, I moved the key up to C sharp. A few weeks later, I moved it into D – and sometimes after that, I nudged it up to E flat to push their range and get a brighter tone.
There was only one time in my career when I used a karaoke backing track, and that was a track that I produced in my studio. It was a big band medley of Vincent Youman’s “I Want To Be Happy” and the Gershwins’ “But Not For Me” and “I've Got Rhythm”. The track worked but there is something about using tracks in concert that always scares me, as in the kids will get off-tempo and not be able to sync again with the track. I’ve seen that happen at so many choral festivals and frankly, it’s embarrassing.
Singing correctly to a track is more of a professional skill. When that skill level isn’t present, it accentuates the disparity between the professionalism of the track versus the more rough vocal performance. I also feel like using tracks with kids is a bit of a cheat.
Two of the reasons why I started writing music right away once I got my first elementary gig was that I had no budget for music and I simply was not finding the arrangements in the styles or keys that I really wanted my children to sing. I came out of college with no formal or informal knowledge of children’s choral literature so it was a steep learning curve that I tried to negotiate as quickly as I could.
If you are focusing on vowel sounds, you can't go wrong with material that you compose where you can control those parameters.
The kids will always request the funny songs, the patter songs, and anything that is fast with a lot of energy. I wrote a bunch of those including titles like “The Good Kid Polka”, “Undercover Kids”, and “The Android Substitute”. But the songs that really resonate with them are the slower pieces, the ballads, where the lyrics truly mean something to them and touch them in an emotional way.
Those compositions rely heavily on pure vowel sounds. “Two Fiends”, “Best Friend”, and “Star” are several that I composed that grown-up kids always want to reminisce with me.
Your hope should be that your students leave with good memories about singing with you in school. Only a few will sing in an organized choral group or in a pop situation – but all of them will sing to their favorite songs when they hear them.
Most of all, we should want them to feel confident about their voice. Their singing confidence (as well as good vocal habits) will spill over into public speaking confidence and pay compounded dividends down the road as they become adults.
Everything that I teach little children about singing - the five things you must do, how vowel sounds are more important than consonants sounds - all these things will hold them in good stead as they grow older and sing by themselves, or even better, when they sing with their children.
1 no hands on face
2 no screaming
3 open your mouth
4 move your lips
5 move your tongue.
I’ll take these five points and elaborate in future blogs exactly why I focus on these skills and how stacking those singing habits one on top of the other creates successful and happy singers who can actually hear their improvement.
I would rely on those five points over and over as well as be relentless in calling out “violations” of those five points in class or in chorus.
“If you do those five things, you will sound like Mr. Holmes. You will be a BIG singer.”
Let me explain.
Over the decades, I have seen numerous music teachers admonish their students to sing louder. Rarely do they provide any concrete actions that would achieve their demands. The teacher keeps saying “Louder” and eventually the student thinks, “You want loud? I’ll give you loud.” And then the child proceeds to mockingly scream instead of sing.
All of that is avoided by framing the vocal act as “big”. Suddenly, we’re not focused on loud, or louder, but instead on “big”. By doing the five steps of big singing, a more rounded, musical sound is produced at all volume levels.
When I work with children in a more formal choral setting, I would also focus more on big singing and vowel sounds as well as a flattened tongue and eyebrows up, especially on higher pitches. There's something about having your eyebrows up that lends itself to a good singing physiognomy. I don't know what it is but I know it works.
To my ears, all singing, especially choral singing, is about vowel sounds. Consonants come and go but vowel sounds are forever, especially at slower tempos. The joke always was after the students sang a passage without paying attention to their vowel sounds, I would stop them and, in mock horror say, “Your vowel sounds! You sound like you live in Delaware!” To which they would all say, “But Mr. Holmes, we do live in Delaware!”
Vowel sounds are so crucial to getting a unified choral sound. When students focus and create good vowel sound habits, their phrasing becomes more intuitively correct.
One of the great resources I found that dealt with vowel sounds as well as regional phonation are the works of Sam Shwat, the dialect coach to the stars as he was often billed. In his cornerstone work, “Speak Up!”, he devised a curriculum to remove regional accents. It was primarily for people in business who wanted an illusory sound as if they were from a typical ivy league school and not East Ja-bip . It's an expensive course but worth the price if vowels and accents are important to you.
Another thing you would have observed and heard in my general music classes and choral rehearsals is I would sing in unison pitch with the children, meaning I was singing way up into my head voice.
I was very lucky to attend a rehearsal session of an honors elementary chorus that was conducted by Francisco Núñez, the director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. Francesco is an incredible clinician and if you ever get the chance to work with him, grab it. He would sing in pitch with his children and his tone was eerily like Leontyne Price. There was no mistaking his sound, vowel production, phrasing, and breath support when he performed a phrase in rehearsal. Nothing can supersede good modeling.
In general music class, one of the beauties of using the guitar is that children have nothing to rely on for following a melody except listening to you sing and chord pitches. Given that I am a male, that meant that they had to learn to sing an octave above me when I sang in my natural range.
Many teachers have a habit of accompanying children with a melody present at all times in the accompaniment and that becomes a crutch for their ears. Often times, they use a karaoke track that contains the melody.
When I accompanied on piano, I could quickly assess how much support the children needed from the melody line and would always work on phasing it out except for maybe a few crucial intervals.
Using a piano and guitar also allowed me to shift keys by transposing the key center and accompaniment. I did a two-part arrangement of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” which was in D major. When we first started working on it, I had them reading in D major while I played the accompaniment in C major. After a few weeks, they were still reading D major but without telling them, I moved the key up to C sharp. A few weeks later, I moved it into D – and sometimes after that, I nudged it up to E flat to push their range and get a brighter tone.
There was only one time in my career when I used a karaoke backing track, and that was a track that I produced in my studio. It was a big band medley of Vincent Youman’s “I Want To Be Happy” and the Gershwins’ “But Not For Me” and “I've Got Rhythm”. The track worked but there is something about using tracks in concert that always scares me, as in the kids will get off-tempo and not be able to sync again with the track. I’ve seen that happen at so many choral festivals and frankly, it’s embarrassing.
Singing correctly to a track is more of a professional skill. When that skill level isn’t present, it accentuates the disparity between the professionalism of the track versus the more rough vocal performance. I also feel like using tracks with kids is a bit of a cheat.
Two of the reasons why I started writing music right away once I got my first elementary gig was that I had no budget for music and I simply was not finding the arrangements in the styles or keys that I really wanted my children to sing. I came out of college with no formal or informal knowledge of children’s choral literature so it was a steep learning curve that I tried to negotiate as quickly as I could.
If you are focusing on vowel sounds, you can't go wrong with material that you compose where you can control those parameters.
The kids will always request the funny songs, the patter songs, and anything that is fast with a lot of energy. I wrote a bunch of those including titles like “The Good Kid Polka”, “Undercover Kids”, and “The Android Substitute”. But the songs that really resonate with them are the slower pieces, the ballads, where the lyrics truly mean something to them and touch them in an emotional way.
Those compositions rely heavily on pure vowel sounds. “Two Fiends”, “Best Friend”, and “Star” are several that I composed that grown-up kids always want to reminisce with me.
Your hope should be that your students leave with good memories about singing with you in school. Only a few will sing in an organized choral group or in a pop situation – but all of them will sing to their favorite songs when they hear them.
Most of all, we should want them to feel confident about their voice. Their singing confidence (as well as good vocal habits) will spill over into public speaking confidence and pay compounded dividends down the road as they become adults.
Everything that I teach little children about singing - the five things you must do, how vowel sounds are more important than consonants sounds - all these things will hold them in good stead as they grow older and sing by themselves, or even better, when they sing with their children.
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