Learning A Song

At the moment, I am learning 'Beau Soir', by Debussy. It can be tricky learning a song in a different language. The first thing that I did was find a reliable translation of the piece, which then helped me understand what the piece was about. This has been very beneficial to me as it has helped me how to convey certain pieces of the text by use of tempo and dynamics and it helps me to set the mood. I find learning a piece easier when I have an image or scene in my head, and this is what I try to convey to the audience.

After I had a clear understanding, the next step was to learn the melody. I tend to hmm the melody first, so that I can get the time signature and structure into my head. After that, I try to fit the lyrics with the rhythm .

The next stage that I took was writing out the lyrics phonetically and double checking the pronunciation of the lyrics. After that, it's basically memorising the lyrics and then working more on my presentation for the performance. At the point, I have to take into consideration what I am going to do with my hands, posture and movement around the stage.

'Beau Soir', has been memorised and I am now polishing off the performance. Next to be memorised is 'So In Love', by Cole Porter, which will be slightly easier as it is in English!

Until next time!

Bye!