Vocal Improvisation

In this course you will learn how to gain more freedom for embellishing melodies and broaden your repertoire of musical phrases. With a deeper level of harmonic and melodic awareness and you will enlarge your freedom of expression and make your songs more personal. And all of this makes it more fun to improvise! 

You will be learning how to put fundamental skills into practice and how to improve your listening skills. In this course we will work with basic exercises, using tools like the major, minor harmonic and minor aeolian scales. We’ll practice these scales by singing intervals and sequences, thereby getting to know the sound of each scale.
By the end of this course you will have an improved awareness of what happens around you in a ‘performance setting’, you’ll be more in control, and you’ll have a better understanding of the music you hear.

Furthermore we will be working on the swing-feel versus the straight-feel. For example, what is the difference in their sound, theory, and feeling? There will be various exercise involving singing in both feels, as well as alternating between the two in order to strengthen your rhythmic awareness. This course is suited for singers, professional and amateur, jazz, pop or classically trained and instrumentalists who like to scat. Some level of theoretical understanding could come in handy, such as knowledge of the circle of fifths, major- and minor scales and degrees on a major scale, 7th chords and chord-symbols.

Video's
1,5 hours

Skill Level
Beginners-Intermediate

Backing Tracks 
10 Backing tracks especially recorded for this course

Language 
English

Certificate 
Certified from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam

Feedback
Personalised video feedback every lesson

Watch the video for more information
 

How it works:

The course is a series of related video lessons, each structured around a specific topic or topics. By the end of this course, you will have developed a strong sense of direction in your daily study routine.

Weekly video lessons: after joining the course, you will be able to view a new video lesson weekly. Each video lesson consists of:

·       Examples that musically define the sound of the topic you are studying in each video.

·       A study routine section in which we first discuss how to study the specific topic of each lesson. We will then play several exercises specially written to show you how to structure your daily study routine.

·       Assignments that will help you consolidate and practice what you have learned in each video.

Weekly assignments: after each lesson, you will be asked to study, practice and then video record yourself playing an assignment which may consist of several exercises. When ready, you submit the video of your assignment. The process of having to record yourself every week, significantly helps to internalise the material discussed in this course - quickly and naturally.

Weekly feedback: you will then receive a video with individual and personalised feedback to each assignment, every lesson. The personal feedback that you receive will enable you to improve and clarify any questions that might arise during your weekly study. You can view the feedback as many times as you like.