I was sitting waiting for my daughter to have her music lesson in our music centre when I heard a girl in the room next door practising her singing warm ups to piano music. She has another teacher from me and I am always interested in what other people are doing.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when her teacher came from the kitchen behind me with a cuppa and went into the room.

So ....... i have managed to work out that the girl was warming up from a cd!

Are there such items available or do you think this was one the teacher made up herself??

Elizabeth

I did one a few months ago for myself, but it wasn't perfect. I mean to get a new one done soon, probably this weekend month. I am still trying to figure out how to make my CD "scalable" i.e. I will never need to make another one again, even if my range changes. Any ideas?

I overestimated my range by 3 or 4 chords on both ends, so I had to pause while warming up the CD.

I also tried to play chords on the piano while singing, but that meant I had to sit down, which is not very helpful. So a CD is indeed useful.

Yes there are. I have one I purchased called "The Chicken Tikka Warm up exercises" Its a smart CD so you can print off the score which I assiduasly use in lessons (the CD does not get used in lessons at all) there is a ghastly set of tracks with children singing along which I never send out to pupils, and another with just the backing tracks. It is designed so that as a teacher once you have bought one copy you can distribute the material to your pupils for nothing. The exercises are well thought out, so I do dish out a copy of the score and the exercises to pupils who do not have a piano at home to warm up to.

However, these are not the only exercises I use, I do use a range of other exercises too, but some of the Chicken Tikka Exercises are fun so are a great supplement to the repertoire. Their range is also good for young voices.

The issue of Pupils not having keyboard instruments at home is a real one. This is why, as long as they have live accompaniments in their lesson and don't get glued to the CD, I am happy for pupils to use backing tracks to practice to. Sure they are inflexible, but at least they get to know what the accomapniment sounds like, and they learn their songs in the right key. I've been known to record accompaniments for pupils purely for this purpose, so that their placing is secure.

Again though I want to emphasise that every song I give to a pupil has a printed score. I'm not in the business of theachign Kareoke. The dots, the composers intentions are important, the backing track is simply there to help during practice.

I record my students lessons with studio quality recording equipment and then give them the file on CD or memory stick afterwards so that they can practise at home - I don't use the recordings in lessons though.

I do use a lot of backing tracks in lessons, simply because a lot of professionals are used to working that way and they bring their own backing tracks - frequently recorded by their own bands. It makes sense to use them rather than a piano accompaniment.

I don't always give a score for songs we're working on either - a lot of the traditional celtic repertoire doesn't have scores for example, so I use these instances as ear training exercises. If we're working on something that does have a score, then I'll encourage the singer to use it during the learning phase, but to memorise as soon as possible afterwards so that they can move away from it.

I don't think I'd tell a student to warm up with their recording whilst I went to get a cuppa, though! I use the warm up phase of the lesson as a listening exercise for me - is everything where it should be? Are things moving when they're supposed to? Is the tone connected and free etc. - if not, then that's the starting point of the lesson.