I’m a music graduate or equivalent. Let me do a quick refresh of some of the more challenging diatonic intervals; I’m ready to go right into augmented and diminished intervals; the 12 note chromatic scale; get my chromatic pitching bang on and faster and faster; I’m ready to transcribe Wes Montgomery solos by ear; I want to sing in Indian Ragas and modes.

I’m good on the somatic awareness of my voice and I’m ready to keep the quality of my tone as I get sophisticated and increasingly fast with my friggin’ awesome vocal agility.

On harmony, I need a brief refresher on diatonic harmony in the context of collaborative improvisation, and now I’m ready for chord elaboration and inversions. And increasingly crunchy sophisticated beautiful vocal harmony in both a conscious and an intuitive way. F yeah.

I’m all about playing with 16th note / semi-quaver patterns, polyrhythm and oddmeter. I already do that, but now I want to get more conscious and sophisticated with it, and I can work at a good pace.

Wild Voice, Solid Roots Level 4 | Year-long Course Content

Rhythm 

• Becoming more and more able to play with highly rhythmically complex vocal improvisation

• Working regularly with polyrhythm, odd-meter and 16th note / semiquaver patterns (straight and swung) and phrasing in steady patterns, free soloing, alone and in collaboration with interlocking patterns, in increasingly fascinating and funky ways.

• Singing whilst playing drum, shaker, or other instrument, with increasing rhythmic sophistication; improvisational vocal freedom while you hold it very steady on another instrument, now with elements of polyrhythm, oddmeter and 16th note / semiquaver patterns.

• Reading and writing rhythmic notation; aural recognition of grooves and ability to sing along and improvise in the pocket of the groove.

Harmony

• Becoming increasingly sophisticated in your ability to improvise with others harmonically.

• Becoming able to instantly recognise and variously produce different voicings of chords including 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th tones - both consciously and also intuitively.

• Establishing deep aural and vocal familiarity with a range of cadences and using them frequently in collaborative improvisation.

• Harmonic ear training with all chords and progressions in major and minor.

• Harmonic transcriptions to suit your ability and taste.

Tone, Agility, Melody, Mode

• Becoming extremely precise, clear, steady and calm when your voice hits this and that note. Being able to land swiftly on notes across a range of intervals, including augmented and diminished intervals, with diverse rhythms.

• Building fluent access to the chromatic scale, major and minor blues scales, and modes of your choice, in addition to scales from level 2 (major, minor) and level 3 (major and minor pentatonic, dorian and mixolydian.)

• Aural transcriptions of solos / music of your choice of style - typically jazz and world

• Expanding your repertoire of memorised agility studies, encorporating for example more Bach preludes, the solos you transcribe, and other inspirations

• Cultivating the deep quality of your vocal tone and its maintenance across increasingly deft agility through regular scale practice, resonant body work and vocal meditation.

Voice, Creativity and Integration

• Fully inhabiting the resonant body, enjoying your free voice - clear, strong, healthy, and beautifully your own.

• Through collaborative and solo improvisation, dropping fear and restrictions, and allowing the creative river to flow.

• Improvising with words

• Listening; an ever expanding capacity to hear all voices (and through the chops study, to understand what you’re hearing), whilst also listening to your own musical impulse, body and self

• Integrated Expressive Practice – using sound, movement and language for high quality creative expression

• Integrating the conscious study of rhythm, harmony and melody into free flowing musicianship.

• Sound healing.

• Reflection and navigating your path of growing as a musician in the world in ways that fit you very well.