Resonance Unit With Voce Vista

1. Define Resonance
2. Define overtones
3. Discuss (let kids chime in as much as possible) the examples of simple musical instruments. Why does a piano sound like a piano, or guitar like a guitar etc. (I recommend having your computer ready with some simple instrument sounds mp3s that can be imported and shone in Voce Vista.)
4. How is the human voice different? It’s way more complicated than a piano. Why?  The human voice is complicated because the air speed, vocal fold proximation,  and almost infinite number of shapes created by the resonating cavity allows for infinite numbers of sounds and timbres. Show this video https://youtu.be/au92XTLm_SU You could also ask kids to make goofy noises into the meet one at a time to prove the point.
5. Define pitch vs. noise (Show live examples in Voce Vista)
6. Discuss spoken language. “Why can we understand each other?
    Our brains are able to detect the subtle changes of overtones that occur when a person is moving their mouth. Show in Voce Vista, and be sure to point out that we speak in pitch. Without pitch our brain would not be able to detect the overtone patterns.
7. Then move into singing sounds. Demonstrate some clearly sung, resonant examples of the 5 major vowels live into Voce Vista. Point out the singers formant up around 3500 hz, and point out the shifting overtone pattern as your mouth changed shape. Optional video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N5q85G3ydk 
8. This is a good chance to explain the importance of blend in a choir.
9. Next, I “imitated” young singers in a loving way… “The breathy kid,” “Kid who’s too cool to open his mouth” and any other funny ones you come up with. Recorded these live in Voce Vista and showed the kids some of the lack in overtone clarity that happens with those types of singing errors in technique. Always good to put good examples up for comparison. A nice review of concepts here: https://youtu.be/PKengo7y28U 
10. On the last day I gave the kids 3-4 minutes to record and send their own sound sample for analysis. I imported and shared them all and let the kids see the “pictures of their sound” which they got a kick out of. It also gave us a chance to address the issue of “I don’t like the sound of my voice. I sound weird on recordings.” Well, yes Sally, that’s because you hear your own voice before the RESONANCE is complete. Ties things together nicely.

visit vocevista.com/choralosophy to download the software for a free 30 day trial. If you chose to purchase it, you will get 10% off when you enter Choralosophy checkout!