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From:  LYNDA313@a...
Date:  Thu Jan 24, 2002  4:30 pm
Subject:  Songs are too low (was[vocalist] why female pop singers don't use head voice)

Hello from in here in lurkdom!

There was a reference in an earlier post to the fact that so much school
music for children is now pitched so low. It's true, of course, but the
creative teachers do not assume that all songs must remain in those keys,
thank goodness. I do remember, however, a workshop I attended a number of
years back...one during which a quality composer of childrens' choir music
was speaking and working with a local boys choir. He said that when he
submits a song of his to a publisher, the first thing a publisher says to him
is, "The song is good, but you'll have to lower the key! No one will buy
it!" . But it is a catch-22. If there are no songs out there in higher
keys, obviously no one will buy them.

There is a perception that writing for youngsters should be in speech
register...but just think what speech register IS for young children! It is
so high...I teach in a school which accomodates students from grades 1
through 12, and the singing and speaking and shouting I hear every day goes
into the stratosphere. Now -- that doesn't mean that all these students
sing well in that area, however. It depends so much upon the vocal examples
they hear. I have observed a colleague who directs a childrens' choir, and
he has trouble getting these voices to sing up high with a clear and
un-pushed quality...but when I listen to his singing for them in his
octave...and/or his uncomfortable falsetto (not like the easy smooth sound
many men create)...I see that they do not have a good example to follow.
Perhaps if they could imitate during singing the sounds they themselves
create during play, that lovely tone would be utilized better and more often!

Sincerely,

Lynda Lacy, Soprano
Vocal Music, Hilton Head Preparatory School
Hilton Head Island, SC

"Let your voice serve the music, and not the other way around." - B. R.
Henson







  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date  
16828 Re: Songs are too low (was[vocalist] why female pLloyd W. Hanson   Fri  1/25/2002  

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