Vocal knowledge

[j4]

Okay, this is a bit of a left-field question, but you lot are a fairly eclectic bunch, so some of you may be able to help...

If you wanted to teach someone to sing, how would you go about it?

No, I'm not entirely sure what I mean by "teach someone to sing", which is part of the problem... IME most people can sing (and when they say "I can't sing" what they usually mean is "someone told me when I was a child that I couldn't sing"); what they can't necessarily do is stay in tune (with others, or even with themselves). So let's say you want to get somebody to the point where they're able to do that well enough that they can join in confidently with 'community singing' (weddings, carol services, etc.), and eventually do simple part-singing. Where do you start? Am I asking the wrong questions?

Reading music is sort of orthogonal (and the sort of people I'm thinking of could probably teach themselves that fairly easily anyway, because they're bookish kind of people).

Comments

[crouchinglynx.livejournal.com]

I can't sing and I have the paperwork to prove it - specifically, the examiner's notes from the bits when they asked me to sing during my flute exams. (If I'd wanted to sing, why would I have taken up the flute?)
What I found particularly frustrating about the headmaster's attempts to get us to sing in assembly, and his belief that there was no excuse for not joining the school choir, was the way that he expected us all to be able to "hit that note" straight off. I can only reach a specified note by letting some noise out and then homing in on the right frequency. From my observations of people who *can* sing, that's an ability I'd have to gain before I could consider myself a singer.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Like I say, somebody told you "you can't sing" and you've taken that as an article of faith ever since. Homing in on the right note -- that means you can tell what the right note should be, and reproduce it. So yes, you'd have to practice before you could do it right first time every time... but isn't that the same for most skills? You can make a tuneful noise with your voice: you can sing. You can learn to sing better if you want to (or not if you don't).

And if your headmaster expected everybody to be able to hit the right note first time without any learning or practice, and forced everybody to join the choir, he's a c0ck. Stop listening to him!! Don't let one guy being a c0ck 20 years ago put you off singing!

If I'd wanted to sing, why would I have taken up the flute?

I believe some people do want to do both :) but the aural bit in music exams is a way of testing general musicality/music theory/etc independently of your technique on the instrument you're learning. Boys are allowed to whistle instead of singing (because of breaking voices) and I think anybody's allowed to hum instead, can't remember the exact wording of the rules. Though music teachers tend to just do things the same way for everybody cos that's the way they know how to teach. :-/

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

For ABRSM exams you can sing, hum or whistle.

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

Boys are allowed to whistle instead of singing (because of breaking voices)

For some reason, this completely reminds me of the St Cakes' newsletters ...

[crouchinglynx.livejournal.com]

somebody told you "you can't sing" and you've taken that as an article of faith ever since.

Well, I think it remains true - I can't sing, in the same way that I can't speak Spanish or do that flipping-the-coin-along-the-knuckles trick. What I'm getting at is that for me, the boundary between "can't sing" and "can sing" is the ability to find the note, and this may (or may not) be a necessary step for that subset of the world that you'd like to teach to sing.

the aural bit in music exams is a way of testing general musicality/music theory/etc independently of your technique on the instrument you're learning.

I eventually worked that out. But my voice seems a much clumsier tool for demonstrating this than, for example, the flute. (And my voice may have been breaking when I was taking some of those exams, but my whistling's even worse.)