Voice Lessons at Pillars
Core Principles of Voice Lessons
HAVING FUN while still learning and growing as a voice student
For voice students, we're serious about the technique and education, but we're also very serious about the fun! Using the Core Principle of LOVE (one of the pillars of Music Pillars - you can read more about that here) we make sure that vocal students always have at least one piece of music that they want to learn as part of their repertoire. It doesn't matter to us if it’s Taylor Swift, a Broadway Showtune, an old Beatles tune, a Disney song, or a brand new pop hit...what matters is that the student connects with it and finds joy in learning the song.
Core Vocal Principles
The core curriculum principles that we design vocal lesson around are:
Solfege Warm-Ups, Vowel Warm-Ups, Breathing, Sight-reading, Intonation, and communicating with the audience through expression. Each of these principles are an important part of our voice lesson methodology.
Group/Ensemble Opportunities for Vocal Students
The fun of singing is multiplied when you do it with others! And we have two really fun group ensembles for our vocalists: Music Theater and Rock Bands! We highly encourage our vocalists to participate in these group ensembles to complement their development as a well-rounded performer.
Voice - It’s not just about talent - it’s about practice too!
We have developed a custom system (we call our system Einstein) that allows students to view their teacher’s notes and instructions and track and record their practice time each day. It also provides the teacher and student complete clarity on the expectations in-between lessons. Establishing good and consistent practice habits is the key to progress in music.
Vocal Students Perform Frequently at Friday Fests
Students who go to lessons and then perform once every 6 months will struggle to become good performers. Would you ever sign up your son/daughter to learn to play soccer by having them go to practice for 5 months and then play in one single game that lasts only a few minutes? Sounds silly right? But time and time again we see students subjected to this ineffective tradition of performing once or twice a year in a terrifying recital, and never growing and learning to be a better and more confident performer. There is no replacing performance experience!
Students should be up on stage playing 2-4 songs every 6-10 weeks. They should learn and be taught to be confident performers, and that will NEVER happen with such little stage time. They need to be on stage more often, and they need to perform several pieces of music so that they are up on stage 3-10 minutes each time. This gives their heart a chance to slow down some, and to begin to relax while up there. This process should be repeated over and over and over again. There is NO SUBSTITUTE or secret sauce for becoming a confident performer. It takes much more time on stage than what is traditionally done. Too many teachers and studios focus on their student playing a piece of music flawlessly on stage. The emphasis should be on the development of the student. The notes are important too, but more important than a perfectly executed piece of music is the maturation of a child to learn that they can be in front of people, and be confident, and even enjoy themselves.
We train our students to not just sing, but to become competent musicians.
We develop students who can enjoy themselves and own their experience on stage - and enrich their audiences lives with music.
We develop singers not only to produce beautiful sound through proper technique, but also to understand the language that is music. Students will learn to read and write music notation, sight sing melodies in different keys and complex rhythms, as well as be able to write their own original melodies using the music theory that they have learned. Our vocal curriculum follows the same pillars that instrumental students learn, developing singers with high music literacy.
