​Edrie Means Weekly Co-Founder Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy Institute

One of the challenges voice teachers face is helping the student bring a song to life vocally. Singing a song is more than singing the written notes and lyrics.

The singer must include musical style, expression, emotion and storytelling so the audience is invited into the character’s world through song. The storyline is expressed vocally through the choice of style and various vocal qualities. The singer should be able to switch back and forth between registers and make different interior shapes to allow changes in the resonance to serve the song style as well as the character.

Emotions and expressions can be created vocally by varying the dynamics, coloring the tone, varying the use of vowels and consonants, emphasizing alliterations, and by using “vocal stylisms” such as bending the pitch, crying, growling, and using vocal fry or a kind of “creaky” sound.

This workshop will interact with participants and work with music theatre singers to examine specific ways to explore and connect to their song emotionally and vocally to bring the song to life.