Copy Me !

The Singing Lesson, and what a mouth shape !


Holiday time, or Song Free time is much needed and a relief from using my voice. It is not only my ears which love the respite, but my voice also. I sing a great deal in lessons, either to demonstrate or to record a song for a pupils' own practice.

I almost feel my vocal folds relaxing and letting go, and when term starts again, like an athlete or dancer I have to warm up slowly to make it through the full weeks' work ! Demonstrating is the only way I really know to help a student reproduce the sound which I want. Most folk use their ears much less than they have the capacity for, a little in the way that we are told that on the whole we barely scratch the surface of our brain power !

There is some magic connection between the ear and the mouth, just like we learn to talk and make 'words', we copy sound and the way the sound is produced. That is why singing a good and focused vowel gives the sound such projection, and of course, an un-miked projection.

Sometimes I think that education in general has lost in the mists of theory and doctrine the knowledge that a good old fashioned bit of copying is both very very useful, and immensly satisfying. I remember all the little rhymes which I learnt for maths and mental arithmetic, many of the poems I learnt, and at the time did not really understand, and all the grammer which was drummed into us by rote.

NOW I understand, and NOW I use the maths rhymes on a daily basis at the supermarket or Bank, and NOW I know that if my youngest to my oldest pupils copy my sounds they sing well, even though they have no idea how or why!!

Listen, reproduce, achieve.

All types achievement is good, and the roads to achievement are many and varied, but ALL are worthwhile.

I love rote, memorising and copying as much as I love spontanaity, creativity and individualism, and I need both in equal amounts in my teaching to paint the whole picture !

(Cute photo don't you think!)