Basics of Singing

Rating:
Summary: liked it
Review: as a voice student, my teacher has been teaching me from this book for some time now. There is, of course, no substitute for her instruction, but this is a very helpful anthology of pieces that cover many vocal skills which she is teaching me. I have found it enjoyable to work with the pieces collected in this book, and I have also seen huge improvement in my abilities since we began working from this book.

Rating:
Summary: In defense of "The Basics of Singing"
Review: I think "A Reader" from California is well off the track on his/her review. You can't get good technique out of a book. You need a "second pair of ears" (in other words, a competent teacher) to help you sing properly. I have been using this book for a while in my voice classes. I find that there are many songs in this book which are accessible to the beginning singer, especially those who don't read music. There are also some songs which are accesible to intermediate singers, both classical and pop. I think this book has a good mix of both genres. What this book lacks in music reading, I supplement with another book for music reading for the beginning singer. The academic chapters of this book I believe are meant as concept teaching tools. You really want to learn to sing and perform well? Cough up the money for a good private teacher and LEARN TO READ by taking a music fundamentals class at your local community college. Books cannot tell you where your individual faults lie and they cannot tell you how to fix them, because each individual is just that, an individual and the myriad of causes for a bad sound can only be diagnosed by a competent teacher/technician.

Rating:
Summary: waste of money
Review: This book is just a collection of songs, not a book on how to sing, despite the fact that it's being used as a textbook for voice classes. There are less than 25 pages on vocal technique,some token pages on reading music. And 6 pages are on "theatrics of singing" -- which is ridiculously disproportionate to the amount of text devoted to technique. Why bother with dealing with theatrics if the student hasn't mastered proper sound production? Aside from a short glossary, the rest of the book consists of songs. With so little space devoted to the mechanics of proper singing, the treatment of technique is obviously very superficial.