When my husband suggested that I add pop music to the music that my students sing, I was a bit apprehensive. After all, I am a classically trained singer and I teach my students to sing largely classical and musical theater songs because I have felt that a good foundation is built on teaching the basics through classical song. My young students (who are 9 through high school age) need to have the skills to be able to go on and sing in productions at school, in choirs and solos. His thought was that it would meet some of their needs and desires and make private lessons more valuable to them (and thus less likely to be abandoned.) I have worked with adult clients on several styles of music as well as classical, so I was open to the idea. However, I did have a few concerns.
1. I needed to find ways to keep the student learning musical and performing skills.
2. I needed to make sure that the student would continue to sing/play with good technique even though it was a pop song.
3. I didn’t want their entire “diet” to become pop music.
For the past few weeks, I have been incorporating pop music into my lessons. Here is what I found. Adding pop music into lessons does a quite a bit to keep the students interest. Students are more likely to practice a popular song that they have chosen because they like it. I make my students sing pop music from sheet music. This forces them to look at the song in sheet music form and creates some really interesting discussions about the differences between whats on the page and what they hear on the recording. It also helps them to learn to read more difficult rhythms. Some pop songs are remakes of older songs or have multiple recordings made of them. It is fun to listen to older recordings to hear the differences in the song and how different performers have made the song their own.
To be continued.
I haven’t included a lot of pop music in my lessons recently. I’ve found that many students try and immitate the sound they hear from the artist’s recording not realizing the amount of “enhancement” that occurs after the initial recording. I do use a lot of jazz standards and music theatre pieces especially those that come with CD accompaniments! Most of my kids are too young to have heard the original recordings, but they often sing jazz choral arrangements of standards and are delighted to sing a solo on their own with a “big band backup”.
I have only had a few situations where voice students try to copy the pop singers, but it’s really up to us teachers to break any of those bad habits. With that said, as a studio singer myself, there is a lot of skill required to sing modern music. To be a good modern singer, one must use the same impecable techniques that classical singers uses. We just don’t use a british accent
My sentiments exactly! I feel that working on pop music allows us to explore some new ideas in singing, while still honoring the underlying technique that all singers need to use. I am sure to point out that many sounds that you hear in recordings may not have been created by the singer without the help of a special effect. I work with the singers on using their own style and own interpretation of the piece.