Hello! 

This class is designed to teach and/or expand upon the general musical skills of singing and performing basic hand percussion. If your student came from my fourth grade class (not a requirement), then they may know how to play ukulele. When we are performing vocal music, I recommend students use their ukuleles or other accompanying instruments to continue learning, but I will not comprehensively focus on these instruments. The focus in this class is our voices, and our drumming. 

We will learn a diverse range of musical repertoire. Pop, jazz, folk, classical, country, rock n roll, rap; no style is off limits! Through the learning of repertoire, we will also touch on many important concepts in the world of music and voice: form, melodic contour, rhythm, sight-reading, vocal technique, solfege, ear training, theory, and more. I believe in using and learning songs to teach these concepts, rather than start with the concept itself.

Each class will begin with a some kind of warm-up. Following our warm-up, there will often be a short study of sight-singing or some other purposeful etude.  After that, we will move on to learning and practice of repertoire. I will screen-share written music documents that I have created, and/or song lyrics. It may be appropriate for us to listen to a song or section of a song in class.

When I'm teaching a new song, I take the "I do, you do, we do" approach.  I demonstrate and/or accompany using an instrument (guitar, piano, ukulele, etc.) I perform the whole song for the students. Then, we echo a few phrases back and forth. Finally, students will sing without me while I accompany them. 

It is necessary for students to sing and play while muted in this class. If they do not, due to lagging, it becomes very confusing for students to learn the song, sing accurately, and feel confident that they are progressing. However, there will be opportunities for me to check in with students by having them unmute and sing. I also utilize warm-ups occasionally that allow us to work with the lag and all be heard at the same time. 

I like to sing songs that students like to sing, within reason. To facilitate this, I invite students to recommend songs to me. On my time outside of class, I will listen to the song and be the arbiter of whether or not it is a song that is appropriate content-wise and musically, for us to sing in class. If a student recommends a song, I reserve the right to veto their choice based on the appropriateness of content and/or lyrics.

Refer to syllabus to get a rough idea of how the year will go. The syllabus is subject to change.