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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.