1. The Art of Vocal Performance

2. - Whether it occurs in a opera house or on a rock concert stage, singing is very much an art form.
-Vocal performance is a distillation of many factors that shape and refine it.

3. Culture Influences the Voice
-Every culture has its own style of singing.
-What is considered beautiful tone in some cultures might be less appealing in others.
-Timbres sometimes reflect the sound of a country’s language.
-some languages slide up and down
-others have guttural sounds and even clicks

4. Vocal Timbre and Musical Style
-To express a variety of emotions in music and attain maximum impact, we must choose the most suitable timbre.
Bel Canto
-The term that designates the operatic singing style is bel canto, which literally means “beautiful singing”
-Bel canto – a style characterized by lyrical and flowing phrases, beauty and vocal color, and brilliant technique.

5. -helps convey the blues feeling
Blues Style
-Blues – a genre of African American music that often expresses frustration.
-the vocal timbres from males and females from all age groups reflect a sense of sadness.
-the vocal quality is most often straight forward, folk-like singing that dips and slides.
-helps convey the blues feeling
B.B King – Everyday I have the Blues

6. -Roots lie in the heritage of African American music.
-text and style originated in spirituals and work songs of enslaved African Americans.
-Blues lyrics are simple and direct
-express painful experiences that reveal the darker side of life.
-very honest, personal expressions address basic concerns in the lives of the poor and downtrodden.
-express loss and heartbreak and the reason for it.
-W.C. Handy – “father of the blues”. He was the first to popularize this jazz form.
-His family frowned upon music, but he worked hard to become a performer.
-Eventually, he composed, arranged, and collected a large number of blues pieces, then founded a music publishing company.
W.C. Handy – short documentary

7. -Blues songs typically have many verses, each consisting of three lines.
-line 1 – states the situation
-line 2 – usually repeats line 1, making sure the listener understands/for building tension
-line 3 – resolves the situation, often dashes the self-pity that was built up in the first two lines.
Ex. Lyrics from “Snatch It Back Blues” by Buddy Boy Hawkins
Gonna lay my head right on the railroad track,
If the train come ‘long, I’m gonna snatch it back.

8. Improvisation
-Many blues songs became classics used by jazz artists as the basis for improvisation.
-Remember, the term improvisation designates a type of spontaneous musical invention.
-The practice has led to confusion about whether the blues is a form distinct from jazz and other types of music.
-Whether it is used as the basic form for jazz, rock, or pop music, the predictable, repetitive blues chord pattern provides the structure for highly individualistic musical expression.

9. 12-Bar Blues
-Usually the blues is based on a 12-bar harmonic pattern that is repeated over and over.
-This simple framework gives musicians a means of expression limited only by their imagination.
-To recognize a 12-bar blues tune, you must be able to recognize the pattern of repeated harmonies that is based on 3 chords.

10. -The tonic or I chord is the first pitch of the scale (C).
-The dominant or V chord (G7) is built on the 5th degree of the scale.
-The subdominant or IV chord (F) is built on the 4th degree of the scale.
-These chords are often made into dominant 7th chords (V7) by the addition above the root tone.

11. Blue Notes
-Blues started out as a fundamentally vocal form. However, blues musicians quickly added instruments, especially the guitar. – Ex. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, John Mayer, etc.
-Guitarists, like singers, can ‘bend’ any tone they want sliding from pitch to pitch, creating what we call “blue tonality”.
-Blues singers also ‘bend’ or flatten certain notes of the scale as they sing. The notes they bend are called “blue notes”.
- Blue notes – selected pitches usually on the third and seventh degrees of the scale, whose intonation is altered at the discretion of the performer.

12. Contrasts in Vocal Music
-There recordings of voices that sound like instruments.
-Sweet Honey in the Rock – female African American vocal group
-have been singing together since 1973
-name comes from a biblical story – the land was so rich that when the rocks were opened, honey flowed from them
-Bernice Johnson Reagon – started the group – influences by a wide range of musical styles
-won a Grammy for their antiapartheid song “State of Emergency”
-Apartheid was an official policy of racial segregation in South Africa until the early ’s.
-song protested the actions of the South African government and its disregard for human rights.
State of Emergency