Friday 10th October 2014 - Down and Out

Friday 10th October 2014

Down and Out

In todays lesson we sung the song "Down and Out" from "Bugsy Malone" We had to use different singing techniques such as diction, articulation and range to help us sing this song and make it sound better.

Diction helped us to sing this song especially in the "down down down down down down and out" parts of the song. Diction can be helped by using vocal exercises such as tongue twisters like "red lorry yellow lorry".

Articulation is how you sing something for example staccato,  short and sharp notes and legato, long and smooth notes. The exercises that can help us to improve our articulation are singing a mixture of staccato and legato "ha ha ha" at different pitches. We used this today when singing, especially when singing the word "you". This is because in this particular song "you" at the end of the line is longer than the "you" at the beginning of the line.

Range is how high and low you can sing. The exercises that can improve this are practising your scales.This is when you sing an ascending and descending melody usually using your vowels. This is used when singing "down down down" and "up up up" word painting is also used here.

Note bashing - learning a sequence if notes within a song
Lyric bashing - learning the lyrics of a song or a vocal phrase
Word painting - The melody does what the words say for example when singing "down" the melody descends