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Voice Studio News & Fun
August 3, 2020 | Issue #22 | Newsletter Archive
Important Studio Info
  • It's time to start thinking about fall lessons! The fall semester starts September 1, so please contact me to sign up.

  • Congrats to all our "Christmas in July" virtual recital singers! It is available to watch on YouTube.

  • The next virtual recital will be on Friday, August 28, and the theme this time is "Les Miserables" - sing a song from the show, or any French-themed song that you'd prefer.

  • COVID-19 Update: We are continuing with online lessons only and once Benton County is moved to Phase 3, we can re-evaluate the safety of in-person lessons.
Musical of the Week
Les Miserables, based on an amazing (and long) book by Victor Hugo, is the second-longest running musical ever! It's also the theme of our August virtual recital, so it's a perfect time to feature it as our musical of the week!
Voice Study
Technology Resources for Singers
Now that lessons are online and singing in choir is impossible for a while, it's even more important than ever to know about all the great resources that are available to help you improve your singing and musicianship. Scroll down for more info!
Jazz Standard Favorites
This signature song of Edith Piaf has been covered by everyone from Louis Armstrong to Grace Jones. Learn more below!
Composer Spotlight
This French Romantic composer was a friend of Victor Hugo (the author of the novel Les Miserables), and collaborated with him on an opera called "La Esmeralda," which was based on another of his novels, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Musical of the Week
Les Misérables is a sung-through musical adapted from French poet and novelist Victor Hugo's 1862 novel of the same name by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music), Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (original French lyrics), and Herbert Kretzmer (English lyrics). The original French musical premiered in Paris in 1980, and its English-language adaptation has been running in London since October 1985, making it the longest-running musical in the West End and the second longest-running musical in the world after the original Off-Broadway run of The Fantasticks.

Set in early 19th-century France, Les Misérables is the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant, and his desire for redemption after serving nineteen years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child. Valjean decides to break his parole and start his life anew after a bishop inspires him by a tremendous act of mercy, but he is relentlessly tracked down by a police inspector named Javert. Along the way, Valjean and a slew of characters are swept into a revolutionary period in France, where a group of young idealists attempt to overthrow the government at a street barricade in Paris.

Here is the rest of the Wikipedia article about the show.


Here is the Broadway show trailer.



Here's a video of a FLASH MOB of pros singing "One Day More" at a mall! Super cool!
Voice Study: Tech Resources for Singers
The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing about an amazing burst of creativity and growth in the area of technology that benefits us as singers. We'll see a lot more of this in the future, but even now, while we can't sing with others, there are a lot of resources to help us continue to sing and progress in our voice study. Here are my current favorites - if you have others, let me know!

These resources are free:
  • Vocal exercise videos
  • Solfege exercise videos
  • Physical warm-up videos
  • Search for other voice-study videos on YouTube
  • Use your phone camera to make videos of yourself singing
  • Use Zoom to easily record videos of yourself singing - I can show you how!
  • Create a YouTube channel to post and share videos - I'm going to ask more of you to do this starting in the fall, to help us with your voice lessons
  • Apps like Acapella, and platforms like Instagram can provide outlets for sharing your music and connecting with others
  • IMSPL Free Sheet Music Library: published music that is now in the public domain can be downloaded here for free

These options have a cost:
  • Tonal Energy Tuner app: it has a tuner for checking and finding pitches, a metronome for keeping a steady beat, and lots more
  • Appcompanist app: it has over 5,000 classical and musical theatre piano accompaniments
  • Musicnotes.com: find and purchase sheet music for just about any song
  • Send Ben Walley a PDF of your sheet music and he will make you a digital backtrack for $10
  • Get an inexpensive USB microphone to improve the sound going into your computer - any that works for your budget will do. If you want to spend a little more, you can get headphones and audio interface equipment.
  • If you have audio software on your computer (GarageBand on Macs), you can use it to create an audio file of yourself singing to a backtrack, and you can add other tracks so you can create a duet or trio with yourself or others.

There is so much new technology coming out every day, so these are just the basics. You shouldn't have to put your singing on hold just because of the limitations on singing with other people right now. You can keep practicing and improving and when we can sing together again, you'll be glad you kept going. Auditions, competitions, concerts, shows, recitals will all come back, and you'll be ready when they do!
Jazz Standard Favorites
La Vie en Rose (translated "life in pink") is the signature song of popular French singer Édith Piaf, written in 1945. The song became very popular in the US in 1950 with no fewer than seven different versions reaching the Billboard charts. These were by Tony Martin, Paul Weston, Bing Crosby, Ralph Flanagan, Victor Young, Dean Martin, and Louis Armstrong. A version in 1977 by Grace Jones was also a successful international hit.

"La Vie en Rose" was the song that made Piaf internationally famous, with its lyrics expressing the joy of finding true love and appealing to those who had survived the difficult period of World War II.

Here are some great versions of this beautiful song:



Name That Tune
Have fun sight-reading these folk tunes! Do you recognize them?
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You've Got Rhythm!
Here are some exercises for rhythm practice - grab your metronome and go for it!
Composer Spotlight: Louise Bertin
Louise Bertin ( 1805-1877) was a French composer and poet, who was encouraged by her family to pursue music and premiered her first opera, "Guy Mannering," in a private family performance in 1825 at the age of 20. Her greatest claim to fame was her collaboration with Victor Hugo (the author of Les Miserables) on the operatic version of his book, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The opera, entitled "La Esméralda," featured Hugo’s libretto and Bertin’s music, and she bears the distinction of being the only composer to have directly collaborated with Hugo on an opera. Read the full article at Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, due to the historic lack of attention to female composers, she is not as well-known as many of her male contemporaries. You can read more about this in an interesting scholarly article.



  • Or if you prefer, listen to the entire opera, in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.


For any of my classical singers working on French, her last name is not pronounced "BER-tin" like we English-speakers might think, but more like "bear-TAH(n)" with the accent on the second syllable, and extra nasal resonance.