How is your: posture, breathing, tone quality, range, endurance, articulation, practice technique, vocal use, control, confidence, and your musicianship?
More specifically, use the following, to get some ideas or maybe to uncover what you could learn more about:
POSTURE
1. Is your posture stiff when you sing?
2. Are you relaxed when you sing?
3. Do you slump when you sing?
4. Is your head up when you sing?
5. Is your head down when you sing?
6. Is your head in a relaxed position,
facing forward when you sing?
7. Is your head tilted when you sing?
8. Are your shoulders down when you sing?
BREATHING
1. Does your chest expand?
2. Is your chest stationary?
3. Does your abdomen move with your
breathing?
4. Do you force your abdomen in?
5. Do you force your abdomen out?
6. Do you fill up with air?
7. Do you run out of air?
8. Do you over-breathe?
9. Can you feel your diaphragm?
10. Do you exercise to improve your lung
capacity?
TONE QUALITY
1. Is your tone clear?
2. Is your tone raspy?
3. Is your tone strident (harsh)?
4. Do you feel you sing from your
throat?
5. Do you feel you sing from your
abdomen?
6. Is your tone breathy?
7. Does your tone crackle?
8. Do you start tones with an aspirate
attack, hard glottal attack or a normal one?
FULL RANGE
1. Does your voice have a register break
(does it “crack”)?
2. Can you sing in full voice in: head
voice, low middle voice, high middle voice, and chest voice?
3. Do you have one area of a register
break or multiple areas?
4. Are high notes difficult?
5. Do you feel tired, hoarse, raspy, or
breathy after singing?
6. Are all vowels easy to sing on all
pitches?
7. Do you think you “mix” chest voice
and head voice?
8. Do you have head voice, chest voice,
and a break in between?
9. Do you have head, middle, and chest
voice with no breaks?
10. Can you sing in full voice, light
production, and breathy quality in every range?
11. Do you have “one voice”, fully
controllable and functional throughout the range?
12. Can you easily sing at all dynamic
levels (soft, medium, loud, very loud)?
13. Do you know the one thing that will
stop your voice from breaking?
ENDURANCE
1. Can you sing without tiring?
2. Can you sing for forty-five minutes
without tiring?
3. Do you have to take frequent rest
periods when you sing?
4. Do you know how to improve endurance?
ARTICULATION
1. Can you pronounce consonants
correctly?
2. Can you pronounce vowels correctly?
3. Do you enunciate clearly?
4. Do you under-enunciate?
5. Do you over-enunciate?
6. Is your enunciation
appropriate/typical for the style of song you sing?
7. Do you have an accent, foreign to the
language in which you sing?
PRACTICE
1. Have you been taught how to practice
in the most efficient way?
2. Do you do vocal exercises which help
you to sing well?
3. Do you do vocal exercises which seem
to do nothing for your singing?
4. Do you know how to warm up your
voice?
5. Do you know music, music theory, and
use this in your practice?
6. Do you sing songs from start to
finish over and over?
7. Do you isolate problem areas in sings
and do what is needed to improve those?
8. Do you record yourself and listen objectively
to the recording?
VOCAL USABILITY
1. Do you lose your voice?
2. Do you get hoarse?
3. Do you ever yell or scream?
4. Do you stay well-hydrated?
5. Do you have caffeine,
anti-histamines, or alcohol?
6. Do you take drugs or smoke
cigarettes?
7. Do you sing in smoky places?
8. Do you frequently speak in the bottom
of your voice (or on a fry tone)?
9. Do you sleep 8 hours a day?
10. Is your body in good health?
11. Do you sing when you are ill?
CONTROL
1. Can you sing on pitch?
2. Can you sing with and without
vibrato?
3. Can you sing at every volume level?
4. Can you sing with emotion?
5. Can you sing with no emotion?
6. Can you sing in front of people?
7. Can you sing with fear, but sound
like you are not afraid?
CONFIDENCE
1. Do you practice enough to sing with
confidence?
2. Do you regularly perform?
3. Do you sufficiently prepare for
auditions?
4. Do you sufficiently prepare for
performances?
5. Do you record video and audio of
yourself to ascertain whether you do what you intend to do?
6. Do you work to correct what is wrong
and record your performance to verify it is corrected?
7. Can you be objective when watching or
listening to recordings of yourself?
MUSICIANSHIP
1. Do you understand melodic intervals?
2. Can you sing successive melodic
intervals in tune?
3. Do you understand harmonic intervals?
4. Do you hear the difference between
major and minor intervals and/or chords?
5. Can you identify: diminished chords,
augmented chords, sus2, sus4, altered chords, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths?
6. Can you write down music that you
hear on manuscript paper?
7. Can you identify instruments when you
hear them?
8. Can you identify duple meter and
triple meter?
9. Can you notate rhythm?
10. Can you sub-divide the beat while
singing?
11. Can you hear chord progressions and
know what you have heard?
12. Can you hear how the melodic line
you sing fits within the chords?
13. Can you hold key when singing a
capella?
14. Can you sing a chromatic scale a
capella and in tune?
15. Can you sing all intervals in tune,
if they are called out to you?
16. Can you sing harmony in a group,
without being thrown off by other singers?
17. Do you understand music terminology
(nomenclature)?
18. Can you write a song?
19. Can you write lyrics which fit with
the chords and rhythm of a song “bed”?
20. Can you sing with karaoke, with a
band, and/or with an orchestra?
