12 false beliefs about singing that can prevent you from even trying – don’t let them stop you!

Many of us had bad singing experiences at school. You might have been kicked out of the choir or told to stand at the back and mime.

photo by Northern Ireland Executive

Experiences like that can put you off singing for years, and even if you really want to give it a go in later life there are many ridiculous myths which may prevent you from even trying. Time to explode them!

I know over 600 songs so how come I can’t think of one when someone asks?

I added it up the other day and I’ve taught over 600 songs in 3- and 4-part harmony over the last 15 years or so.

photo by Eric Kilby

But when someone unexpectedly asks me to teach or sing a song, I can’t think of one! What’s that about?

Why some singers find it hard to learn by ear (and what you can do to make it easier)

Some people really struggle when it comes to learning a song by ear. Often it’s singers who are used to using sheet music, but not always.

photo by bokeh burger

I’ll explain why I believe some people find it hard and then I’ll outline some strategies for getting better at it.

How to practice a choir song on your own (and a big concert’s coming up)

A concert is looming and there are a couple of songs you don’t know that well.

Photo by _foam

You’ll need to put in some practice at home, but how do you rehearse on your own?

How to sing a song in a foreign language

“Great, a new song to learn.”

Photo by Michael Wu

“Oh, no, it’s in ‘foreign’. Help!”

Stop me if you’ve sung this before: learning different versions of songs you know already

A while back I taught a song wrongly. Not for the first time!

Original photo by Brian Robert Marshall

Even though I corrected myself quickly, the original version stuck in people’s minds and now they can’t shift it.

Name that tune! – earworms, musical memory and other strange phenomena

Sometimes I only have to hear two notes of a song and I know what it is.

Photo by bishib70

Often I join in with someone singing a song only to realise that I’m singing a completely different one. What’s going on here?

How songs are stored in your brain

This is a revised version of a post which first appeared as The singing memory in February 2007.

In How to deal with song lyrics 2 a few weeks back, I said that I believe that song lyrics are stored in a different part of the brain from, say, poetry, phone numbers or lines from a play.

So how does the singing memory work? Where are songs stored in your brain?

time and memory

After only a short break from regular choir sessions, it’s as if people forget much of what they’ve learnt. Unlike riding a bicycle, just a short break from regular singing and it’s as if that part of the brain ‘forgets’ everything that it’s known. Even if we’ve been going over a song every week for the previous few weeks, just a short time off and the singing mind goes blank.

However, this only seems to affect short-term memory for songs.

Sometimes we really struggle with a song without ever quite getting it right. Then perhaps a year later – without re-visiting it at all in the meantime – we decide to sing it again and it comes out perfectly! There has been no extra practice or rehearsal or repetition. It’s lain dormant in the brain, and yet the subconscious seems to have been at work in that time.

having a break might help you remember

This phenomenon points to something about how the brain stores melodies and lyrics. A short break of just a week may have devastating effects, but a whole summer off and the choir often comes back sharp as nails.

Understanding this better might help us find more effective ways of teaching and learning songs.

After learning a new song for a few weeks, I get the choir to sing it through for a few more weeks. Then I leave it for a few weeks before we try it again in the belief that the subconscious has been squirreling it away more effectively in the memory.

how the brain remembers songs

There is definitely a different part of the brain involved in learning songs than that used to learn melodies for instruments or when learning ‘lines’ off by heart (e.g. poetry, plays, etc.).

Many times I can be asked what the lyrics to a song are and can only recall them by singing them. I can’t speak them or I’ll forget what’s coming next. The brain has stored the sounds and the words together, inextricably linked.

Similarly, when someone is struggling with a tune, often reminding them of the first few words is enough for the whole thing to kick in.

When singing a song we’ve not done for a while, I’m often convinced I don’t know the words (or the harmony). But I trust the process and just open my mouth and – as if by magic – the whole thing comes out almost despite me. There is even a conscious part of my brain that observes this process taking place and marvels at where the words and tune are coming from.

trust your own memory

Recently somebody asked for clarification of their harmony part so I sang it to them, believing that I knew it perfectly. Afterwards they said that they weren’t sure that’s exactly what I’d taught them originally. This sowed a doubt in my mind so I went to get the written score.

The second time I sang it, I realised that I had been absolutely spot on the first time! It was my subconscious brain that had remembered it. I just opened my mouth and trusted what came out. But as soon as someone asked me a question, my rational brain kicked in and I began to doubt myself.

I often see people singing hesitantly because their conscious mind is telling them that it’s not sure that they know what they’re doing. However, nine times out of 10 they’ve got it right, if only they’d trust themselves and the learning process.

At times like that I tell people to behave as if they know what they're doing and invariably it will come out right.

what can we learn from this?

Of course, everything I’ve written about here is anecdotal. I have no idea if there is any scientific evidence backing it up. But what I’ve learnt is this:

• leaving a song alone for quite a while allows the brain to consolidate its learning in peace. You might want to build in gaps like this when teaching or learning new songs.
  
• it’s no good drilling extra verses at home like you would when learning lines. You need to link the music with the lyrics. Better is to sing along with a recording whilst looking at the lyrics, then gradually hide them as you repeat the process.
  
• you know songs better than you think. If you’ve not sung a song for a while, don’t panic and get the music or lyrics out, just trust the process and you will be amazed at what your subconscious mind has remembered.
  
• don’t panic when you’re in the early stages of learning a song. If you learn a song quickly, you will forget it quickly. If you have a break from singing too soon in the process, you will forget the song quite easily. But it WILL come back. Just be patient.
   

do you have any handy hints?

Do you have any personal experiences you want to share about learning songs and lyrics? Do you have any handy hints that might make the lyric-learning process easier? Do drop by and leave a comment!

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to deal with song lyrics 2

This is part 2 of a revised version of two posts which first appeared as The writing’s on the wall and Words are flowing out like endless rain ... in January 2007.

Last week I looked at how and when you might begin to introduce the lyrics of a song; whether the words should be written down or drilled by ear; the tyranny of pieces of paper in the hand; how associations made when learning a song can become a trap; when to take written lyrics away; and how to make sure the last lines in each verse are rehearsed as much as the first few lines.

This week I want to continue to look at how we deal with lyrics in songs.

foreign vs. English words

Foreign lyrics can seem daunting at first, but once people get used to seeing strange syllables, they don’t pose too much of a problem. In fact, foreign lyrics can be easier to learn than English ones!

If a language is unknown, there is no alternative but to learn the lyrics syllable by syllable. But if you know a language well (like English) or are somewhat familiar with it (French, Spanish, etc.) it can a make life more difficult.

When you learn English words, you internalise the meaning as you go. When you come to sing it, you may remember the rough meaning, but not the exact words. So you paraphrase, substituting your own words for the proper lyrics. The problem is, not everyone does this in the same way, and your words might not even fit the tune!

With foreign words, even if you know the meaning of the song, you can’t simply make up your own version. You are much more likely to accurately remember each syllable.

It may be hard at first, but you have to make sure that the foreign words don’t slow you down. This can be a problem if the words are written down. The whole song can slow down as you stumble over the strange lyrics.

A classic example of this is when Woven Chords sing the Polish Christmas song Lulajze Jezuniu. We spent some time learning the song using the words of the first verse and the chorus is the same each time. When we come to the second verse in performance, everything slows down and gets much quieter until we get to the familiar chorus when it all picks up again!

The secret is to soldier on regardless. When you’re learning you will stumble over the odd syllable here and there, but just gloss over it and keep the same speed and energy up so that the song flows. Eventually you will make the correction as the words become more familiar.

there will always be an audience member who understands

My experience is that there will always be at least one audience member fluent in one of the foreign languages that you sing at a concert. You need to respect the foreign words and find a way of bringing life to them and pronouncing them as accurately as you can.

This is why I will never teach a foreign song that has been passed down by ear without finding and checking the original lyrics. It would be an insult to the culture that the song comes from.

If you get your choir to behave as if every word they sing is going to be understood by at least one audience member, it will lift the whole performance.

We have had a Japanese woman in tears as we sang in Japanese about cherry blossom; two young Bulgarian women who joined in with a song that they didn’t know, but picked up the words quickly; a person who heard one of our CDs and assumed that we came from the countries where the songs came from!

beyond the first verse

When I begin to teach a song, I usually use the words to the first verse when teaching the tune and harmonies. We often spend a few weeks on this until it’s locked into the brain properly.

But then we realise there are loads more verses to learn – and most often in a strange foreign language! These are always much harder to learn than the first verse. (This is the same problem that I mentioned last week in individual verses where we always end up singing the first lines more than the last lines.)

In subsequent verses the syllables often fit into the tune in a different way, sometimes the rhythm is even slightly different. No matter how often we sing the other verses, we never seem to nail them as well as we did the first verse.

After Verse 1, people are just reading off the page and trying to fit words to a tune in a fairly abstract way rather than learning tune and lyrics together as we did in the first verse. If I ask people to go home and learn the words, it’s with a different part of their brain so it never seems to flow as well as Verse 1.

I’ve tried teaching new songs line by line (with all the harmonies), and doing the first line of every verse before we move onto line two. The trouble with this is that we never seem to get an overall picture of the whole song, and it ends up being bitty and also a bit of an overload to deal with so many foreign words.

I’ve tried moving straight onto Verse 2 as soon as we’re beginning to master Verse 1, but that somehow seems to push all knowledge of Verse 1 out of people’s brains in order to make sense of Verse 2! I’ve even resorted to adding one new verse each year – which does seem to work, but takes a very long time to finish the song!

I have yet to find a solution to this, so any advice will be greatly appreciated!

making changes later on

After a song has bedded in for a long time, what happens when we try to change lyrics or add new verses?

Because of the problems of learning verses beyond Verse 1, I often chicken out and just sing the first verse in performance. After a few concerts, this becomes limiting. It’s a lovely song and we want to repeat it more often. Also there may be people in the audience who understand the language and want to hear the rest of the story!

But now that we have repeated the song so many times with the same words, it is very, very difficult to add new lyrics.

One way to help this might be to change the arrangement at the same time so that the whole song is refreshed.

how to stop singers using lyrics in performance?

Some people will always find it difficult to commit lyrics to memory – foreign or English. Of course, it is much, much better if singers aren’t referring to lyric sheets in concerts, but how do we police this?

One option (probably used in professional choirs) is to say that if a singer hasn’t learnt the words, then they don’t sing in a concert. This seems a bit draconian for a community choir though!

Apart from impressing upon the choir the importance of learning the lyrics, how does one insist? What sanctions can one use?

This is a problem that I’ve not found a solution to. Again, any useful suggestions gratefully received!

the lyrical memory

How and where are song lyrics stored in the brain? I believe that it is a very different mechanism from that used to rote learn poetry, phone numbers, lines in a play, etc. That’s the subject for a later post from the archives.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

How to deal with song lyrics 1

This is part 1 of a revised version of two posts which first appeared as The writing’s on the wall and Words are flowing out like endless rain ... in January 2007.

Unless we’re singing vocalises or songs with just one word (“alleluia”, “mravalzamier”), we have to deal with lyrics at some point.

How do we first encounter them – written down or heard? How can we best learn and remember them? What about foreign words? How do we deal with many verses when first learning a song?

when do we need the words?

Sometimes words get in the way. If we’re trying to learn a new song, then the simpler and fewer the words, the easier it seems to be to learn the song.

Because of this, I’ve tried teaching songs without using the words at first, but just ‘la, la, la’ or similar. In that way people can focus on the shape of the melody and harmonies without the ‘meaning’ part of their brain being engaged.

This works brilliantly, but … when it comes time to add the words, the whole process slows down. The melody seems to get forgotten. People struggle with how the syllables fit the notes.

I’ve decided that this is not necessarily the best way to teach a song! I think you have to confront the lyrics from the very start.

seen or heard?

So then the question becomes: how do we introduce the lyrics? Should we write them down for the singers, or just drill them by ear?

There’s no simple answer to this. If a song has two, three or four simple words which are repeated, then I would always do them by ear.

However, some people (including me) are very visual, and in order to really nail the lyrics and make sure we’ve got the vowel sounds right, we need to see the words written down. Just the once. So we can get an internal image of them. Then we can continue by ear.

I ran a workshop this weekend and prepared large lyric sheets for some of the simple songs, thinking that I would need them. In the end, I decided to have a go at teaching them by ear. We spoke them in rhythm a few times, and then launched into learning the tune. I was surprised how quickly people picked them up (and they were in foreign languages!).

It’s very much a judgment call. I was in a workshop once where we drilled and drilled and drilled the words for ages. It was boring, and when it came time to learn the tune, I’d forgotten the bloody things any way! I think it’s vitally important to learn the words and the music at the same time. I believe that we store song lyrics in a different part of our brain to where we store poetry (more on this next week).

As long as the drilling of the lyrics doesn’t get in the way of the fun or the learning, then try to do it by ear. If the words are tricky, or there are lots of them, then write them down.

the tyranny of bits of paper

If you hand out individual lyric sheets too early in the process, you’re doomed! As soon as people have a visual aid in their hands – even if they know the words already – their eyes will gravitate to the paper. They will stop looking at you and stop paying full attention to the melody.

I’ve sung songs which I’ve known inside out and committed to memory for years, but even then, whenever I have lyrics – either in my hand or on the wall – I end up looking at them. We are very much a visual culture, not an aural one.

I think the next best solution to learning by ear is to put the lyrics up on big sheets of paper so that everyone can see them easily. If you have a big group, and/ or if you work in a circle, this can be a problem. You may have to have several copies of the lyrics dotted around the room.

High tech choir leaders might even use projectors!

Basically you want people to focus outwards, to feel that they’re all in the process together, and to pay attention to you.

becoming trapped by associations

Just as a piece of paper in the hand can become a security blanket, so can big lyrics on the wall.

At the weekend, we sang a fairly short song many times during the day, but always with the lyric sheet on the wall. Even though people really knew the words (it had sunk into their subconscious by then), when we came to revive the song at the end of the weekend, somebody grabbed the lyrics and put them up on the wall!

Partly this is a form of security because people don’t believe that they’re truly learnt the words. But it’s also something to do with how you learn the song in the first place and the associations you make.

If you learn a song facing the window with the basses to your left, then you sometimes struggle if you try to sing it later with your back to the window and the basses on your right.

When first learning the song you also encoded where you were standing, what you were doing, who was with you, etc. Part of this was the action of looking at the words on the wall. You have embodied this experience, so need to recreate it when you sing the song later. Even if you know the words perfectly well, part of you needs the lyrics up on the wall for it to feel familiar.

For these reasons, I believe that it’s important to change things around as much as possible when learning a song. You then remove the learning of the song from any specifics such as where you’re standing in the room. You end up singing the song in so many different contexts, that it becomes properly embedded in your memory independently of how you learnt it.

when to take the lyrics down?

So when can we take the lyrics down? How early can we take the prop of words away without disrupting the learning experience? Given the choice, singers will want to leave the lyrics up there forever as security!

I’ve tried various ways of doing this. One obvious way is after you’ve been learning a new song for a while, then run it through one last time with the lyrics up, then try it without. If it’s a disaster, then repeat the process.

Another way is to keep singing the song, but each time round, cover up one line of the lyrics, starting at the top.

repeat after me …

One side effect of repetition and the fact that time moves forward (unless you’re Doctor Who!), is that the early lines of a song get sung far more than the later lines. This also applies to the first verse compared with subsequent verses.

As we slowly build up a song one line at a time, we keep going back to the beginning and adding new bits one line at a time. That means that we sing the first line more than the second line, which we sing more than the third line, etc.

The danger is that the first part of the song gets rehearsed loads, whereas the ending is always under-rehearsed. This imbalance doesn’t go until the entire song has been sung many, many times.

One way round this, and – I believe – a good way of really learning a song, is to work backwards once the whole song has been taught.

Divide the song up into sensible musical/ lyrical phrases, then start by just singing the last phrase. Then add the phrase before this, so you sing the penultimate phrase, followed by the final phrase. Keep this process up until you’re back at the start of the song.

This is an excellent way of really getting to grips with how each phrase joins with the next, it also allows for more attention to be paid to the end of the song, and finally, it forces people to really concentrate as we look at the new song in an entirely different way.

more on lyrics next week

Next Wednesday I’ll be looking at foreign vs. English lyrics; how to fit syllables to notes; looking beyond the first verse; and how the memory for lyrics actually works.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

You are what you sing

In many ways, we are all defined by the songs we choose to sing. Our favourite ditties say a lot about our tastes, background, age, religion and culture.

photo by rgdaniel

Songs and singing help to define our very personality and sense of identity.

singing and the self

There is some very deep-rooted connection between our singing voice and our sense of self.

People with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia withdraw into themselves, they lose the desire to engage in conversation. It’s as if their personality has got lost somewhere.

They struggle with finding the right words and remembering incidents from the past. Many people with dementia no longer have the ability to recognise even those closest to them.

But somehow their memory for songs and singing is preserved. The parts of the brain that work with speech and episodic memories are different to the parts that process music.

It seems that the musical part of the brain can remain intact long after other parts have stopped functioning properly.

singing for the brain

The UK Alzheimer’s Society provides a service called Singing for the Brain. There are numerous anecdotes of people who, after just a few verses, seem to ‘come back’ to themselves again and are able to express themselves socially.

You can read more about it in How singing unlocks the brain.

musical memory is different

I’ve discussed before that remembering songs and song lyrics is very different from, say, rote learning a poem (see my post The singing memory). The words are linked to the tune and hence stored in the musical part of the brain rather than the word part of the brain.

People with extreme cases of memory loss can often still remember music in great detail. One of the most famous cases is that of the British musicologist and conductor Clive Wearing. Due to an illness, he suffered a profound case of total amnesia. Because an area of the brain required to transfer memories from working memory to long-term memory is damaged, he is completely unable to form lasting new memories – his memory only lasts between 7 and 30 seconds.

Yet Wearing recalls how to play the piano and conduct a choir – all this despite having no recollection of having received a musical education. As soon as the music stops, however, he forgets that he has just played and starts shaking spasmodically.

You can watch him in action in a BBC documentary: The Mind – life without memory. It is remarkable to see the transformation when he becomes involved with music.

You can also read an account by the neurologist Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker: A neurologist’s notebook – The Abyss. Sacks has also written at length on music and the brain in his 2007 book Musicophilia which includes a chapter on Wearing.

you are what you sing

It’s as if a fundamental part of our identity is tied up with song and music. Even when our memories are failing and we withdraw from everyday life, a familiar song or piece of music can reawaken us. We come alive again, our personality reasserts itself and we live once more through the music.

It seems that singing touches a very deep primeval part of ourselves. Humans have sung for many thousands of years (see The singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithin) so perhaps it is song and music that ultimately defines us.

 

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com