Karaoke Forums

Since I challenged someone (name intentionally omitted to protect the innocent) to sing a song that they more than likely never heard of before, I was hoping to give that individual some tips that any of you may use when your learning/practicing a song that is completely unknown to you. I have already offered my $.02 worth--- namely find the sheet music, get the melody line down, see how it matches with the background/accompaniment, and, if possible, look for already existing recordings by which to pattern the performance by. Does anyone else have any ideas? I want to give the indivdual every chance to complete the challenge.

All help here will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. I am confident that this individual has the ability to sing this particular song, due to the credentials which that individual has (or claims to have).

Sounds like you covered all the bases! I basically try to find an existing recording to become familair with arrangement, the cues, the ending, etc......

For popular songs, it's very easy...you can download the song off the net somewhere and learn it by listening to it.

With classical songs, though, it helps to have both the sheet music and an example to learn from (especially if you are not good at playing the piano like me

I am the person RP is talking about, and I already said twice now that I don't know if I'll have time to do it, or how long it will take....so, no promises.  Learning a new song of ANY type takes time, and for a classical song it takes even longer and is a lot harder to sing.  I am pretty lazy about learning songs...I generally prefer to take a song I already sort-of know and learn it better, rather than learning a brand new song, unless the new song is very easy and repetitive.

I didn't ask for help, though...RP sent me the backing and I just asked if there was a sample of someone singing available.   It's not that big of a deal...if I have time to learn it, I will!  And, again let me just say that if I don't think the song is good for my voice or if it's supremely difficult, I probably won't do it.

Which credentials did you mean? I never claimed to be any expert or anything...I just took lots of voice lessons and college music classes. I can send you my college transcripts, if you'd like!  :)  You can hear how bad I sounded back then (this week's songs) and then listen to how I sing now, and that should show you how much the lessons helped me.  Other than that, not sure what you mean by "credentials I claimed to have"...

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~Suzanne Lanoue~

I found Charlotte Church's version and downloaded it...this recording is probably not gonna happen, sorry. It's a very tough song and would take me months to learn it at all.  I don't think I have the necessary breath control to do those runs properly, and there's at least one part where I'm sure I would run out of breath.  On top of everything else, the song moves very quickly, which means fewer places to take a breath.  That's not even taking into account all the time it would take to learn the French.

I don't know why you think I could sing this. Sure, I could hit the notes, do the diction, etc. but it would require a lot of work and still not sure I could ever do it even adequately.  I never claimed to have great breath control I can hit some hight notes, and I am a better singer than I used to be....but I'm no opera singer. The two non-English songs I did previously were so-so in my book, and those I had worked on quite a bit in my voice lessons, back when I was taking them.  And they were way easier than this one.

I'm not giving up on it, but just don't expect anything, I may never get around to learning it, is all I'm saying.  Or I may work hard on it and then give up because it sucks.  Who knows!


Why don't you get JazzyBaggz to take a stab at it? I'm sure she would sound wondeful on it.

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~Suzanne Lanoue~

if you aren't comfortable with downloading music from the net (I am assuming with a peer to peer program or similiar) then you can always do what we did in the old days before the internet (yes there use to be a time.... LOL)... call a local radio station that plays the particular genre or style/artist and request it and listen to the radio then record it on tape for personal use, which is OK... I realize this seems archaic in this digital age but that has worked for as long as I can remember and when I was a radio DJ I had many a request for songs that people had never heard before but had heard OF and wanted to hear it before buying it or whatever they had planned for it... when I KJ I try to keep a selection of my dance/mix music to mirror what we have in the karaoke books so, if someone wants to "hear" the original before trying the karaoke version, I can play 30-60 seconds of the song inbetween singers so the person wanting to hear it can get an idea of what key it is in, the original speed/tempo of the song and here the original artist's interpretation so they can make an informed decision of whether they wanna jump in with both feet... hell, if it is slow I might play the whole song for them and tell them, if they want to, they can put the karaoke version up in a few rotations and take a crack at it... or if it is REALLY slow I may just opt to play half of each (half the original and then half the karaoke version) and we all can make a side by side comparison etc... when I do things like that they may decide that the song isn't for them but it may help "discover" the song for another audience member who didn't know we had the song, couldn't remember the title/artist etc... When I first started in karaoke back in 1990, I dedicated sunday nights (very slow back then) to "new music spotlight" and I would intermix new disks I had bought inbetween the 2-3 singers we would have on sundays and play a new song or two... I had singers who would come in, not to sing, but to be able to sit and browse thru the books and make "preview" requests of songs they weren't brave enough, or drunk enough whatever the case may have been, to try on a busy night... they could sit comfortably in their chairs drinking and basically sample the songbook without the pressure of singing... again, this was a courtesy service to them where they explored our song list more than they normally would, and the others in the audience also got exposed to the different styles and tastes of music they might not normally go for or know that we had... I have discovered MANY songs that I have added to my personal singing list because I heard it somewhere and realized I DID know the song and that I simply did not recognize the title of it or the artist etc... I had many singers with limited repertoise (sp) increase their personal song selections by coming in on those "new music spotlight" sundays... just another view... take it as you will- tig

I enjoy infringing on people copywrights so ..i generally listen to the original a couple of times..then i forget it and sing it however I want to Makes things more interesting!

AMEN...

I try to copy the original as much as possible, but it still gets my "spin" on it, inevitably

This one has no "original" though, it's a classical song, very old.

Nowadays I usually don't bother downloading illegally because I can just download tunes for 99 cents through itunes, MusicMatch or Walmart.  I downloaded so many for years via Napster etc. that in general I have plenty of music to listen to!  Plus all my CD's that I ripped.  So now I only download the occasional song that I want to learn to sing, and most are available legally.

If they had only had those services years ago, they may not have had to worry about Napster...

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~Suzanne Lanoue~

To learn a song, I've had pretty good success finding the original recordings at my public library. And it's FREE, (well, except for those taxes).  You can borrow for three weeks at a time and  then renew.  I've renewed material over and over again and have borrowed CD's for several months.  

What I do is put the original in my CD player and the karaoke version in my Pioneer V-10 player and synchronize the two so that the lyrics show up on my TV, but the music is coming from the original only.  I sing along with the artist until I feel confident to try the karaoke version.  Sometimes one version is slightly faster than the other, so all you need to do is press the pause button, to get them in synch again.  

Multiplex discs are also helpful and I find that most demo singers are very accurate.

I listen for 5mins then sing it no I'm not joking