Vocal Improvisation/Freestyle Workshop

SUMMARY:

Day: Every Thursday
Time: 7pm - 9pm
Place: Artist Studios Bristol, 10 King Sq. Ave., Bristol, BS2 8HU
Cost: £15 per session or £50 for 4 sessions
Website: www.artiststudiosbristol.com
phone: Billy 07935 243844
Facebook Group: http://tinyurl.com/n5rjmv

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Improvisation is often considered one of the hardest things to master, and yet it is the skill that requires the least effort! How can that be? Well, it is my opinion that good vocal improv is something that happens when you stop trying. When you completely relax and let the music take over your body. But that’s easier said than done! We are so caught up in our own expectations of how we should sound, that we tend to freeze up whenever we try to improvise. We are afraid that what comes out of our mouths won’t be good enough, that people will laugh, or simply that it’s safer to practice something first!

So if you can’t force improv, what’s the purpose of this workshop? Well, although it’s true that you can’t learn improv as a step by step process, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tricks and techniques that can help you along the way. This workshop gives you the opportunity and encouragement to explore a variety of different approaches to improv, under the guidance of an experienced tutor.

Week by week, students will have the chance to explore many different aspects of vocal improv, from scatting and freestyling to live loop sampling, all with the goal of learning to free up the creative voice that lies within all of us. Topics covered include:

Tapping into your musical memory (finding melodies)
Learning your instrument (the voice!)
Scatting
Using mistakes to your advantage

Loop Pedals
Building a track with layered vocals
Using percussive sounds
Beatboxing

Lyrical improvisation (Freestyling)
Approaches to rhyming
Where to place rhymes
Letting the rhyme lead the story
Lyrical syncopation

The workshop is suitable for students of all abilities, and while it will certainly improve your ability to improvise, the focus of the course is on using improv to have fun and help you gain confidence singing!

To see some past students improvising, watch the following video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdJIUFxPAEQ


JOINING:

The workshop is run on a rolling basis, so you can join whenever you want. You could just come for one week, but I really recommend you stay for at least 4 weeks to really get the most out of it. After that, you will probably want to continue anyway as you will be having so much fun! Please get in touch to find out if there is currently space on the workshop, as I have limited the places to 6.


ABOUT THE TUTOR:

Billy Salisbury is a singer songwriter who performs under the name The Undercover Hippy. He is well known for his ability to improvise songs on the fly, often from words thrown by audience members, and he is as comfortable rapping hip-hop as he is singing the blues! Billy has been running courses for over 10 years and has designed courses for colleges and universities in Singapore and the U.S. To hear his music visit www.undercoverhippy.com

See you there!!!