“What Are We Going To Sing Today?”
This is how a lot of my voice lessons start, although I tend to have a hand in choosing repertoire for my students. I was inspired to write this post after a student this week asked me “do you think I’m really a soprano, or are you just giving me all these high songs to challenge me?”
I started thinking about how multi-dimensional the repertoire we give our students can be. What you may not know is that there are a lot of reasons why particular pieces may be assigned in a lesson.
Meeting You Where You Are
Sometimes students may be frustrated by the simplicity of the songs they are assigned when they first start taking voice lessons. I’ve had parents complain that their young children can do more. Oftentimes parents will suggest, “just let them sing (fill in the blank major belt song here), so you can see what they can do.”
Truth is, I know what they can do. In most cases, I figured out their capabilities within the first couple of vocal exercises. But remember, you are taking voice lessons not to perform, but to improve upon your craft. Many of the big, exciting pieces that my students bring to me pose more than a few technical challenges. We can absolutely break down a piece into small, workable chunks and iron out all of the technical details that way. But students can get frustrated with this approach. It can take a very long time to have a finished product that they are truly proud of. This is why I frequently assign pieces that are more simple, so that we can use the piece to work through aspects of their technique before tackling something larger and more demanding that they might want to use for auditions, competitions, or performances.
I frequently assign folk songs to singers because by definition folk songs are passed through oral tradition. As such, they are pieces that are meant to be accessible for everyone, and there are some gorgeous arrangements of folk songs out there. Check out this arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer by Benjamin Britten. It’s stunning:
Folk songs can be amazing devices for transitioning between working on vocal technique in exercises and applying them to the repertoire you ultimately want to sing. There are other pieces that offer the same benefits, simple pop songs or musical theatre pieces that are repetitive and cover a small range are also very valuable for this purpose. And oftentimes the ability to sing something simple with great control can be as much of a show stopper as belting the end of Defying Gravity.
Photo source: https://www.playbill.com/article/idina-menzel-weighs-in-on-12-year-old-39-s-defying-gravity
Tackling Vocal Weaknesses
I can be an obnoxiously positive person in real life, and possibly even more so as a voice teacher. So, I don’t typically use negative words like “weakness,” but I do talk about building strength quite a bit. Many of us approach our vocal training with a solitary focus on one register. For example, when working with my musical theatre students, I often find that they have been working on their belting since they started singing, trying to emulate power houses like Sutton Foster, Taylor Louderman, Patti LuPone, etc. Their primary request when they come to me is to help them to bridge the gap between their chest and head voice, and to find a more balanced mix.
If most of your singing and speaking is in your chest voice, then the muscles that control your head voice are likely not as strong which can account for most of the problems with navigating through the “break” or passaggio as a singer moves higher through a belt. I’ll start by incorporating exercises that strengthen the head voice, and will frequently assign a song that sits in head voice for the singer so they can spend more time getting familiar with and building strength in the muscles that are responsible for the head voice. This is not a transition that can happen over night, just like any form of “strength training.” So, while the vocal exercises can be helpful, working on a piece long-term can accelerate this process a bit.
The opposite can be true as well, if you are a singer like me who was trained classically. Most of my training was focused on my upper register, and especially my whistle register.
Here’s a recording of me singing “Caro Nome” from Verdi’s Rigoletto joined by Dr. Andrew Campbell and Dr. Paul Lee on dueling pianos to give an example of head voice focused singing.
While this was important for the repertoire that I was focusing on when I was exclusively singing classically, when I made the transition to singing more musical theatre I had a major deficiency in my chest voice. It took me about a year of dedicated work to even make a legitimate sound in my chest voice. Working on pieces that allowed me to stay in my lower-middle helped to strengthen my chest voice so that I could start to work on developing a belt.
Think of it as a form of cross-training. Just like how football players take ballet to teach them alignment and agility, sometimes the sweet sopranos need to sing something that explores their chest voice in the same way that show-stopping belters can benefit from singing in the rafters.
The Stuff You Just Need to Work On
Sometimes a student will come to me with a piece they need to work on for a particular performance or audition. I may disagree with the piece that was assigned based on the technical focus I have for this singer in our private lessons, but my job is to help my students to get through all of the singing that they are being asked to do. And I can acknowledge that my opinion of a student’s needs are not always the only perspective that matters.
Unless I have concerns that a piece can ultimately damage the voice of a student, I will help them to make the best possible sounds they can with the least amount of effort. Remember, I’m here for you!
~Lauren