The human voice is an amazing instrument that we carry with us everywhere we go. Part of what creates the unique sound of your own voice is air flow through the vocal chords as you exhale while singing or speaking. Therefore, controlling your breathing can help you control your voice!

You may find yourself thinking, “But I’m a pro at breathing! I’ve been doing it since I was born!” However, like most things there’s always more to learn, and the kind of breathing you do while singing is a little different. Here’s a few things you can try!

1.) Let your stomach expand when you breathe. Many people instinctively suck their gut in because we live in a world where it’s apparently unacceptable to have a stomach. This action forces them to breathe from their upper chest only. In turn, this restricts them from singing comfortably, as they’ll often feel like they just don’t have enough air. If you place your hand on your stomach, you should be able to feel it gently rise when you inhale, and fall when you exhale.

2.) Shoulders back and relaxed! Having your shoulders hunched or tense will also prevent your diaphragm from expanding fully. Let your arms hang by your sides, relax your shoulders and stand or sit up straight with your ribcage tilted just slightly upward rather than down. You shoulders should not move much at all when you inhale and exhale; that creates tension and doesn’t help with proper diaphragmatic breathing.

3.) Plan ahead. This one might sound odd, but it helps to anticipate how much breath you’re going to need in the next phrase in the song. Of course, knowing the song (by listening and singing along and memorising the lyrics) will help you tremendously. You will attain the best sound when you inhale neither too much, nor too little air for the next part of the song. Although singers need to take deeper, faster breaths, you don’t want to overfill your lungs. That creates unnecessary tension in your body, and loss of vocal control as you try to push out all that excess air!

4.) Find a vocal teacher to teach you good breath management skills. Is this cliche coming from a vocal teacher? Yes, but it’s nevertheless true. It can be hard to know if you’re getting a technique right when you’re at home watching a Youtube tutorial. Getting in-person lessons can seem scary, but having someone else to guide you can really maximise your chances of success and your enjoyment of singing!

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Look for the patterns in the song: 

Most songs have easily identifiable sections like a verse , chorus or bridge, but within those sections, if you look closely, you will see that there are other patterns within those sections. For example, the drummer may play the same general groove for 8 bars and then play a fill, then repeat that for the next part of the verse.Also the guitar/keyboard chords are often repeated phrases. If you can begin to spot those patterns it makes memorizing songs much easier. In fact, you will see similar patterns popping up in other songs too.

Listen to the tune of the chords:

 Just like the tune that the vocalist is singing, the chords also make a tune but it’s one that we don’t often listen to. After a while of listening to chord patterns we start to recognise them and put them into our internal musical library just like we do with the main melody of a song. Check out the chord intro to Wild Thing by the Troggs and try to hear the tune of the chords. Then listen to the intro of Summer Loving from Grease. The two songs are in different keys but the sound of the riff is a very similar tune. 

It’s all relative:

 Actually music is really easy until you put the note names in (eg Bb, C# etc). Western music consists of 12, equally spaced notes. You can start a tune anywhere within those 12 notes and follow a pattern. Start the pattern elsewhere and you’ll get the same tune in a different key. You kinda know this already because when you sing Happy Birthday at a friend’s party you don’t have to ask what key it’s in first! Wherever you start from in those 12 notes, the rest follows on, relative to that first note.

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A tutor knows what you don’t know. 

Sure, there are hundreds of resources around on the Internet so why not use them? Well, remember that your tutor knows what you don’t know. If you don’t know why you should learn a natural minor scale, or what a scale mode is, or why playing the kick drum with a crash cymbal is important, how are you going to know that you need to learn it? When students realise this the light-bulb flicks on and they get excited about taking lessons.

Technique.

We see a lot of self-taught people with poor technique. Does it really matter? Well, I suppose not, but if you want to be great on your instrument then learn to do it right -and with more delicate instruments, like your hands or your voice, you probably don’t want your poor technique to do you any physical damage (eg RSI). A tutor can correct bad technique easily by suggesting different hand positions, etc; a Youtube video can’t do that.

Accountability and motivation.

When you know you are going to lessons you actually have a reason to practice, a reason to work on your instrument. If not, well there’s always tomorrow to practice.

Do you trust yourself?

I forget who it was but one famous guitar player once stated that he was self-taught initially until he realised he was a lousy teacher. You don’t teach yourself to drive, or to do maths -you go to someone who has experience and skills in that area (and who can also teach).

Why not learn from a friend?

Ask yourself the questions “are they a good teacher?”, “do they have the necessary experience?” and “do they know what you need to know?”

There’s a lot of rubbish on the Internet.

There’s some great resources on the Internet but there’s also a huge amount of rubbish. There are videos and tab sites and chords and lyrics but I actually think that more than half of it is incorrect. Yes, more than half. Sometimes I even wonder what the person was listening to ‘cos it’s certainly not the way I hear it played. Do you want to take that chance?

 So if you are taking lessons with us—great stuff—you’re on the right track and you’re taking your learning seriously. Keep rocking!

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Did you know that you can learn more about music just by listening to songs?

Try listening to a song by your favourite artist. Can you name the time signature? Try tapping out the beat. Is the tempo fast, or slow? Does it change during the song? You could create a “Time Signatures” playlist out of songs you know, to help you identify and understand time signatures. If you’re not sure what the time signature is, you can google it, or ask your music tutor!

Familiarise yourself with 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 (the most common) and 6/8. Some more unusual time signatures include 7/4, for example in the song “Money” by Pink Floyd, and 6/4 in the song “Electric Feel” by MGMT. Some songs even change time signature, which can be really important to pay attention to when you’re playing. A great example is “Happiness is a Warm Gun” by the Beatles. It has over 4 different time signatures to give each part of the song a distinctive feel!

Another thing you can do is to try to identify the instruments in the song. Do you think that they are electronically generated, or “real” instruments, or a mixture of both? Listen to the different parts that they play, how they complement one another and how they contribute to the structure of the song. The combination of different instruments and sounds gives a song “Texture”. What patterns can you hear?

Can you identify when the chord changes occur? If you’re able to, try to identify the types of chord they’re playing. If you have access to your instrument, you can attempt to work out melodies, chords, riffs or root notes by ear. This is an incredibly useful skill: before the internet, and sites like GuitarTabs existed, musicians had to work out how to play the latest hits by ear! It’s not always safe to assume that the tablature you downloaded is accurate. It pays to be able to listen, experiment, and work things out yourself.

If you’re a vocalist, or even if you’re not, have a listen to the lyrics! Look them up if you can’t make out what they’re saying. This can save you from having a bad case of “misheard lyrics”, or the unfortunate experience of realising that the song you’ve been playing in front of small children is perhaps not so appropriate! A surprising number of people don’t listen to song lyrics. This is a pity because some songs have excellent lyrics that are worth knowing, or are simply fun to sing along with when you know them (e.g. the bridge of Bohemian Rhapsody).

Listening to music with focus and intentionality is an activity you can do on the go, and it can help you understand your chosen instrument, and how it can be played, better. Try it today!

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Let’s look at rhythm.  I often do a set of strumming exercises on guitar with my students.  First up we strum 8th notes, down and up, on any chord, counting “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”. 
Strumming down on the numbers and up on the “ands”.  We then start to leave out various strums to make new strumming patterns, for example, leaving out the strum of “and” after 2 and the strum of “and” after 4.  Students usually concentrate really hard to count the beats and strums until I tell them it’s the same rhythm at the start of Jingle Bells.  Now it’s not so tricky.   In other words, they already knew the rhythm—they just didn’t know they knew it.

What about melody?   The gap between any two notes in a melody is called a musical interval and their names are based on where they fall in a major scale in relation to the root (tonic) note.   Most people can sing many, many songs—at least in their head.  Here’s a few examples of common intervals:

The first two notes of Amazing Grace are a fourth.

Twinkle , twinkle little star is a perfect fifth.
Major seventh—First two notes of the chorus of Take on Me by Aha
Octave—Somewhere over the rainbow

By comparing what we are learning to what we already know we can train our ears to hear things in a different, and more efficient way.  

Get those ears wiggling. 

Cheers!  Mark

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1) Be prepared:

This is pretty obvious but “can I borrow a pick” and “I left my music at home” are very common phrases that we hear from students. Why not keep your music in a folder? Get some spare picks (they only cost a dollar or so). Make sure your instrument is well maintained. Make sure you’ve worked on any exercises your teacher has set you. Come to your lesson on time, get tuned up before you arrive or while you are waiting. It all helps make the lesson run smoothly.

2) Practice (you knew it was coming, eh?)

After many years of intense study, top scientists and musicians have made the groundbreaking discovery that the secret to being a great musician is PRACTICE. Who knew? But seriously—it really does make a difference. Even 10 minutes a day. But let’s make a pact—let’s not call it PRACTICE; let’s call it PLAYING. PLAY your instrument for 10 minutes a day. PLAY something you like, something easy, something harder, something new. (That sounds a bit better than PRACTICE. Agreed?)

3): Be open-minded

Your tutor made be old and seem out of touch, but there’s a good chance that they have experienced some stuff that you may not have. Why not see if you can learn from that experience? Your tutor may use styles of music that you are not familiar with or wouldn’t listen to yourself, but there’s a good reason why those pieces were chosen. Be open-minded about learning different genres, and styles too. Many pop artists over the years have taken influences from previous generations and amalgamated them into new, modern, genres.

4) The Beatles. 

Listen to the Beatles. Always listen to the Beatles (according to Mark!) They manage to cram a lot of musical goodness into their songs. There’s a lot to learn from them!

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It’s important to understand that although the two things are closely related, music theory does not mean note reading. Note reading is the equivalent of reading a novel; music theory is the equivalent of understanding the way the author has used various language and other literary structure to create a compelling read… Music theory is the “science” behind music; it is the “maths” that describes how music works. Here’s some thoughts:

1. Understanding:

 Theory helps you to understand why certain chords sound good together, why certain notes sound “tricky” in certain places, and many other things. This understanding helps you get “inside” the song and see how it is constructed rather than it being a seemingly random collection of notes and chords.. Then you are only one step away from creating your own compelling song.

2. Reuse: 

Once you understand that a C major and G major scale are only one note different you can modify any C major scale patterns you know to make G major patterns!

3. Practical skills:

 Once you understand how chords work, transposing a song becomes easy, and working our your own chords becomes second nature.

4. Communication:

 Music is just a language. The more you understand it the better you are able to communicate with fellow musicians

5. Informs and educates:

Knowing theory makes a good player an informed good player, and ultimately a better player. So, should you learn some theory? Yep!

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