Singing

 

I find it somewhat sad that many people don't sing. Or they sing very softly and timidly because they believe they don't have a good voice and/or don't sing on key. Singing is universal -- all cultures do it -- and singing most likely emerged right along with speech in human evolution. We need to exercise our human right to sing!

Singing is so natural that, regardless of how well (or badly) you think you sing, you can see that there is a direct connection between the brain (auditory cortex) and the vocal chords. When you want to sing Happy Birthday, you just sing it. No one ever taught you how exactly to contract your vocal chord muscles to sing each of the notes. In a sense, the ear just tells the voice what to do, and it does it!

If you think you sing badly, the solution is to sing more, not less. That is the way to strengthen the ear/voice connection. You don't need to take singing lessons; instead, play a note on the piano (or other instrument) and try to match it with your voice. When you really are singing the same note, you will experience it "lock in" with the note you are playing. If it doesn't sound right, try to determine whether you are too low or too high and try to adjust until you lock in. (Obviously, try to play a note that is within your vocal range -- lower if you are a man and highter if you are a woman.) Many people struggle with this, but I believe everyone can improve. This is a good first step.

I do teach ear development as well as sight-singing (which you'd need to do in a choir, for example), and have many methods to help students with this. However, it's beyond the scope of this post to detail it all here.

What does this have to do with the piano? As you've read in previous posts, the importance of the ear cannot be over-stated. 

Specifically, I often have students sing the melody line of the piece they are working on. (You can also sing the bass line or any of the other lines, if it is a multi-voice piece, but start with the melody line.) If you find you can't quite do it, that means the music is not "in your ear" yet, meaning the ear/brain doesn't really know how it sounds. It's imperative that the ear knows it. (By the way, ear and memory are essentially the same; see my post on Memory.) After you have sung it, try playing it again and you will most likely feel it is easier. 

Of course, piano music has a lot more than just melody going on, and since you can't sing more than one note at a time, you can't sing the complete piece. There are many ways to approach that, such as playing everything except the melody on the piano while you sing the melody. 

When you're away from your piano, waiting at a red light,say, sing the melodies from the pieces you're working on. It will help you when you get back to the piano.

Another big advantage to singing the melody is for hearing the phrasing. When you sing, you automatically take your breaths at places that make sense for the music. If there are lyrics, you would breathe where there would be a comma or a period in the lyrics. You wouldn't want to take the breath in the middle of a word, for example. Likewise, in instrumental music, even though there are no lyrics to guide you, you can sense where a musical "thought" ends and where another begins. The equivalent of a breath would be a release of the key(s), so that there is a clear sense of one phrase ending and another beginning. I've heard students, even those with a lot of natural ability, just elide phrases together, which sounds like the equivalent of a long run-on sentence, and doesn't make for a very musical rendition. If you cling to the keys (read my previous post on being "clingy") and you are fearful of picking up your hand(s), you will almost certainly end up eliding the phrases. Whenever a student has the tendency to do this, I write "p.u." in their music, which stands for "pick up." But again, singing the phrase will probably be the most helpful tool.