Finding Your Keys to Success!

For those of you who work in a professional capacity as a singer/entertainer, whether in a club, or on stage in a theater, or in a church, community center or nursing home, and who are having trouble identifying the keys you sing in, this is for you.

I'm going to show you HOW to find your keys!

Every song has a range of notes, from the lowest note of the song to the highest note. The challenge is to fit the range of each song INTO your personal range.

Each singer has a different range.

Some, like Mariah Carey can cover a wide range of notes and even sing some very very high notes, while most of us can cover between 1 and 2 octaves at best.

In addition each song has its own range which can be very narrow, like a simple kids' song, say,

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", which has a span of 8 steps from the bottom of the song to the top,

or quite wide like

"The Star Spangled Banner", a really hard song to sing, which goes covers 19 steps from lowest to highest note.

Let's say you want to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the Wizard of Oz. And let's also say that your personal range starts at G below Middle C, (you can already see here that knowing music is extremely helpful in being a working singer), and ends at the C above Middle C. That's a personal singing range, (or "TESSITURA", as its called in musical terminology) of 1 octave PLUS 5 half steps.

Okay, assuming the KEY of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" spans a range from Middle C up 1 full octave PLUS 2 half steps, or to the D above the last note in your personal range, you can see that singing the song in the key of C would make it too high for you. However, if it were lowered to let's say Bb or even A below Middle C, then all of the notes in this song would fit nicely into your personal range.

The trick is to fit YOUR range into the range of the song. Therefore, you can't be singing every song in one key because every song has a different set of notes from lowest to highest, and the key of the song needs to move in order to fit your range.

Also, in this example, your personal range is wide enough to accommodate all the notes of the song, and just requires moving the starting note. That's not always the case.

More on Vocal Ranges

Let's take another example.

This is hard to explain without a visual demonstration, but let's give it a try, okay?

Some students have short or narrow personal ranges, maybe about 1 octave. Now let's say they are asked to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" at a local event in their town.

If they already know that their personal range is only an octave, and that the specific song they want to sing spans an octave PLUS 7 half steps, then they would be better off declining that offer because the song is going be entirely OUT of their comfort zone. Even lowering the whole song will not help here because the range of the song is outside of the singer's personal range. This is why we hear so many sad renditions of The Star Spangled Banner" at local sports events. The song has a larger range or "tessitura" than the singer's.

It's pretty much the same challenge as trying to fit a square peg, (the song's tessitura) into a round hole, (your own tessitura) . Are you starting to understand this a little?

Read on...

What Needs to Happen?

You've heard me say a lot that as a singer, it's extremely vital that you sing songs in your comfort zone in order to get the best performance possible.

So, if you never do anything else in terms of learning music, Please make it a point to know this:

• Your lowest comfortable note


• Your highest comfortable note


• The lowest note of the songs you sing


• The highest note of the songs you sing
 
• And finally, the most beneficial thing you can do is to LEARN "SOLFEGGIO"!

Read on...

SOLFEGGIO!

Here’s a simple way to understand Solfeggio.

Let’s take a simple major scale.

If you ever saw, (and who hasn’t) "The Sound of Music", you’ll remember the song the children sang with Maria called "Do, Re, Mi". Remember it?

Well the notes they were singing, that they labeled "Do", "Re", "Mi", "Fa", "Sol", "La", "Ti", "Do", are the notes that comprise the major scale, around which most songs are composed.

The space between each note, starting on "Do" is: Whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. This is the formula for a major scale. And for those of you who need it, looking at a piano keyboard, WHOLE steps on the keyboard are those that have a single key between them. HALF steps have nothing between them.

So, if the key of your song is "C", that means that the "Do" is "C".

In Volume 3 of our vocal manuals, we show you step by step how to locate the "Do" of each song you sing, and there are short exercises to do that will help you practice this.

Here's an example:

Let’s take a simple song that everyone knows like "Mary Had a Little Lamb". The first tone of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" starts on step 3 of the major scale, or the "solfeggio" tone "Mi", (pronounced MEE), and the song would be sung like this:

Mi Re Do Re Mi Mi Mi, Re Re Re, Mi Sol Sol, Mi Re Do Re Mi Mi Mi Mi Re Re Mi Re Do.

Or, you may use numbers to identify the steps of the scale if that's easier. The major scale (Do Re Mi) can be sung 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, instead of using solfeggio.

So here's the numbering way to sing our "Mary Had a Little Lamb":

3212333/222/355 3212333322321

The note you land on singing "DO" or "1" is the key of the song.

So, if "DO" is on C, then the key of this song is "C". Your starting note is "E", and your highest note is "G". If these FIT into your tessitura, then you would be comfortable singing this song is the key of "C", see? :-)

And it works for every single song you want to perform the same way. Locate "DO" or "1", then the highest and lowest notes of the song, and match those to your own range.

I gotta tell you, this can be confusing, even explaining it to you is a little mind-bending, but it's important for you to know that UNDERSTANDING what you're doing when you practice this stuff is NOT NECESSARY!

It's like driving a car. You don't need to understand the entire workings of a motor in order to drive. You learn how by repetition and practice. It's the same with music. You are programming your muscle memory, so just doing the exercises laid out in Volume 3 will program your brain and give you the knowledge you need to identify your correct keys. And as also mentioned in Volume 3, nothing gets more respect in the music business than a singer who know his/her keys. I tell my students to never NEVER get on a stage with a band or piano player without being able to tell the accompanist what key your song is in. Please visit our new site and if you'd like to get into Volume Three of our voice manuals, you may order it HERE!

Remember too, your feedback is vital to us as we strive to give you material you can use, so feel free to comment and let us know what you need!

Til next time, singers!
Chrys