Welcome to the SINGORAMA newsletter series. The easiest series on singing you’ll ever log on to! You may have tried the other singing products out there … felt your eyes glaze over at all the strange words, half-heartedly attempted the exercises … and left the product in that stack in the corner, promising to pick it up again someday. Of course, you never did.
With this newsletter series, you’ll find singing made fun! You’re going to have to learn all the tricky vocabulary, what qualities make a good voice, and practice all the boring exercises anyway. At least, with this series, we’ll make sure that you’ll enjoy the process!
We’re even going to make you wait until you get further along in the process before we teach you the tricks about microphones, auditions, and putting a song together, because we don’t want you to focus on the fun stuff at the expense of the real knowledge you need to know. By the end of this series, you’ll be able to talk to ANYONE about singing. You’ll wow your friends with your mastery of concepts like vibrato, articulation, Solfeggio, and arpeggios. You will gain the edge that puts you miles beyond a mere karaoke king or queen.
So start humming and pick up a pen. You’re going to start learning about how sound gets produced, what creates the perfect singing voice, how to practice, and the basics of vocal technique. You’ll learn about blending, breathing, articulation, and vocal health. It may sound like a bunch of gibberish right now, but we promise you that the professional singers already know about these concepts. How else do you think they got where they are today? Natural talent is just a starting point—voice training is what takes them to the stars!
To help you even further, we’ve recorded audio examples of the exercises. Whenever you see the audio button, play the indicated track.
Studying singing can often seem like getting mini-courses in anatomy, music theory, and Italian all at once. Don’t let the amount of vocabulary scare you off! we’ve included handy vocabulary lists at the end of each chapter, which can help you refresh your mind about what all those crescendos and contraltos are.
So…what is singing?
What distinguishes singing from the variety of other sounds we make? We often assume that song is easily distinguished from speech, but it isn’t always the case.
For example, rap music tends to sit on the boundary between song and speech.
Someone may speak in a melodic voice to lull a baby and thereby “sing” the child to sleep. There may not be as much of a difference between song and speech as we thought. Usually, we consider someone to be singing when they are using their voice for musical effect. In other words, rather than focusing on the communication of certain words or content, they are focusing on the artistic effect that their melodic utterance creates.
Try the following exercise.
Speak the sentence:
The leaves on the trees sing in the fresh summer breeze.
Now, try to “sing” the words, using a similar voice to your speaking voice.
The leaves on the trees sing in the fresh summer breeze.
Can you see how changing your pitch, tone, and/or volume adds an artistic effect ?
The vocal apparatus that we use for speech and song is identical, but singing utilizes it in a more deliberate, focused way, by taking advantage of its resonant capacities.
Singing tends to be more sustained than speech and involves a greater range of sounds.
The History of Song
The human voice is the original musical instrument. Singing is such a natural activity that there isn’t a single culture discovered that does not sing. The earliest musical sounds people made were likely imitations of sounds found in nature. As human cultures evolved, music came to play an important part in religious rituals, celebrations, and as a lyrical record of events. This “folk music” expressed the life of its community and was usually anonymous, a collective artifact of the culture that created it .
Today, popular music is everywhere: on the street, in the buses, in homes, in workplaces. There are few places you can go without hearing music. Live performances, in venues ranging from concert halls to local bars, are accessible for most people. The proliferation of burned CDs and songs in the easily-downloadable MP3 file format have enabled a wide variety of international musical styles, sounds, and genres to flourish and find niche audiences.
Also making your own music has never been easier. Microphones, amplifiers, keyboards, and mixing equipment are easily available in models for almost every budget level.
Karaoke bars give anyone a chance to try out their singing skills in front of an audience, while competitions like American Idol encourage aspiring vocal artists to dream that they can be a pop star.
So is there any better time to be learning to sing than right now? Go on give it a try and keep a look out for our next newsletter where we explore the science of song and give you insight into how your vocal instrument actually works!
Another Singorama Success Story!
Jiang Junxuan
I would like to thank Singorama for this wonderful product! With this, I have managed a much better projection of my voice and my head voice has definitely improved through the course. I also liked the bonus software provided - Singorama! Mini Recording studio where I get to record and hear what I sound like during practice. Gosh...with all this training, I took part in a singing competition and got through to the finals! Thanks for all the wonderful lessons...you are the best!!