Classically Abby - September 16, 2019


HOW I LEARN MUSIC ｜｜ It only takes six steps!


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Transcript

00:00:00.560 Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
00:00:04.720 how I prepare to learn a piece of music.
00:00:10.000 So I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about my process when I'm learning a new piece of music.
00:00:14.640 For me, this isn't something you just sit down and do. There are a lot of things that go into
00:00:18.880 learning a piece of classical music because you want to sing it in the best way possible and you
00:00:23.680 want to sound as Italian, French, German, whatever language you're singing in as you can. So the
00:00:30.480 first thing that I'll do when I go through a score is I'll go through and highlight all of the meter
00:00:35.760 changes. Now what's a meter? We have things like three four four four. Three four usually sounds
00:00:42.000 like a waltz. One two three one two three one two three and four four usually can sound like a march.
00:00:49.440 Now not always, but that's a good example of something. One two three four. One two three four.
00:00:55.920 And that's just a couple of examples of meters. So if you're looking at a piece, a lot of pieces
00:01:00.800 will have changes throughout that show you exactly how many beats there are in a meter. For example,
00:01:07.680 in this aria that I'm learning now, Madama Butterfly's aria in act two, there are a few different meter
00:01:13.760 changes. We have three four, it goes into two four, and at some point I think it even goes into
00:01:19.200 four eight. So you have to be clear about when are those things going to happen. So when it comes
00:01:24.400 and I see it, I'm not surprised. I know what's going to happen and I have it highlighted and I'm
00:01:29.840 prepared. The next thing that I'll do is I'll go through and I'll mark out with lines each beat in
00:01:36.880 every measure. So when I'm looking at a measure of music, I'll see that there are a different number of
00:01:44.080 notes and I need to know exactly where the beat is going to hit, where that one, two, three hits
00:01:50.400 in that measure. If I don't know when that's going to happen, I can't be good at keeping the rhythm and
00:01:55.360 that's a really important thing. If I don't know what the rhythm is doing, then no one's going to be
00:01:59.760 able to be with me if I'm singing. My pianist won't know where I am and I won't know where my pianist is.
00:02:04.240 So that's the next thing that I do. The third thing that I'll do is I will go in and write in
00:02:10.400 the International Phonetic Alphabet. The reason I do this is that it helps me understand exactly
00:02:16.080 what I should be singing and how, what it should sound like. So a word like, let's see, vedremo.
00:02:24.720 Now I could sing that and it could have a very open A sounds, vedremo, but that's wrong. That's
00:02:32.240 not how the Italian sounds. It has to have closed A sounds. So it's going to be vedremo. I don't know
00:02:38.880 if you can hear a difference, but it is a pretty significant difference in the language. Another thing
00:02:44.240 you'll notice is that there's a double V. The first letter in the word vedremo needs to have
00:02:49.920 a little bit more length to it. So it can't just be vedremo. It has to be vedremo. Now again,
00:02:57.920 so small, subtle things that make a very big difference when you're listening to someone
00:03:01.520 sing an entire aria. The last thing that I do and the one of the most important things
00:03:07.120 is putting in the translation. I need to know exactly what I'm singing. Now I do speak these languages,
00:03:12.160 but there are words that I don't know. So it's important for me to understand what I'm saying
00:03:17.680 when I'm singing. I'm not going to say I can speak Italian, French, and German fluently.
00:03:22.720 Absolutely not. But I have a good grasp of the language so that I could sit down and maybe read
00:03:27.680 through this and have an understanding of what's happening. But there's a lot that I don't know.
00:03:32.720 And so for me to go through and write down exactly what I'm saying is incredibly important.
00:03:37.200 The next thing that I do is I go through and I sing the entire piece only on vowels. So something
00:03:43.680 like un bel di vedremo would be u e i e io. And that's how I sing it. And it really helps you line
00:03:53.280 up where those notes should feel and sound in your throat, in your body, and learn how to support without
00:03:59.920 the consonants getting in the way. Now the last thing that I do is I sing everything together. I look at
00:04:05.040 this. I look at the page. I find the pianissimos and the crescendos and the diminuendos. That means
00:04:11.920 getting louder and getting softer. And I make sure that I know where those are going to happen.
00:04:16.880 And I make sure that everything feels comfortable in my voice. And when I'm singing it, I know what
00:04:22.240 I'm doing. And lastly, I memorize it. And that's how I learn a piece. So I just wanted to walk you
00:04:27.440 through briefly what I do when I'm learning a piece of music. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
00:04:32.720 Please subscribe to my channel and subscribe to my blog if you haven't already. Hop on over to
00:04:36.800 Twitter and Instagram and follow me there. And I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!