Western Vocal Music Updates

When we are singing songs, we try to sound like the studio version of artists.

We forget that these songs may be highly processed and even auto-tuned.

Hence, it's a good idea to listen to covers and different renditions of the song and gain perspective.

Then, try to put in your own variations and make the song your own. Only then you can grow as a singer.

Imitation helps learn variations. But always stay in touch with your style.

You may be the next Adele or Sam Smith. So let people know your voice for you.

Hi,

Each one of us is blessed with our own unique voice. When we undergo singing classes our speaking voice will be converted to singing voice. And if you get the best tutor or institute to get trained Professionally and if you are able to spend time for the learning, then definitely you can achieve your goal.

Best wishes

Cardio singing is the act of vocalizing at the same time with a set of physical exercises that develop the connection between the voice and the body. Cardio singing has a huge impact on developing the vocal stamina, and the perennial question of "How do I improve my vocal range?" gets addressed directly when one practices cardio singing.

Singing engages the entire body as the vocal instrument. Think of your body like this giant tuning fork that vibrates at a certain frequency, combined with the power of melodies and harmonies and lyrics to mesmerize audiences. Isn't singing just wonderful? Of course, laryngeal components, and appropriate closure of vocal cords are vital, but that would just solve a part of the whole singing equation. The main driving force or the engine for singing is the entire body.

Singing is about the coordination of various intricate muscles in the body in order to produce rich and fuller tones. The entire process begins from the pelvic region and works its way upward, reaching the larynx producing what I call as a vocal "Spark", and the spark goes upward, colliding against various resonators in the body. For optimum functioning of the voice, it is important that the right set of muscles are engaged and strengthened during practice. Appropriate breath support is crucial and with that, one can only feel the muscles just above the pelvic region, and absolutely no direct stress on the vocal cords.

Cardio workouts help engage the right muscles for singing and takes away undue stress from the laryngeal vocal apparatus. Try running on a treadmill, or skipping along with vocalizing on a note. Feel the difference in your voice within two minutes of doing this activity. Want to take your voice to the next level? Why not try doing planks along with singing? Or still intense workout? Squat down as low as you can and start humming on your scales. This also would re-program your mind to not "reach" for the higher notes, but instead gently "land" on them.

“When you look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music’s benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage,” says Luehrisen. While children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, music education helps enhance those natural abilities. “Growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children’s language development,” she says. But Luehrisen adds that those inborn capacities need to be “reinforced, practised, celebrated,” which can be done at home or in a more formal music education setting.

According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. “Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds,” the group claims.

This relationship between music and language development is also socially advantageous to young children. “The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music,” says Dr Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practising musician. “Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.”

Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. “A music-rich experience for children of singing, listening and moving is really bringing a very serious benefit to children as they progress into more formal learning,” says Mary Luehrisen, executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, a not-for-profit association that promotes the benefits of making music.

Making music involves more than the voice or fingers playing an instrument; a child learning about music has to tap into multiple skill sets, often simultaneously. For instance, people use their ears and eyes, as well as large and small muscles, says Kenneth Guilmartin, co-founder of Music Together, an early childhood music development program for infants through kindergarteners that involves parents or caregivers in the classes.

Music learning supports all learning. Not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it’s a very integrating, stimulating pastime or activity.

A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to the second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQs were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade.

Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year tested on average three IQ points higher than the other groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ but did experience increased social behaviour benefits not seen in the music-only group.

Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a nonmusician. There’s some good neuroscience research that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to be using more of your brain.

In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in the brain images of children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who received music instruction had improved sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, and brain imaging showed changes to the networks in the brain associated with those abilities, according to the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organisation that supports brain research.

A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardised test.

Aside from test score results, a quality music education can have on a young child’s success. Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and art teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency. People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.

Music can improve child’ abilities in learning and other nonmusic tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. The many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher.

It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you. Music makes kid interesting and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.
While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make her a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with a musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.

There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake. The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music. Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.

History of the Piano

The story of the piano begins in Padua, Italy in 1709, in the shop of a harpsichord maker named Bartolomeo di Francesco Cristofori (1655-1731). Many other stringed and keyboard instruments preceded the piano and led to the development of the instrument as we know it today.

Mankind’s knowledge that a taut, vibrating string can produce sound goes back to prehistoric times. In the ancient world, strings were attached and stretched over bows, gourds, and boxes to amplify the sound; they were fastened by ties, pegs and pins; and they were plucked, bowed or struck to produce sounds.

Eventually, a family of stringed instruments with a keyboard evolved in Europe in the 14th century. The earliest of these was a dulcimer, a closed, shallow box over which stretched wires was struck with two wooden hammers. The dulcimer led to the development of the clavichord, which also appeared in the 14th century. These were followed by the spinet, virginal, clavacin, gravicembalo, and finally, the harpsichord in the 15th century.

The harpsichord, however, was limited to one, unvarying volume. Its softness and loudness could not be varied while playing. Therefore, performing artists could not convey the same degree of musical expression as that of most other instruments. The artistic desire for more controlled expression led directly to the invention of the piano, on which the artist could alter the loudness and tone with the force of one’s fingers.

The harpsichord was a particularly important development leading to the invention of the piano. Its ability to project sound more loudly than its predecessors and refinements in the action (or touch) inspired many more musicians to compose for the keyboard and thus, to perform keyboard works.

First exhibited in Florence in 1709, Cristofori’s new instrument was named gravicembalo col piano e forte (roughly “soft and loud keyboard instrument”). Eventually, it was shortened to fortepiano or pianoforte, and finally just piano. His earliest surviving instrument dates from 1720 and is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Despite many improvements during the past 300 years, it is truly astonishing to observe how similar Cristofori’s instruments are to the modern piano of today.
New Technology in Pianos

We are living in perhaps the most exciting time in history to buy, own or play that eternal instrument, the piano. Whether your goal is to purchase something as small as software that can record what you play, a newly designed player piano, a digital instrument or a classic acoustic model, there have never been as many choices for the consumer.
Player Pianos

Also called “reproducing pianos,” this class of instrument represents a modern update on the paper-roll player pianos you remember from old movies, and they’ve grown enormously in popularity over the last decade.

These are not digital instruments – they’re real, acoustic pianos with hammers and strings that can be played normally – but they can also “play themselves” using sophisticated electronic technology. Instead of punched paper, they take their cues from floppy disks, specially formatted CDs or internal memory systems. Several manufacturers offer vast libraries of pre-recorded titles for their systems—music in every genre from pop to the classics—recorded by some of the world’s top pianists. These sophisticated systems capture every nuance of the original performances and play them back with startling accuracy—providing something that’s actually much better than CD fidelity because the performances are live.

Thanks to these new systems, many people who don’t play the piano are enjoying live piano music any time of the night or day. Whether they’re accompanying dinners for two or entertaining a houseful of partygoers, these high-tech pianos take centre stage. For people who do play the piano, these systems can be used to record their own piano performances, interface with computers, aid in music education, assist with composing and many other applications. In short, these modern marvels are not your grandfathers’ player pianos!
Digital Pianos

To the uninitiated, digital pianos may appear related to the inexpensive toy keyboards than can be purchased over the counter at electronics stores. But that’s like comparing a go-kart with a fancy touring sedan. The digital pianos produced by many of today’s top piano companies produce sophisticated, sampled piano sounds taken from their own top models. What’s more, they offer other instrument voices – sometimes by the hundreds – with striking realism.

Because digital pianos are software-driven, they also open up exciting new ways for beginners to make music. For example, some keyboards feature lights over the keys to help you play a favourite tune or learning programs that combine the music with an on-screen display.

Digital pianos help home musicians get more out of the Internet as well, and they can be connected not only to a computer, but to other instruments for arranging and orchestration. With memory storage setups such as Flash ROM, users can download and store new music.

There are also a number of digital pianos that offer a variety of unique functions—such as providing you with a lot of different preset and combo sounds, ones that can give you a layering effect to your playing. Some of these instruments also include a Karaoke/Video output for the next time you want to put a little life in your party.
Software

There is probably no more exciting area of growth in the piano industry than that of software technology. Science fiction writers of the past would be impressed by today’s advancements – like software that converts music files to sheet music… downloads and unzips music files and Karaoke files from the Internet… or even lets musicians print entire musical scores and analyse their harmonies and chord names. Today’s software will even let users shop for, purchase and print sheet music over the Internet, if you can’t find the score in a store.

Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote “Player Piano” in the 50s, would not believe the new software that currently exists for these instruments. For example, there is now software for the piano that will allow it to load hours of pre-recorded music, with no discs or CDs to change; everything from jazz to the classics. Should you be looking for music by a specific pianist, you will be able to find it: everyone from Floyd Cramer to Peter Nero is represented and can keep your piano (or your get-together) humming.

But software is not just for the player piano. For the budding composer, there is also new technology galore. For instance, the first ensemble piano that features CD-R technology is now available. This piano has the capability of CD-R – meaning you can put a disc in this piano, record a CD of a song you have written or played, and, immediately play the disc back in your boom box or PC. And not just keyboard sounds; vocals, too, can be ‘burned,’ enabling any budding songwriter to produce a 16 track studio-quality ‘demo.’

Synthesisers are still very popular among jazz and rock musicians. Among the newest is a synth that offers multiple oscillator technologies and has real-time control over pitch, time and format. There are also synthesisers that give players the ability to control audio with the same flexibility as any music file, all due to new technology. This new software can take on all sorts of new musical and recording functions.
The Traditional Piano

And what of traditional concert pianos? Have they been lost in the technological shuffle? Far from it. With countless artists from Bruce Hornsby to Michael Feinstein using them, the acoustic piano is still very much in demand.

While the basic design of the acoustic piano is remarkably similar to the first models from around 1700, manufacturers are including innovations at a rapid pace. Some of the updates draw on materials science, to find special woods or newly available materials that make a piano more durable and tonally stable. Some use engineering know-how to strengthen the piano and keep its sound deep and rich for years. And 300 years of experience with the mechanics of a piano’s action has resulted in keyboards that feel great and stay in tune better.

Concert grands are used by numerous conductors, composers and songwriters—and are more available and affordable than ever. And although concert grands are the choice of performers, there are many high-quality baby grands that are designed to meet the needs of the homeowners and players of all levels.

Whether you are looking for a compact instrument or a larger one renowned for its lower register and power – whether you want a piano than can keep up with the loudest orchestra, one that re-creates a classic style from the past, or an instrument made of a particular kind of wood – you should have no trouble finding the traditional piano that suits your needs.

It’s very clear in 2004, that whether you want to play, record, mix, have a player piano entertain you, or sit down and practice Brahms or Bach, there probably has never been a period in which the piano has been available in so many different and useful forms. Whatever your musical needs, there is a piano (and perhaps software) out there waiting for you.