August 27, 2010
My blog by Kuba Suttles
www.bowtownmusic.com
Singing: finding difficult intervals
This is a great time of year! The days are still warm and long and the garden is really kicking in with fruit and veggies. There is nothing like raspberries off the bush, or zucchinis right off the vine. I also managed to get that batch of chardonnay started, a month ago. I've had that kit sitting in my cupboard for about a year. When I went to pour out the juice, all the sugar was a big solid lump at the bottom and it took a while trying to crush it back into the juice. Well, the wine is just about finished now. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope it turns out fine.
So you are working on a song and there are a few notes that you just can't seem to get. Some intervals are very difficult, but then that may be why the song appeals to you. It's a challenge you want to master.
There are the usual difficult intervals like fourths, sixths or ninths. There are also the very difficult ones that involve key changes.
One of my students is working on a lovely song called "Alice In Wonderland". Right off the bat, it starts with a fourth of a D minor seventh chord. Finding that G note might be easy if it was against a C chord, but nasty against a D minor. So I suggested singing along, just under the breath, to a four measure intro of Dm7, G, Em7, A7. By singing the root note of each chord, you end up singing an A against the A7. So going from that A note to the G note (just a drop of a whole step) of the beginning of the song made it seem a lot easier.
There were a few more places in the song with some pretty tricky notes to find. So it became a process of taking the previous note and analyzing the relationship from that note to the difficult one. Often it was either a whole step up or down. The more difficult intervals involving key changes with sharps or flats can also be treated the same way. Look at the previous note and see what kind of interval you have to the next note. It may be a minor third or simply a semitone up or down.
So give this method a try, rather than just stabbing in the dark, if you are working on a song that's giving you some trouble. Happy singing!
