Singing

Songs to sing at home (both during Corona times and in general!)

Singing lifts the spirits! PART A: Watch these lovely examples of how powerful singing is in bringing people together, and then, for PART B, try singing along with the resources below! Ask your family to join in with you!

1a. Imagine

1b. Your turn!

2a. Italians singing their National Anthem together

2b. Your turn. Challenge - can you sing our National Anthem completely without looking at the words? 

3a. "Over the Rainbow"

The Chino Valley Unified School District's annual Choral Festival was cancelled due to the virus, so the students all sang their individual a cappella portion of "Over the Rainbow" in their separate homes, and put them together to create this masterpiece:

3b. Your turn. Can you sing along with this beautiful version of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'?

4a. Stand By Me

4b. The Upper Fourth (and string ensemble) should know this very well already. It's a beautiful message to sing or play out, loud and proud, at tough times like this. Sing along at the top of your voice! For a challenge: record yourself and your family or friends singing it over an online platform!

5a & b. This is may be one for your parents/teachers! 

6. Singing across the UK - Gareth Malone's 'Great British Home Chorus'

If interested, you can sign up here: https://decca.com/greatbritishhomechorus/

7a. A family challenge: Watch this family perform their adaptation of a famous musical theatre number... 7b. Can you get creative and come up with your own 'remix' of a song, with members of your household?


Other singing activities:

Students' challenge: Can you make up your own? Achievement points available for the best ones. Send to Miss Cassells at music@highclareschool.co.uk. See Mrs De Visser's version below:

General warm-ups and activities

Scales

In lessons and choir rehearsals, we often sing the notes of the major scale in numbers, for example by singing the following activity.

Solfège is a method used to teach aural skills, pitch, and sight-reading of Western Music. Syllables (below) are alligned to the notes of the scale

  1. Do
  2. Re
  3. Mi
  4. Fa
  5. So
  6. La
  7. Ti

You may already be familiar with this from 'The Sound of Music'. If not, watch the following clip:

Here is an exercise for you to experiment with some solfège singing. This will test your ear, pitch, and sight reading skills.

You can also try the 'number' warm up with solfa:

In Indian Classical Music these notes are known as 'Svara'.

  1. Sa
  2. Re
  3. Ga
  4. Ma
  5. Pa
  6. Dha
  7. Ni

Watch and join in with the following video:

We can also sing scales that have smaller intervals (gaps in pitch) between each of the notes. In western music, the smallest distance between any 2 notes is known as a semitone. The chromatic scale is made up of semitones. Watch and join in with the following clip to learn about this further:

However, Indian music goes even further than semitones: A shruti is the smallest gradation of pitch that a human ear can detect and a singer or instrument can produce. Check out the following video:

Musical theatre warm-ups!