Saskia

Recommended minutes to practice: 10 minutes a day

What to practice: various warmups, My Girl, Butter, reviewing any old songs we’ve done as well as singing other favourite songs with lyric videos!

How to practice it most effectively: The warmups we have done include:

  • “ooh” unpitched slide (just start on a comfy middle note, and slide gently up and down, getting a little higher & lower each time)
  • “na na na” C-D-E, E-D-C warmup (then moving into other notes as the bottom note)
  • “ooh-ah-ooh” sliding warmup (can be small, C-E-C; or big C-G-C)

For My Girl, try to have a little, almost silent “H” before the “I”s so it’s gentler on your voice. In the chorus, the lead singer only does the first “My girl”, the other echos are background vocals. Note that the “hey, hey, hey”s are slightly different the 2nd time. If you do want to sing Butter along with the lyric video, just make sure you do a warmup that extends a few notes beyond C4 since that high note comes back again and again. Have a great summer break and thanks for singing with me!

 

Gianna

Recommended minutes to practice: 10 minutes a day

What to practice: various warmups, Do a Deer, So Long Farewell, revisiting songs like Monster, If I Can’t Have You, Shake it Off as well as any others you enjoy, and songwriting!

How to practice it most effectively: The warmups we have done include:

  • skips warmup (C-E-G-E-C, then moving around to other notes as well) on “na na na” or “ma ma ma” (make sure the vowel is nice and open).
  • sliding down warmup (can do G to C, then moving down in your range) on “Hah” – the “H” at the beginning is important to achieve an open/forward sound quality.
  • singing a C major and G major scale (saying letters or saying do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do).

For Do a Deer, continue to sing the ends of phrases (like “sun”, “run”, etc) with open vowels. Make sure you end these long notes early enough that you have time to breathe before the next phrase. For So Long Farewell, please use the video I sent you so you also have the verse (the beginning part) of the song. The word “auf wiedersehen” is pronounced “aw-vee-der-sen”. For all those long tones near the end on “good-bye“, please make sure you get a nice big belly breath in before singing them. Thanks for all your hard work and enthusiasm in class – have a great summer!