Lecky-Springer Music Studio 

Unearth Your Vibrato

Friday, October 8, 2021 by Karen Lecky-Springer | Uncategorized

As Halloween draws eerily near, I find myself eager to share one of my favorite exercises for "finding" one's vibrato in nearly every lesson. One of the creepiest figures of Halloween, the ghost, has one of the most "natural" vibratos and students have fun imitating them in our warm-ups.

What is vibrato? Generally speaking, vibrato is a quick oscillation between pitches. The voice will subtly and quickly vibrate between two pitches of close proximity.  Vibrato is one of many tools a singer has in their toolkit to add color to their sound palette. Commonly found in the classical bel canto style, singers of all genres will benefit from understanding how to create this vocal effect.  Musical theatre students will access this technique when singing golden-age musicals, or even adding a quick sparkle of vibrato after singing a sustained straight-tone note at the end of a powerful phrase. Singers of Jazz and Pop also utilize vibrato for varying effects.

Although most of us can hear and distinguish straight-tone singing (maintaining a constant sound/tone without oscillation of pitch), many singers find that their vibrato remains elusive. Excess tension, or possibly inconsistent breath support often suppress the voice's ability to vibrate. Working to free up this tension takes time, but I am here to share with you one of my favorite exercises to help you "find" your vibrato.

Ghostly Howls

Yes, I know it sounds silly, but in this exercise you will imitate a ghost:

• Start with the vowel [u] (as in "oo" or "who"). Make sure the tip of your tongue rests against the back of your bottom teeth for the entirety of the exercise
• Create a ghostly "oo" in the lower part of your voice and slowly slide up and back down over a few notes with a big, wobbly, sound.
• Keep sliding from your lower register up and down, gradually sliding (howling) higher and higher. 
• Eventually, "howl" a simple octave scale, feeling like you are merely sliding between each note. 

Many singers find it easier to access their vibrato with this exercise in the lower register, finding it fairly quickly. As you flip into head registration, be patient but keep pretending to be a ghost. The scarier and wobblier, the better!

Happy Halloween and enjoy spookily singing through the season!

Practicing 101

Sunday, August 8, 2021 by Karen Lecky-Springer | Practice

Practicing 101:

 

Balancing school, homework, music lessons, sports, shows, volunteer work, and family time can already seem a daunting task. Whether or not you love to practice, you can't forget to schedule regular practice sessions in your schedule. These sessions can be relatively short and effective- if you plan them right! 

 

How often and how long should I practice?

            There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to this question, as varying factors all contribute to how you will schedule practice sessions; however, I can say with 100% confidence that more is NOT always better!

            Remember, your voice is made up of a series of muscles. Just like any other athlete, you have to build up strength in these muscles over time. You wouldn’t jump into a marathon (or even a half-marathon) without training for such a distance, right? The same can be applied to singing, and practice (training).   More advanced singers can practice for a few hours a day, but your average beginner may only be able to manage 15-20 minutes, or less, depending on the day. The key is to use your time effectively- have a system with clear goals laid out beforehand and you will make the most of these sessions.

            As a general rule of thumb, try to practice regularly- about 4-5 times a week. Just like athletes, your muscles benefit greatly from having a “recovery day” after use. If you make it a goal to practice at least every-other day, that should be plenty!  Take time at the beginning of each week/month, or whenever you set your schedule, to set time aside for practicing- AND STICK TO IT! Practicing should be attended just as any other appointment you have in your calendar. I know I do everything I can to make my monthly massages a priority along with my favorite Friday night TV shows- practice time should hold just as much weight on your calendar as those other highly coveted appointments. 

Beginners should try to fit in regular practice sessions of about 15-20 minutes of singing every other day at a minimum. At this stage, your voice muscles are not used to singing with proper technique. If too much effort is put in for too long, injury can occur- so keep it short, sweet, and systematic. I will lay out a practice system out for you shortly. 

Intermediate singers (those who have had a few months/year of lessons under their belt) can better understand when they are putting in too much effort while singing and have some tools at their disposal to correct or cease the strained actions. Depending on how your throat feels, and the intensity of your repertoire, you can aim for sessions around 25-45 minutes in length. 

Advanced singers (those who have studied for several years) have flexibility and the knowledge necessary to successfully practice for an hour without risk of damage to the vocal mechanism. Although you may want to sing more than an hour, be careful not to over-do it! Keep listening to your throat and trust that more is not always better.

 

How to Practice?

Each practice session should include aspects of the following 4 steps. How long you spend on each step depends on your skill level, as well as the repertoire you are learning.

 

This is the time to stretch your body- from your head down to your toes. Yoga, meditation, essentially anything that will bring your mind and body together is ideal. 

• Warm up (in this order):
  • Straw exercises
  • Other SOVT exercises (lip trills, tongue trills, [ng], etc,)
  • Diaphragmatic exercises
  • Sirens
  • scales/arpeggios- mid voice
  • range extension
  • vowel placement
  • messa di voce
  • flexibility/coloratura

• Song practice with attention to technique:

Depending on what learning stage you are at with your repertoire, you will want to use this time to learn notes/rhythms (using SOVT technique), dynamics, etc. before ever singing on the text. Take it one or two phrases at a time and focus on one technical element at a time. As each day goes by, slowly add in the text and pay attention to technical elements as it pertains to the language in which you are singing. 

            Have a few small goals in mind before you begin your session: What technique will you focus on? How many phrases of music do you want to learn? Do you have a memorization goal? You get the idea…These small goals will give you a sense of accomplishment and keep you from simply “shooting in the dark” hoping you hit some of the concepts your teacher touched on in that week’s lesson.

This is one of the most important steps to overcome performance anxiety and feel a sense of connection to the repertoire. For the last few minutes of each practice session- just SING! Don’t worry about technique, but just take time to feel the music, and tell a story. Think of the music, the lyrics, and let whatever comes, come! Don’t stop no matter what- come what may. It is in this important step that you remind yourself why you chose to sing in the first place.

 

Simply making the time to practice and having a goal-oriented system in place before stepping into the practice room will allow for you to practice more efficiently and effectively, leaving more time for you to stream your favorite TV show or head outside (to my favorite destination- the Theme Parks)!

 

 

5 Steps to Learning New Music

Saturday, July 3, 2021 by Karen Lecky-Springer | Uncategorized

Whether you are a seasoned performer, or just beginning your musical journey, learning a new piece of repertoire can seem like quite the daunting, yet exciting task. When we set out to learn a new piece, it can resemble a budding romance, and we’re often brimming with excitement, albeit nervous anticipation. Nonetheless, the outset of learning is the moment we instill lasting habits- this is the period when the brain and the body tend to imprint. When we begin with a blank canvas, it is easiest to inscribe healthy habits, rather than trying to erase poor ones later in the process.

It is crucial, no matter how much time you have (or do not have) to prepare a new piece, that you learn it deeply, and with proper technique from the beginning. Oftentimes, in the professional world, a singer is given music to learn with as little as 24 hours (sometimes less) before a performance. Beyond having exceptional sight-reading skills, top performers have tricks to help them learn a piece in a short amount of time.

1. Look at it from the 50,00 foot level
2. Analyze and Mark Up the Score
3. Lay Out the Technical Map (without text)
4. Discover your vehicle (add language)
5. Take it for a Spin- Execute the Map

1. Look at it from the 50,000 foot level:

Have a sense of what common practices are for the selection by watching and listening to varying recordings. This, I feel, is more useful for musical theatre repertoire, as stylistic choices (such as belting and other registration colors, standard phrasing, dialect, etc.) are not easily apparent on the written page.

• Establish an aural and visual model of the piece (listen to and watch recordings)
  • Research background information (dates, placement in larger work, character analysis, scene analysis, etc.)
  • Overviewing the piece from the 50,000 foot level helps you prepare for the finer points needed to perform a composition. This allows you the opportunity to keep the bigger picture in mind before diving into the nitty-gritty.
  • Analyze and mark up the score (before ever singing a note)
  • What is the overall mood and style of the song?
  • What is the overall form of the piece?
  • Do melodic phrases repeat throughout? Does the form follow a verse-chorus pattern, is it strophic, through-composed, or something different? Repeated phrases are a helpful place to begin learning notes, as once you understand how one passage goes, you have learned a larger chunk of the entire song.

2. Analyze and Mark Up the Score:

• While analyzing, scan the music for any tricky spots:
  • awkward intervals, quick melismatic passages, passaggio challenges, long phrases or sustained notes that will challenge the breath, surprising dynamic or tempo changes, etc.
• Mark up your score!
  • Pay attention to tempi changes, as well as dynamic indications.
  • Invest in some colored pencils- perhaps the erasable kind- they will be your best friend. If using digital scores, mark with colored highlighters or pencils in your favorite sheet music app (mine is ForScore). Choose a different color for varying dynamics and tempo changes.
  • My go-to system is a RED circle for forte, and BLUE circle for piano (with a varying spectrum for dynamics in between) and boxes of varying colors for tempi changes. Find a system of marking up that works for you. These marks help the eye visually see changes ahead of time, allowing you to focus more on the text and notes/rhythms without the added stress of reading all the tempi and dynamic markings.
• Take the time to establish where you think you will take breaths.
  • Using the text as your starting point, speak it through as a monologue. Where do you naturally want to breathe when speaking the text? Obviously, this may change as you dive into the piece itself, depending on vocal demands, but it is a good starting point.
• At an easygoing tempo, vocalize on a lip trill, hum, “NG,” or through a straw, the rhythms and notes of the first section. Repeat this 3-5 times.
• Move on to  “Laying out the Technical Map” of that section. Then return and repeat for each subsequent section.

Your overall goals are to understand the overall artistic content of the piece while shaping your phrasing and execution of the vocal line. This understanding will come into play when making technical decisions such as registration, phrasing, expression, and staging.

3. Laying out the Technical Map (without text)

Have a system to tackle new repertoire:

• Take on small sections at a time- try a melodic line that is prevalent throughout the piece (think of the “Chorus”- what repeats itself several times?)
• Find the easiest way to sing through each passage (remember, you aren’t on text yet). Just focus on breath, phrasing and placement for the time being.
• Think about what you are singing about. Just because you aren’t singing on the text, doesn’t mean you can’t think about what the text is conveying.
• It is of most importance at this stage to sing through each musical phrase with the intent of the text in mind. Although not singing on the text, yet, what should the phrase sound like in the context of the monologue?

4. Discover Your Vehicle: 

After you have a plan, or have mapped out the technical components of the piece without the additional stress of text, you can move to the second-to-last step: adding the language piece-by-piece. Think of the language as your vehicle of expression.

• Just like you did in Step 3, tackle the text phrase by phrase.
• If in a foreign language, TRANSLATE word-for-word as well as poetically. Place IPA transcriptions into your score as well.
• Sing phrase-by-phrase on text. Break it up into small sections at a time.
• If new problems with registration, phrasing, or resonance occur at this stage- take a look at the vowels being sung at the problem areas. Try finding an opening or closing neighbor to modify the vowel through those areas.

5. Go for a spin! Time to Execute the Map

• Sing through larger (but digestible) portions of the piece at a comfortable tempo, slowly achieving your goal tempo over time.
• Artistry comes before accuracy, but the goal is to be both artistic AND accurate!
• If you come across trouble spots in this section, isolate the problem area, and execute it accurately 10x in a row! Repetition is key to imprint correct technique at this stage of the process.
• Once one section feels easy, repeat the process with subsequent sections.
• If having trouble, try taking your map and starting at the ending destination- work small sections from the end and move toward the beginning. Mixing it up by making the destination your starting point has many benefits- it feels like you are “going home” every time you end your song!
• Don’t forget to RECORD yourself singing through the piece- it allows you to evaluate your performance objectively.

Take these tips for a spin the next time you get to tackle a new song! This systematic approach will help you understand the composition on a deeper level, while also executing an artistic rendition with minimal prep time.