I've been promising myself that I'd put together a 'learner pack' of the exercises with their rationale, and examples of them in action for a long time now
I'm hoping to get some of these ideas used locally - Ireland has some way to go singing-wise to catch up with the phenomenal success that music is now experiencing
I believe most people can sing and, given the effort, can sing as well, if not better than many of 'the names
We had a lovely experience one when we took blind Traveller, Mary Delaney, (discussed on the 'What Will We Do' thread) to The Singers Club one night
She sat though the residents' performances and after each, whispered her opinion of them into my ear (she loved Frankie Armstrong's singing)
If you think people don't criticise your singing after you perform - dream on
You may as well make use of that criticism as far as I'm concerned
Working in the way that we did meant that everybody involved learned something from each session - the singer being worked on - of course - the fact that you were being asked to think abot what the singers was doing meant that you began to understand the workings of your own voice and apply what you have learned to your own performances
One thing I found was that, while I have never been as good a singer as I wanted to be, the very first time I ever sang for criticism got rid on any nervousness I had about singing to an audience - I have never been nervous since
Will put something together when we get back from Dublin (our trip will include a visit to the Cobblestone Club whicdh is run entirely by young singers who have fairly recently come to traditional singing and are now as good, if not batter, than most clubs on the scene today)
Jim