Objectives for this module:
-Understand how notes relate to one another and how the way they are patterned creates different musical moods.
-Understand why ear-training will really help your singing
-Practice (at least 4 times this week) and train with the fifths interval.
-Refine your ability to analyse the song you’re working on. Is it broadly in a minor or a major key? What pitch registers are the notes in each section in? Very often the notes in the chorus will be in a higher register than the verse. How do the notes move in each section?
-Work on one section at a time, really focusing on note movement and using different sounds to drill muscle memory for each section.
-Review the last week – how many times did you sing, what did you focus on when you were singing, how did it feel and what questions/refections arose? If you didn’t have time to sing, what diary spots are available for you to schedule this next week?
-Check in with your song list and continue adding songs in different tempos.
Record yourself at least once singing the warmups focusing on release of air. You can do that in soundtrap here. https://www.soundtrap.com/studio/assignment/JooRhXaTT8m2PhtcgzqNcQ/
There are twelve distinct pitches in the Western system of music, and there are many ways of combining these. You can see that from C to C in the diagram we have 7 white keys and 5 black keys. The natural (white) keys are labelled with letters (in other musical traditions they can be labelled Do Re Mi etc, but in English they are designated with letters). The black keys are given a name that describes them as being adjacent and higher than a natural note, or adjacent and lower than a natural note. The black note to the right of D can be described as D# – D sharp – (immediately next to, and higher, than D) or Eb (immediately next to, and lower, than E). It depends on other musical context that we don’t need to get into right now as to which name is used.
The important thing for singers is to understand this:
1. All melodies are made up of movements between notes. These movements can be stepwise – notes up or down like a scale – or intervallic – notes with a space in between. Singing melodies with accurate pitch comes down to how well your muscle memory can create these different spaces between the notes. When we start out with vocal training, we are typically more comfortable with notes that are close together, because this is most similar to the rhythms of speech. When we talk, we typically vary the pitch of speech. Note spacing where we have to gauge a bigger space than the small pitch variation of speech can feel like a stab in the dark.
This is why, out of all the things you can do to help the quality of your singing, the repetition of small sections is one of the activities that will make the most difference to your ability to consistently sing your chosen songs confidently.
2. Your ability to accurately move between different intervals is related to muscle memory. Your body has many other very finely tuned calibrations that you are able to make each day and take for granted. You can find your mouth with your cutlery even though you cannot see where to aim. However it’s a learned skill – babies cannot do this. It’s a bodily sense that is sufficiently familiar to be very reliable. If you hold a driver’s licence, you can move between gears spaced very close to each other, without looking down This may seem like an obvious point to make, but I want to encourage you to understand that any melody can be broken down to specific individual movements that you can become familiar with through repeated exposure and this is a muscle memory/co-ordination skill, not a mysterious talent.
3. If we systematically train your ability to hear and recognise each possible melodic spacing and we consistently train your ability to sing each one, you can become very accurate and consistent with pitch. You will not be ‘hoping’ that the notes will come out sounding fine. You will know exactly what spacing you’re aiming to make and you will have sufficient practice with each one to be able to do it easily and consistently.
4. Every scale or lick or trill or ornament that you learn is a way of pre-selecting certain pitches from those twelve available ones to create a pattern. Depending which pitches are included or left out, the notes create a certain musical effect. The major scale (start at C, and sing all the white notes) creates one kind of instantly recognisable pattern and mood. The minor scale creates another. The more comfortable you become with these patterns, the more you will have already internalised many of the patterns that crop up in melodies. When someone sings a song with great pitch and expression, they are not singing something they have never heard or sung. They are using vocabulary and muscle memory that they have already absorbed. This is why the scales and other exercises are helpful.
Ultimately, you want to be able to hear any two notes and identify what the distance between them is. The best way to build this skill up is to choose ONE interval at a time and to train it for a week before moving on to the next.
Here is a guide using different pieces of music to help you hear the spacing between any two notes.
| Interval | Note spacing | Sounds like first two notes of: |
| b2 | One semitone, smallest distance | Jaws |
| 2nd | Two semitones | Happy birthday |
| b3rd | Three semitones | Greensleeves |
| 3rd | Four semitones | O when the saints/ While Shepherds watch their clocks |
| 4th | Five semitones | Here comes the bride/We wish you a Merry Christmas |
| 5th | Seven semitones | Twinkle Twinkle little star |
| 6th | Nine semitones | My bonnie lies over the ocean |
| b7 | Ten semitones | Star wars theme |
| Maj 7 | Eleven semitones | Somewhere Over the rainbow |
| Octave | 12 frets | Some-where Over the rainbow |
Watch this for a recap of what ear training is about and how it specifically relates to guitar.
Watch this if you understand the principle and you want to move straight to training yourself with the first interval, fifths.
Ready to test yourself? Here’s the audio to see if you can hear and sing the fifths audio. You’ll hear a note and an instruction to find the fifth above or below it. Then I’ll say ‘Time’ to let you know I’m about to play the note. Match the note I play with the one you sang or mentally heard. Up a fifth = first two notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Down a fifth = first two notes of the Flintstones.
