How To Read A Vocal Score For Complete Beginner Singers

 If you sing and you ever come across a vocal score and you have no idea what they are for or how can they help you, this video is for you. Today I’m going to tell you how a score can actually help your singing, even if you don’t know anything about music theory. In this video, I’m going to show you why we use music scores in singing and how can they help you.

 OK, so I’m here with this vocal score that I got from the Rockschool Vocals Syllabus, the debut grade or pre-grade. This is a syllabus I use a lot with my kid students, the beginners. I’m going to use it to show you some of the elements of a score.

A lot of times I have students that have no idea how to read music at all, and then they want to sing in a choir or in a music theater or something like that. And then they are given these scores and they don’t know what to do because they tell me, ‘Oh, I don’t read any music’. And the thing is, you don’t need to be an expert on sight-reading to benefit from a score. Of course, you start from the beginning, and you are not supposed to go from not being able to know anything about a score to sight-reading everything from zero with no reference.

So, the first thing you have to do is to get familiar with the elements of a score, and that is what I’m going to be showing you now. So, we have this score. It’s Imagine by John Lennon. It’s a score  by Rockschool, as I said. The first thing you can see here it’s a quarter note here.

This number means that the tempo of the piece is 72 beats per minute

If you have no idea what that means, let’s just find it here (demonstrates). We have 72 beats per minute.

Hopefully, you can hear (the beats). So that is the tempo (demonstrates) Now if the number was higher – I’m going to make it much higher- (demonstrates). That means it will be faster because you have more beats per minute. So I’m gonna set it a little bit higher here to show you, and I’m gonna sing it as well. This is our new tempo (demonstrates).

In the same way, if I go slowly, this is our new beat, it’s much more slowly, fewer beats per minute. And that is what that information gives you, how fast or how slow the song is, and that information is very, very important. And, you can have it right away, there in the upper part of the score.

Now, next to that number, you have this information here, ‘Peace Anthem’. There, you can usually find the genre of the song, also very important.

Now, this is a vocal score (for a solo singer), which means  only has one system, and is for the vocal part, in this case, one vocal part. If you were singing in a choir, the score usually has four parts. Or, well, as many voices as the choir has. Sometimes you can find a full orchestra or a full band score, it depends. But in this case, it’s only a vocal score. So, all you see here is for the singer, one singer.

We have this little thing here. This is called a treble clef, and it is a very important piece of information to know what pitches (notes) you are dealing with. There are different kinds of clefs. In this case, what this clef indicates is that, for example, this note here, which is like right in the middle of the little curve here,  is a G above a middle C. Don’t worry too much about that right now. All you need to know about that is that  as a singer, you’re usually gonna be using the treble clef for your scores unless you are a bass singer.

Next, we have this information here. This says 4/4. That means that the piece is in a 4/4 bar. This information is super important. if you want your bandmates to like you, be good at rhythm! I can say that. Alright, so, what that number means is that you have four beats per bar. In music, beats are grouped into bars. What this information gives you is that you have four beats per bar and that those beats are measured in quarter notes as you can see here. There are different kinds of bars and time signatures, but the 4/4 one is the most common and that’s why I am showing it to you. Now, another thing that you can really benefit from, from the beginning, is this: every bar is divided by a little line here, and, if you look at this score, you can tell right away that you have four full bars of introduction,  in which you don’t sing. There are no pitch notes here (points to one bar), it’s only a rest of four bars. So you know that you wait for four full bars, and here what this indicates you is that you start singing right before beat two. Don’t worry too much about that right now because I’m going to talk about note values in another video but for now just know that you sing one, two, three, four, that’s one bar and you wait four of them for full bars and then you start in   the fifth bar (in beat 0.75 – watch video for demonstration).

That’s when  you start singing.  If you have a score or something similar you don’t have to guess anymore when to start singing! It’s there. You just have to count beats. It’s great!

All right, so I’m going to play the backing track for this song, also using the material from the Rockschool syllabus. And, we’re gonna count beats, we’re gonna do that together. And then, we’re gonna see if it’s possible to start right before two. Let’s try that.

(demonstrates)

So I started right before beat two. And so that’s how you can figure it out at the beginning. Of course, once you resolve the song and you get used to it, you don’t have to count anymore, you just know. But this provides a real shortcut to be able to learn these songs much faster.  Of course, you also have more information here. See, you have, for example, the information on how long to wait in between phrases. This will be the music playing, but you’re not singing because they are (music) rests.  And, what is the exact rhythm of the song. Of course, you can modify it to make your own version, but understanding the original information really, really helps you to have the freedom to create your own version.

If you are completely new to music, these notes here, these note values are not going to make any sense.  In this case, I would recommend you to join my new online subscription because I’m going to be teaching  vocalists not only how to sing and prepare songs from complete scratch, but also how to be a real musician with their voice.

Meaning, you are going to be able to understand this and to practice it with me every week as well.

The next, piece of information that you have here is an interpretation mark. This one, in particular, means mezzo forte. Forte means loud. Mezzo forte would be moderately loud. So that is a dynamic mark, that tells you how it’s recommended that you sing that passage (moderately loud).  It might not be too relevant, perhaps when you are doing your own version, but if you were singing in a choir, for example, or in a musical theater part, then that information will be really relevant and you will have to be able to work with that at some extent.

All right. So, I think that is a lot of information if you never came across a score before, or if you have no idea how to read it. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it was useful.