You know what's great to do at home? Sing!
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Hi Warm Me Uppers! Well it has been quite some time since we wrote a blog but we suddenly have quite a bit of time on our hands. Suddenly being a musical director of a big musical seems a little two weeks ago…
BUT the good news is we’ve been thinking about how much singing and music making we can all be doing at home and have put together some ideas about how to fill your home with music even if it’s just you isolating it up for a couple of weeks.
Obviously, start every sing with a Warm Me Up warm up! We recommend 7 - 12 minutes but even an exercise or two is beneficial. We’ll also be putting out some videos over the next bit to inspire you to use some of the Warm Me Up exercises in fun and different ways.
If you do a solid warm up every day, you’ll probably notice some real improvements in your singing: increased power and flexibility and you might even extend your range and find some notes you haven’t had before! See, there are silver linings to every grey pandemic cloud!
As well as working on your technique, this is the perfect time to learn new songs. Finally get started on that song you’ve been thinking about learning for ages or go on a youtube adventure and discover some new songs that speak to you.
Once you’ve found something you love, it will most likely be available for purchase on Musicnotes.com. It’s not cheap but the money is going to the artists and publishers so it’s the right thing to do. Once you’ve bought the music you can either print it out or use their app where you can change the key and tempo - both handy tools for making sure the song sits well in your voice and practising it slowly. The piano accompaniments are computerised and thus nowhere near as good as having a pianist play it for you but it’s a great way to start off. And then when you’re ready to level up, send some $ to a pianist who’ll record it at their place and email it straight back to you (they’ll need the work and be grateful for the new music to play!)
This is also the perfect opportunity to improve your musicianship and aural skills and we’d recommend the Aurelia apps for this. They can help with note reading, rhythms and interval recognition and have a game element so they’re fun too!
If you’re missing your choir rehearsals, Sing Harmonies might be a fun app to play around with. It has songs in four part harmonies where you can solo individual parts, learnthem and then test yourself in the full chords. It’s all learning by ear but this is a great skill to develop and heaps of fun too!
And if you can live without your choir rehearsals but not your choir buddies (or theatre buddies!), Smule - The Social Singing App will be just what you need! It’s the perfect chance to sing karaoke either by yourself, with the original artist or (using LiveJam mode) with your friends. Who says distancing can’t be social?!
We hope that gives you some ideas about how to keep moving forward with your singing. Let us know if you’ve got great apps or websites that you’ve been enjoying - we’d love to share them too.
Wash your hands and keep singing!