Inspiration

Listening to good singers can be inspiring and help your understanding of the vocal tone and phrasing required for the musical style you are working on.

Below here are some selected performances to inspire you and get you listening to great artists! Where possible we have chosen live recordings over studio recordings. Studio recordings can sometimes be deceptive as devices such as auto-tune and heavy editing of vocals can be present. Live performances therefore give a more realistic picture of the actual performance by the artist.

When working on a song, here are some things you might ask yourself (this will depend on genre):

• Who wrote this song? Year? Context - for a musical or opera - what's the story?

• Original artist? For pop you might start with looking up a performance by the original artist and then afterwards move on to look at different cover versions.

• Lyric content - what's the song about?

• Musical accompaniment? Slow or quick tempo? How does the dynamics change throughout the song?

• How does the artist capture the audience/ deliver the meaning of the song?

Classical :

Musical theatre:

Pop and Rock: