Singing Lessons: Working On A Song

During singing lessons after a warm up we move onto to working on a song, sometimes I will come to the lesson with a song in my mind that I want to work on or usually my teacher will choose a song for me to do. My first singing teacher that I worked with shared a lot of my music taste and we worked on lots of folk and country songs as well as some more popular songs. Another teacher I worked with got me to do a lot of different style songs so as to have a more diverse collection of work. I have to say I wasn't very comfortable with some genres for example, RnB really isn't my style! I understand why I have to try and sing more genres of song but to be honest I'm not very comfortable with some styles. Some genres I have found interesting are country; in particular bluegrass, rock, punk, and classical singing.

Firstly if I know the song I'm singing then me and my teacher will usual sing along to the original, and if I don't know the song then I'll listen to it and pickup the melody and the lyrics. Then my teacher uses a backing track and I'll run through the song a few times with them listening and then they'll give me notes and things to work on and improve. If we have the lyrics or sheet music then often my teacher will write notes on it like places to breathe and certain dynamics. Then I'll run through it several times, each time concentrating on different aspects of the song, like breathing or annunciation.

My teacher will sometimes record the song so before the next lesson I can listen to it and then practise in my spare time until the next lesson. I've done quite a few concerts and sung solos in them so, if I have one coming up I'll work on that song and my teacher will critique things more to do with performance, for example gestures and posture, or annunciation and microphone work.

 One of the first songs I ever worked on with a teacher was called 'eet' by Regina Spektor, she still has a recording of it, then on my last lesson with her we sang it together, I could really see how much I had improved on those two years and there was a huge difference. You could tell how my breathing had improved, I have a very unique tone to my voice according to my teacher and it has developed very nicely and it means I can make songs my own because my voice is different.