January 20, 2026: Tuesday Upbeat
Teachers: Happy Tuesday!
Get Students Singing Right from the Start
One of the most powerful teaching strategies for music learning on any instrument is singing.
Singing helps to make all music learning click — no matter the instrument.
When students sing a phrase first, they internalize pitch, pulse, and phrasing before fingers, sticks, or valves get involved, which means cleaner intonation, steadier rhythm, and more musical shaping on the instrument.
Singing builds the ear (matching and remembering sounds), strengthens breath and posture, and clarifies articulation (often associated with diction).
Singing turns theory into something you can hear; intervals, scales, chords, and musical form stop being abstract and start sounding familiar and having meaning.
Singing boosts memory and confidence: if you can sing it, you can learn it, get good at playing it, and memorize it faster.
Singing aids in audiation – another important musical skill that opens up new worlds for students and musicians.
In lessons, there are so many things you can sing with students: melody, lyrics, solfège, scale degrees (numbers), letter names, bass line, down beats and other counting-singing, humming, patter, call-and-response, harmonies, and more. When we get music living in our voice first, practice on our instrument becomes guided by a clear, musical, “inside sound.”
All students can sing, and all students will sing (eventually). Even those who say they can’t or won’t. Strategies to get students singing who initially don’t want to include singing for them (which will eventually become with them), and encouraging them to “sing in their heads” or “sing in their brains” (which will eventually become humming and then singing aloud). Do these things even if it takes months or longer before they start opening up and singing aloud.
Start singing at the very first lesson. Piano, guitar, and drums students especially can sing while playing. Do not be tempted to believe that singing while playing is too hard (unless you are a wind instrument). Singing while playing, when practiced from the start, makes learning and playing easier. Start simply by singing while playing one note at a time on the keyboard, or one string at a time on the guitar (or other string instrument), or one stroke, hit, or paradiddle on drums.
From day one, invite students to sing every song or phrase before they play. Lock in pitch, melody, pulse, rhythm, and phrasing. And then sing while they play. Turn theory into sound, develop confident ears, breath, posture, and whole bodies, and make things they play on their instrument cleaner and more musical.
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Have a magical Tuesday, a musical week, and enjoy happy, healthy and tension-free teaching and learning with your students.
Thank you,
Dennis Frayne
"Dr. Dennis"
Laguna Niguel School of Music
Dennis Frayne Music Studios
30110 Crown Valley Pkwy, Suites 105/107/108
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677
(949) 844-9051 (office cell)
(949) 468-8040 (personal cell)
www.lagunaniguelschoolofmusic.com
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