Volume IV · Piano, voice and tunesStage 12 of 15
12
Singing and melody
Everyone sings: knowing the song, phrasing like speech, ballads.
- 12.1 Everybody sings Singing as the way into improvisation Barry taught improvisation with his voice: he sang licks and the class played them back. Singers sang along with the horns’ scales, players sang their phrases, and his singers’ classes and choruses were part of the method, not a side line.
- 12.2 Know the song; learn many songs; find your key Know a song before you do anything with it: melody, words and changes, as written. Barry made singers learn many songs, took each through five or six keys so everyone found and wrote down their key, and wanted horn players to know the words.
- 12.3 Phrase like speech; place entries in time; ballads Sing a line the way you would say it: natural stresses, no big production on the last word, pauses that breathe. Place each entry exactly, often on an ‘and’. In ballads know the words, keep their natural grouping, and think six against the four.