There’s a song for every kind of dad in Billboard’s ‘Dear Daddy Playlist.’ Honor your biggest fan—the man who scowled at your prom date, and never missed an opportunity to beam at every little success in your life—with some or all of these tunes. And if you have a couple hours on Saturday, try learning one!
1. Madonna, “Papa Don’t Preach”
2. The Game, “Like Father, Like Son”
3. Eric Clapton, “My Father’s Eyes”
4. Bruce Springsteen, “My Father’s House”
5. The Temptations, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”
6. Queen, “Father to Son”
7. Harry Chapin, “Cats in the Cradle”
8. Jay-Z, “Glory”
9. Madonna’s “Oh Father”
10. John Mayer’s “Daughters”
11. Billy Ray Cyrus & Miley Cyrus – “I Learned From You”
12. Luther Vandross, “Dance With My Father”
13. Beyonce, “Daddy”
14. Keith Urban, “Song for Dad”
15. Reba McEntire’s “The Greatest Man I Ever Knew”
16. Stevie Wonder, “Isn’t She Lovely”
17. James Brown, “Papa Don’t Take No Mess”
18. Slick Rick – “It’s a Boy”
19. Asher Roth, “His Dream”
20. 2Pac, “Papa’z Song”
21. Common featuring Lauryn Hill, “Retrospect for Life”
22. Nas, “Daughters”
23. Kanye West and Jay-Z, “New Day”
24. Birdman and Lil’ Wayne, “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy”
Have you ever tried to sing a round or a harmony to a song, only to find you’ve flip flopped to someone else’s vocal line? Do you get distracted by the presence of harmonies in karaoke songs? Do you find yourself scooping up to a note, because you’re not sure where it’s supposed to be? Singing amongst multiple vocal lines is tough, and it’s easy to find yourself listening to other parts and losing yours in the process. these practice tips should shed some light on getting your vocal line down.
Learn the part by yourself
The other day, I had some musician friends over, and we decided we’d sing the three-part harmony to ‘Because,’ by the Beatles. It was a blast, except for the fact that we were all stomping on each other’s lines, fudging hard parts, and losing our lyrics. How can you expect to sing a complicated harmony if you don’t know your own part in the first place? Spend thirty minutes singing your part by itself to get a grasp on its melody and contour. Next, spend some time fine-tuning your vocal quality, pitch, and delivery. Remember, once you’re harmonizing with other people, you’ll be focusing on staying together, and you won’t have the attention to pay close attention to your technique. This step alone can make you sound miles better.
Familiarize yourself with the other vocal lines
Once you know your own part like you know the back of your cereal box, learn the other vocal lines. You don’t really have to sing them—singing them helps, but I know most sopranos don’t sing bass and vice versa. Just be familiar with what the other vocal lines do, so you’re not confused and thrown off when the higher part suddenly veers away, or when the lower part drops an octave.
Practice active listening to a recording
If you have access to a professional recording of the song you’re singing, perfect. Spend another thirty minutes simply trying to follow the separate lines (particularly yours). See if you can visualize where your line is going to move as the song proceeds. Next, try gently humming your part along with the recording.
Practice your part against all the other parts individually
Next, it’s time to sing with real life people (who make mistakes, and need practice of their own). Practice singing your part against all other parts, one at a time. That means, if you’re singing four-part (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) harmony, and your part is alto, practice with the bass, then practice with the tenor, then practice with the soprano. It’s a lot easier to contextualize your part into the scheme of things when you sing with only one part at a time.
Put it all together
The last step is to put everything together. You may choose to hum or sing on ‘la’ the first few times through, but by now, you should be able to attend to your part within a sea of other voices. It’s important that you don’t use a crutch like plugging your ears, because that reduces your ability to tune up your voice with the rest of the group. Remember, it’s not just about you, it’s about the sound you and other people create as a whole.
Have other tips or an experience you’d like to share? By all means, leave a comment and tell us!
We can’t wait to teach Beyoncé’s new song, ‘Rise Up,’ from the upcoming animated movie Epic. It’s an inspirational call to action and a plea to ‘be who you are,’ and we can’t really think of a better message than that. The vocal part is ornate, syncopated, and harmonized, but the song actually only has three important chords in it. That means ‘Rise Up’ is the perfect song to start learning how to accompany yourself.
If you know music theory, the roman numeral notation for this song is IV-I-V-V in any Major key. If that doesn’t make sense to you, but you know the keys on a piano, here’s a different way of looking at it:
The song is in the key of F#-Major. To play it in the original key, you’d play:
four counts of B Major (B, D#, F#),
four counts of F# Major (F#, A#, C#),
and eight counts of C# Major (C#, F, G#)
If you want to play it in C, an all-white-note key, you’d play:
four counts of F Major (F, A, C)
four counts of C Major (C, E, G)
and eight counts of G Major (G, B, D)
I’ve put some resources together for you on Hooktheory.
We’ve been writing tutorials on hard songs to sing for a little while now, but the Les Miserables song, ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ is more dynamic than any of the ones we’ve covered so far. That means quieter quiets, louder, beltier climaxes, and and a lot of variation in between. In that light, we’re going to make this one a two-parter, and the first part starts with active listening.
Listening to one or several versions of this song will help you get a feel for what you’re up against. The best way to start learning how to sing quietly or loudly is to observe how successful singers have sung quietly or loudly. Your goal isn’t to copy them—you’ll never discover your voice if you mimic a singer note-for-note, ornament-for-ornament—the goal is to listen to what vocal modifications they make and when.
Singing is all about modifying your voice along several axes (low to high, bright to dark, soft to loud, airy to clear and salient, etc.). For instance, want to sing louder? It’s most people’s first instinct to simply push more air out through their vocal folds without changing anything else. The truth is, a bunch of different aspects of a singer’s voice should change when he or she sings. When seasoned singers get louder, there are going to be subtle changes in the way they pronounce vowels, drop consonants, position their larynxes. Even if you have a private vocal coach, it’s your job to eventually figure out what changes you should make, and when. The only way to do that is to observe what works for other people, and observe what works for you.
So here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it:
Listen to ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ all the way through several times. You can choose any version you like; the one I chose was the Original London cast.
Your first listen: mark down the times that you hear a change in the intensity of Fantine’s voice.
Your second listen: make a scale from quiet and wistful to loud and passionate. I thought I could hear 6 levels of variance in her voice, so I made a scale from 1 (quietest) to 6 (loudest). This is all subjective, so you can make a scale from 1 to 4, or 1 to 7, as long as you can justify doing so. Now, every time you hear a change in intensity, give it a number from this scale. Sometimes there are parts that steadily grow in intensity, and sometimes there are parts that stay constant for a while. Notice those times, and try to mark them down. It would be extra cool to make a chart like I did, but I get the funny feeling nobody’s going to take it that far. That’s alright.
Your third listen: Write down several adjectives and observations to describe Fantine’s voice in each part. Is it airier in some parts? Does she pronounce a word differently than you’d pronounce it with your normal speaking voice? How so? Does her amount of vibrato change at all between parts? Just do your best to be able to find what’s different about each level of intensity you marked.
Next week, we’re going to look at some key parts of the song, talk about some of those important modifications, and give you some exercises to make it work. Happy listening!
Supplementary Materials
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
This month, I got the privilege of e-interviewing an incredibly talented and hard-working singer named Kat Long. At only 13, this OCSA music & theater student is hardly a stranger to the stage with five years of performing and over 20 musicals under her belt. Her favorite roles? Mushu in Mulan, Snoopy in You’re a… Continue Reading
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We’re celebrating Mother’s Day at Molly’s Music with songs from a gamut of different genres. Their mediums might be different, but the message is the same: moms are momentous forces in our lives. Sing one of these songs to your mother, or just listen through them and take a little time to reflect. Feel free… Continue Reading
