Hey you guys and welcome back to The Singing Studio. Today’s episode is a review episode of episodes 22 through 28. So if you have not seen any of those episodes yet be sure to check them out. I hope you enjoy this video.
Hey everyone! Welcome back to The Singing Studio! Today’s a theory factory episode and I’m so excited! Today’s video is the first video in a three-part lesson that I will be teaching you. This is the second part of my three-part lesson about how we can break down a song. This is the final video in a three-part lesson that I’ve been teaching about how to break down a song. I’m so excited to be here with you today because today we are talking about something extremely important: how to properly and effectively memorize a song. I’m so excited to be with you all today and I hope that you have enjoyed our videos where we have really focused on dissecting our songs, breaking them down, and also talking about memorization.
You’re probably wondering why we are learning so much theory! Well it’s important for us to understand rhythm specifically so that we can become better singers and better readers of music. Let’s invite our special guest, Gilmore, to help us break down those rhythmic values and remind us how many beats each of these types of notes get. Gilmore how many beats in a quarter note? How would you count two eighth notes? How many beats in a half note? Gilmore how many beats in a dotted half note? How many beats are in a whole note?
There are two types of meter: simple meter and compound meter. Simple meter breaks down the beat into two and compound meter breaks the beat into three. So for today’s video and what we’re going to be focusing on from here on out is mainly simple meter: breaking that beat just into two. These sets of notes or sets that you see on each line are called measures or bars. So measures are able to separate all of the beats because each measure is going to get a specific number of beats. In order to know how many beats per measure there are, we need to look at the time signature. And that top number will tell us. It kind of looks like a fraction. 2/4: That means there’s two beats in a measure. ¾: That means that there are three beats in a measure. 4/4: That means that there are four beats in a measure. Now we know what a time signature is which tells us how many beats are in a measure. We know what a measure is and those are separated by bar lines. Within each measure are our beats and we also know all the different rhythm values. So putting it all together, how do we do this? How do we clap and count our music? Well let’s try a couple examples together! Okay we’re going to look at our first example. The first thing I do is I look at our time signature and that is right here. So how many beats in a measure are we going to be counting? Three. That’s right. So we’re just going to do these two measures. This is a measure and this is a measure and they are separated by these bar lines. Awesome. So let’s go ahead and clap and count the first measure together. One and two and three and. So it will go (clapping): one and two and three and. Now let’s look at our second measure. Now remember when we move on to a new measure this bar line resets it back to back to one. So after we go “one and two and three and”, we’re resetting to our next set of beats. This is a half note. This is a quarter note. Let’s go ahead and count it. This is what’s going to sound counting and clapping: one and two and three and. So remember this gets two beats and this gets one beat.
Ep. 24 – 26 – Breaking it Down Parts 1-3
The different ways that I’m going to teach you on how you can break down a song are breaking down the song by rhythm, breaking down the song by melody, and breaking down the song by text. So in each video I will be focused on one of those elements. Breaking down the song can help us prioritize how to learn this song. It can help us with memorization actually and it can help us understand the song and retain it more in our heads. As you can see we have Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We’ve got the notes, we’ve got the rhythms which have the melody and we’ve also got our text. But right now we’re focused on rhythm. This has a time signature and if you look at it it says four so we know that there’s going to be four beats in each measure. We’re going to go ahead and we are going to clap and count this song. Let’s just do the first line. Here we go. One and two and three and four and, One and two and three and four and. One and two and three and four and. One and two and three and four and. Well now we’re going to focus on breaking down the song by melody, but we are not going to sing the words yet. Now you can start playing around with it and putting it on different vowels. So I’m going to choose the vowel “wee” and I’m going to sing that same thing but on “wee”. So today we are going to be breaking down the song by the text – so by the lyrics or the words. It’s just your opportunity to speak the song in rhythm without really thinking of the music yet. So let’s try speaking that first line of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together. Twinkle twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are. Awesome, awesome. Now if you are struggling in trying to get the rhythm with the lyrics, try clapping it. Twinkle twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are.
So my tips for you today, just to recap: number one make sure to write down those lyrics and use different colors. Number two, review and memorize at nighttime before bed so that your brain has an opportunity to rest and really let that sink in overnight. And finally, do a little bit of memorization work every day for a longer period of time.
So you’re probably wondering why we have been so focused on breaking down our song and learning how to memorize it. I don’t get it – why aren’t we singing? Why aren’t we really getting into it? Well the reason why it’s important to focus on these different techniques on breaking down the song of memorization is because that is the best way we can get comfortable with our song. Sometimes it’s really daunting to look at a song and think, “Well where do I start?” And sometimes we just start with singing it and listening to a recording and that’s about all we do. When we actually break down the song and when we actually utilize the tools we have to memorize it then we can really start to have fun with it which is what I’m going to be discussing right now. So I’ve talked about three different ways we could add our artistic flair to a song. Those were dynamics – we can utilize dynamics to show emotion. Second, we can choose specific words to emphasize in order to help with our storytelling. Finally, we need to be purposeful with our breath and we need to look at our phrases where we’re supposed to breathe in order to launch us into different tactics and acting choices as we sing a song. So dynamics, emphasizing words, and breath are really what is going to help us add some awesome artistic decisions and storytelling into our songs.
And that is all for our review video today. Be sure to check out the ones you haven’t watched yet and we’ll see you in our next video.
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.