question on singing lessons and Mr Tamplin

danthegeek

A lot of people give me to difficult exercices. I mean, a five note scale seem too much in the beginning. You know the when you are told by a teacher to stand in front of the piano and sing a five note scale when he/she plays the piano. I did this with a teacher. It did work poorly for me. I don't know much about singing lessons but I have take some by a teacher and watch some on youtube. It was a lot about singing scales and feeling higher notes down in the body and low note up in the body.

My first question when it comes to the five note scale is: Can a person even sing Do-Re-Do? I have been told by professionals that we sometimes need to break down exercices into easier exercices. We sometimes start with something too difficult. I remember being told once by a person that just hearing a note on the piano or being sung and singing it can be difficult enough for a beginner.
Was I given a too difficult exercise by my teacher? What do you think? Or should one just repeat and hope one will succeed eventually if one is lucky?
And I can honestly say that I have very little respect for teachers. I am sorry but they often give too difficult tasks. Anyway, how can Mr Tamplin help?

Klaus_T

it depends what you mean. do you expect to do it all perfect at the first shot? that would be asking too much. can you get 5 notes in a row to come out of your mouth? that sounds doable.

yes the course starts basically on these scales from day one, and it works for most people. but hardly anyone will have done it right from day 1

record yourself, and then try to break it down. what is good? what can do with work. too slow? slow down the scale and do it again. not on pitch? repeat until you feel it getting better. no support. no ping etc.? work on it.

if you are unsure how to analyze all of this yourself, post the recording and let us help you.

having little respect for teachers, is not always going to help you. having little respect for bad teachers, that can be a good thing. having no respect in general, that could be problematic. that would mean you are stuck with the level of knowledge that you were born with.

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Klaus_T

hi Dan, yeah hard to know, "different things to different people" i guess it is true what you say. most people here have no problem starting with scales (not sure how which scales you mean by 5 note, but we start with arpeggios and octave scales, the arpeggio is basically a broken down major chord, and the octave is the major scale, both are sung upwards and downwards). a 2 note scale does not exist per se, it would then be called an interval (you don't have to understand this to learn how to sing though). in the course, there is a segment which is meant for learning better pitch which do only these intervals (back and forth between two notes), and yes, you could use those as a primer if more notes at once are too much. i can't tell if you just simply have high expactations for yourself, because again, i never heard anyone that said they can't do it. yes they will miss lots of improtant things in the beginning, but not to the degree that it overwhelms them singing more than two notes.

you can break down tasks into smaller bits, why not? there is of course a certain degree of self-motivation and drive to explore you should bring to the table if you want to do the course successfully

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Elara

You don't have to guess what to do. Ken plays each chord on his guitar in the lesson video, then sings the scale, and you sing along with him. When you are comfortable doing that, you move on to the audio workouts where, again, Ken plays the chord and sings the scale, and you sing along with him. Finally, you can move on to the piano-only workouts, where Ken does not sing. It builds in stages, and at each stage, you are expected to listen to Ken and to yourself and try to match what Ken does as closely as you can.

There is no guesswork in the course. Ken explains what to do and WHY.

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