Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Doing the homework

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine posted this on her Facebook wall:




There have been studies proving that trying to learn text and music at the same time is NOT the most efficient method to learn a new song/role. One of these very important parts of the whole (either text, rhythm, or pitches) will be short-changed, because our focus will be on whichever one is more difficult at the moment.

Have you ever been in a coaching or lesson where you were asked to recite the text as a monologue? Was it difficult? Did you need to think of the music to remember where you were in the text? And when you did recite it, did you suddenly realise what the song was about? Has your coach ever reminded you of an accent marking and suggested you use the text to create that?



This is what I call "doing the homework"! Breaking things apart, pulling out each ingredient and piecing them back together, rather than just trying to do everything at once. Take one component at a time, say your text as a monologue, look at the rhythm and any markings that go along with it, sing the melody on neutral syllables, and make sure that at each stage of this, you are really seeing what the composer actually wrote. It's too easy to miss something when you're busy trying to see everything all at once.

Let's face it--about 80% of a coach's time is spent telling singers exactly what's on the page already! Do what you can to avoid wasting your own time and money, by needing a coach to correct things you could have already seen, and use your time effectively.

--Ellen