The Blog

Finding new and interesting ways to prepare solo performances within a group is always a challenge.

JT Director, worked on the song text of ‘Butterfly” by Lin Marsh, with a group of three girls

After singing the song through to remind ourselves of the melody, we worked on the song in a number of ways.

Visualisation

We decided that the characters in the song were the child and the butterfly.  In the first verse, the child was asking the butterfly questions. One child sang, and another child became the butterfly, flitting about in the room. The singing child then asked the butterfly the questions.

This brought us to the text.

The Three Times Echo 

This exercise is really splendid for working with subtler meanings of the text.

• Singer 1 speaks the first line of the song.
• Singer 2 repeats the first  line bringing out  a different word in the  sentence
• Singer 3 repeats the first line once more, emphasising yet a different word in the sentence.

And so on, through the song. This is an excellent way for young singers to understand the underlying intentions of the song text and the importance of descriptive adjectives.

Putting it together

The singers decided that the first verse was a question and, in the second verse, the child wanted to be a butterfly for a day. We enacted the the second verse with the child being a butterfly, flitting about the hall.By this time we had reached the end of the 30 minute session, so this was our final ‘Performance ‘ of the lesson.

How this helps young singers

Thinking about the song text in this way helps children to visualise an imaginary butterfly and think about the meaning and intention of the words. This will bring the communication aspect of the song to life.

The JTPTrust is a Corporate member of the Association of Teachers of Singing (www.aotos.org.uk) . Work above was inspired by the presentations of Dr Meribeth Dayme (CoreSinging) and Barbara Houseman (Voice Coach, Central School of Music and Drama)