J – A teacher raised a question today.. Why don’t you perform pop music?

I thought about it for a second. There are a lot of things I could have said, but this is what I came up with.

1. They already know sooo much about POP music, and I want to introduce them to other genres that they may not experience otherwise. 

2. I don’t choose music based on text, or whether it is sacred or secular. If I can have a general theme then great, and if not that is great too. I think about the needs/capabilities of my students, strengths and weaknesses, and my goals for them as an ensemble. These are the goals I provided for her:

Tone!!! (round and head dominant)..introducing certain rhythmic elements..meters… pure vowels to help incorporate head voice… harmonic qualities that they are capable of singing but will challenge them on different levels, music that may appear simple but will challenge them expressively and force them do to something with it musically.

3. Vocal Technique- Pop music today is essentially chest-dominant, and basically that is all any child of this generation hears unless they are in a music class or chorus that encourages them to sing in their head voice (or light fuzzy voice as I tell my fourth graders).  I feel very strongly that students of all ages needs to develop their head voice (even if that means singing completely in that voice until 10th grade) before they even begin to transition to using their chest voice in the lower register.

Try listening to a pop singer sing classical music and then listen to a classical singer sing pop music.. This speaks for itself.

Along those lines.. I found this article pretty interesting!

It is a little scary when people question what I am doing, but it also feels good to be able to talk to people about the WHY 🙂

❤ J