Specialist Techniques - Vocal Workshop

Today for our specialist techniques workshop, our class was split into separate groups for our primary specialism. As I play piano and am a lead vocalist, I had a choice of what I wanted to do, and I decided to join the vocal workshop.

Our first task of the workshop was to discuss and run through our individual vocal warm ups and explain how they help us to sing in our vocal range. In my group was myself, Hope, Kiera and Amy. Hope, Kiera and Amy, all explained that they had very similar vocal ranges and the best way for them to warm up is to do scales which entails singing from a low note to a high note, and testing your voice across several different octaves. As we are all instrumentalists, too, we follow our vocal warm up by playing piano or guitar along with it. I have found a clip which demonstrates this warm up:

I have been attending professional vocal lessons for seven years, doing one grade exam per year, and I am now almost at a grade 7. From my years of lessons, I have found that doing a “sirens warmup” is the best for my voice, as I am mainly a funk and soul singer. Sirens teach me to sing high notes with strength and power and to sing low notes with confidence without hurting or straining my voice. The main aim of sirens is make your voice go from the lowest note it possibly can to the highest note, safely. Here is a clip to demonstrate this:

After discussing our individual warm ups, we went out into the garden with Nick, and he explained his best tips and advice for singing and warming up. Here are some screen shots, of the advice he gave us:

After this, we went into a rehearsal pod and practiced the warm ups that Nick had explained and demonstrated to us, and we then chose a song to sing together to put these techniques into practice. The song we decided to sing was “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse. Myself, Hope and Kiera, sung this in a three-part harmony, Amy did attempt to add some more textural stuff to the song but I think she struggled with it and was quite nervous. However, the warm ups that we practiced help us to sing fantastically and I think our voices sounded really good together and complimented one another, even though all three of us are completely different vocalist. Here is the clip of our song:

I thoroughly enjoyed this vocal workshop. It was interesting to work with people I wouldn’t usually work with, and to learn new vocal techniques which I will definitely be utilising in future performances and rehearsals. I feel this was one of the best specialist techniques workshops and I am looking forward to future ones.