Aural (Auditory-Musical)
Are you an aural learner? Aka do you like to learn with sound? If so, I think it is best that we kick this article off with some music to play in the background while you read.
Here is what I’m currently listening to:
Okay, let’s get into it.
The first thing that I’d recommend is for you to find the rhythm of the song and you can do this simply by talking the song as it sounds.
There is no need to think about at the moment as all we doing is finding our beat.
When talking through the song, remember to use your own accent. This will make it sound more personal and relatable for you to get you started.
Since you learn and remember by using your ears, think about the tonality and feel of every word.
Do the exercise 10 times. Record each time on your phone and listen back to your tonality.
I read somewhere that tonality is responsible for more communication than the words that you are using. Just some food for thought there.
Once you feel you are ready, we can move on to the next task; singing it.
Take your spoken version (in your own accent) and smooth it out so it turns into a song, BUT keep your accent for now even if it is supposed to be in another dialect.
The reason we do this is to give you a nice connection in your voice.
I know so many people who when they start singing, they go into this ‘singing-mode’, and I’m like: what is that. It doesn’t make you feel anything. When you slide your way into the song by speaking it first, it gives a nice transition and keeps the communication element of the song with us.
Now you are singing the song, repeat what we are doing earlier by recording yourself singing and taking a note of interesting sounds throughout the piece.
Record, sing, listen back another 10 times and you’ll well be on your way.
Since you now have 20 sets of recordings of the song in both spoken and sung versions, choose your favourites and put them on your music device on a playlist called ‘Song Learning – song name’.
Listen to yourself speaking and singing the songs on repeat for the next couple of days and it will creep into your mind as if you weren’t suspecting it.