Help: Singing songs

Subject: Singing songs
From: GUEST,Jimmy Moch
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 01:10 AM

Is it better to learn songs exactly like on the record or to interpret them and add your own character to them?

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 01:27 AM

See the thread of "yesterday" titled: Help: Learning songs (click)

Here's an excerpt I wrote in it, and a lot of the other comments in that discussion go with your question. If you are going to join that thread you might indicate that here so others will know where you are looking for replies to your question.

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Sometimes once I think I've "got it" I will play the recording more and more softly as I sing with it. At first I am following the vocalist on the recording, but as it gets softer and I can barely hear the words to it--I find I am leading and then making it my own. That works well for words and melody. You can also whistle, the brain seems to like it and recall it well.

Sometimes it helps to see the printed music and see how the tune is constructed rhythmically, or see what melody phrases repeat. Once you see how it's built, it's easier tor recognize the sections and instinctively feel the transitions. It's like going for the same walk every day, turing the corner to see a familiar sight.

Then, once you've lived in the neighborhood awhile, you just go, without even thinking where or how. In the song, you stop being so conscious of the "bricks" it's made of and you can focus on the unique features of the day. Like when you turn the corner and someone has just painted their front door bright red since you last passed. I might be singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" three days in a row but on Monday I am in my car thinking about a sick friend who wants angels to take her away. On Tuesday I am in the kitchen doing dishes and I might be thinking about something else and spontaneously come up with whole new verses. On Wednesday in the shower I might find I'm in some kind of silly mood and the melody and rhythm might start sliding into a jazz/blues/swingy thing.

Which one will I do Saturday night in our church service? I don't always know. The versions will have added up to something fresh for that night, probably. I just let the song go ahead and be the song.

I think when people worry about learning a song they are worrying sometimes about doing the song RIGHT. That means doing it the way you haeard it or think it's supposed to be done. You think it can be perfect. It doesn't work that way. The song is the song and it becomes yours, and how you do it is how it should be done, that particular time. You only need to learn it well enough to let your mind and heart take it and keep it and share it. If you do that it will be different every time.

When you don't know a song, try doing it anyway. You might find your mind fills in a whole new melody, and if you can capture it you have just written your own new song. Sometimes my head will take off from Song A to somewhere else completely--- go into a nonexistient melody for awhile-- then end up in Song B. This is much more fun than learning how Doc Watson sings each note on his record. And the truth is, Doc only sang it that way once, it's never the same on the live album or in concert.

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: Bugsy
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 02:04 AM

I won't comment about "learning" songs but you should always add YOUR interpretation and personalty to the "performance" of that song. After all that is what the artist is doing when they originally recorded it. Therefore if you perform a song exactly as it was recorded, you offer nothing new to your audience who have, presumably, come to hear Your performance.

I hope that makes sense.

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: sophocleese
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 05:32 PM

I think Praise described it well, to be a good singer the songs should come from you. Its a good idea and fun to experiment with different styles of singing and find out which things you like to do and which you don't. Take a song you know really really well and then sing it several times over pretending to be some other kind of singer, operatic tenor, gravelly voiced Tom Waits, whispery and personal intimate singer, cheesy lounge act, etc. You can discover things about your own voice and the song if you do that.

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: Mbo
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 05:38 PM

I've sung tons of songs, from many genres, and I've always imitated the singers--sometimes very accurately--and as time went on, those little quirks of other's voices became absorbed into mine--so now I have found my own voice, and it is a combo of all those I've imitated in the past. Same with the songs. I learn them from an original source, and sig them exactly as I hear them, but as I sing them over and over again, they slowly incorporate more of me and less of the original--until they become totally different from the original. Metamorphosis, you might call it.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: JamesJim
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 10:05 PM

Do it your way and write a verse (or two).

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 Feb 00 - 12:05 AM

Yes, all of the above. Jimmy, what are you finding useful about the replies? Have you been back online to get these? I guess Mudcat was down for a bit over the weekend. Keep coming.... Join!! I just did, it is excellent. I am just learning to use the site well and already the free personal page where we store our stuff (like your aunt Nan's extra bureau drawer always waiting for your next visit... where you keep that old baseball you like to toss with her neighbor's kid).

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 Feb 00 - 02:43 PM

If you hear a great song by Pete Seeger, and you learn it, remember that YOU ARE NOT PETE SEEGER! If you try to imitate just his voice and his inflection and his banjo playing you're doomed to failure. The aficianados of Seegerdom will look down on your failures. Make the song your own, and you have no apologies to make--assuming you display some good musical judgment and have control of your instrument in your own terms.

It's better to be a first-rate YOU than to be a second-rate Seeger, say I.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: radriano
Date: 07 Feb 00 - 04:36 PM

If you are new to singing, emulate singers you admire. Copy a version straight from a record if you like. As you gain more experience singing you will find your own style emerging naturally as you gain confidence and as you find what works for you and what doesn't.

radriano

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: emily rain
Date: 07 Feb 00 - 09:03 PM

my prof quoted t.s. elliot today:

"Bad poets borrow; good poets steal."

apparantly with the context it becomes clear that what he means is copying someone else's ideas or style or whatever leads to art that is only a copy, but if you take the ideas and internalize them and let them influence your _own_ ideas, you'll end up with art that's new and fresh but still linked in with the brightness of other minds. after all, there can't be anything completelytotallyentirely new because no one creates art in a vacuum, and anyone who says different is lying to themselves.

that said, i don't really care how people sing so long as they're singin'. unless i paid money to go see them, in which case i want to see something unique and brilliant. i can see a copy for free.

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 02:00 PM

I like that, Emily, about "borrowing" and "stealing". Nice observation on his part; nice application on yours.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: GUEST,kristy vevea
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 07:29 PM

i think once you know the pitches, you know the song, it's up to you to interpret the words. at first when you sing the songs, the words are just words, then you keep singing it and they are what you want them to be. i think you should learn the song like the recording, then add your feelings and emotions to the words.

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 03:49 AM

I am a very impatient person & will usually learn a song very quickly & sing it my own way. I rarely sing the same song in the exact same way twice. I change the tune & phrasing to suit the way I'm singing it at the time. If I like a song I just get completely swept away with it and sing it with wads of expression. That all seemed great until I started to sing with a bunch of other people. Now I find that because I vary the tune I will be singing a different tune to the others, and because I vary the phrasing I am not fitting in with the guitar or the other singing (I get left behind or end up in front). Worst of all, our harmony-girl gets thrown off because she can't tell where my voice is going next & hence I mess up her ad-hoc harmonies. So now I have to apply myself to learning the standard rendition FIRST, and then varying from that a bit more intelligently. SO, I think the advice of Praise & Mbo stands out here. I think, if you want to fit in with other singers (which you might not anyway - in which case do whatever you fancy), then you need to be working from a common source. But it need only be the source, it can go & flow where you like.

Kris

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 10:04 AM

I agree. Thje best play-together fun I've had always semms to dpend on there being one person who is sure how the song should go on any particular occasion and a group of people who can "catch" that and go from there, which allows the initiator to go from there too, and everyone is happy with where they wind up.

Now we had an interesting lesson in this recently. I a usually the one who is sure, sometimes it's my husband. we used to worry about this wondering if it was a control issue on our part, but the group was just obviously having so much fun that we kept it up. Sometimes we got frusrtrated at being leaned on so hard. But we have started to notice a change.

We were reheasing and doing soundsetup for a gig. I stepped away after one song to get a drink and they all spontaneously went on break. ("It figures, I uncharitably thought.") But when I came back I found them sitting around, some with instuments, some not, and someone had started singing "Little by Little". we are sick of it and yet we can never leave it out when we get together, someone always has to start it up. Well, this night it was in a whole new way, real swingy/jazzy/slow bluesy.

They had learned by osmosis that anyone could lead, and all would follow. When it was over they just paused and smiled at each other and sighed. That happens when Greg or I lead but they had never taken us all there themselves, and they liked it, and they were quite aware of what had just happened.

THIS IS HUGE.

Now they are taking off as leaders themselves.

In church we talk about discipling people or shepherding people along-- helping people find a starting point and sticking with them as they progress. I like this as a model for becoming a more effective folkie because it's more accurate than saying we learn or are taught. To stay with the analogy a moment, last night a radio preacher pointed out that it isn't about knowing a lot which you will then teach someone else. It's about one beggar telling another beggar where a good meal can be gotten.

I think the most generic and still accurate description of the healthy process at work, in learning and singing and playing, would be that someone is parenting us, and we are maturing. I think we parent each other, I certainly know our band is parenting me just as much as I am parenting them, and of course sometimes we're all being sisters and brothers and Kum Ba Yah, I've gone dangerously close to the 70's somehow now.

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: Mbo
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 10:49 AM

And I can do a pretty mean Andy M. Stewart and Dougie MacLean...

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Help: Singing songs
From: Alice
Date: 20 Feb 00 - 10:34 AM

The original question in this thread:
Is it better to learn songs exactly like on the record or to interpret them and add your own character to them?

My answer: Only you have your vocal cords, the unique instrument born in each of us. If you want to be an impersonator, which many people do for fun or as a profession, then learning to imitate is the way to go. If your goal is not to be an impersonator, (and most singers are not), then developing your own voice is what you should be doing from the very start of your training and rehearsal. We are all influenced by the sound of whoever we hear singing, especially when we listen to recordings over and over, programming our memory. Develop your own voice, your own way of singing a song, and run from any teacher who tries to teach you to imitate if that isn't your goal.

-alice