Integrating Acting and Singing Skills for General Music Teachers

• Christopher Loftin
• Posted 4/15/21
• 0 comments

The COVID-19 pandemic has given music teachers a new perspective. Teachers and students in masks, students losing social interaction time, and increased voice fatigue due to talking in masks (Carrillo-González and Atará-Piraquive, 2020).  

Therefore, the time music teachers have with students is even more valuable. However, music teachers’ increased demands to cover more duties, teach songs through a mask, and engage their students through more physical and emotional barriers cause vocal, physical, and mental fatigue. It is even more important to reflect on how music teachers use their voices and how they can reduce other engagement barriers between teachers and students.  

Even when music teachers feel sick or disheartened, students still need love, support, and safety to help them reach their potential. Carrillo-González and Atará-Piraquive advocate for complete assessment of music teacher’s practices. Further, they encourage teachers to contemplate all of the risks, rewards, and opportunities present and seek out training to improve in areas needed. This article focuses on finding ways to incorporate basic principles of acting with optimal vocal habits, thus increasing student engagement, vocal health, and sanity. 

Gavin (2016) studied final year undergraduate music education majors, focusing on factors that motivated or hindered them from finishing their degree program. He noted that several students felt that they had to wait until their third year before they got to do what they came to college for, teaching music.  

Participants further mentioned that since the music education degree is so challenging with so many credit hours and coursework, they wanted to teach and make music more and earlier. Pre-service teachers felt more comfortable teaching instrumental techniques to elementary students. Still, they felt very insecure about their ability to lead singing or model songs and wish there had been more singing training earlier in the degree program.  

Baughman (2020) found that undergraduate pre-service music teachers wanted more teaching experiences earlier with a mentor to better understand some of the teaching complexities before reaching their internship. They especially cited the desire for more training with singing techniques, vocal health, and vocal pedagogy. They also valued having a mentor or coach to help guide them and provide authentic feedback. 

Siebenaler (1999) found a positive correlation between elementary school music students’ knowledge of songs and song preference. When students knew a song, they preferred learning about it and singing it. Siebenaler further proposed that music teachers should not quit teaching a piece because of initial student dislike. 

However, music teachers should explore the message, music, composition origins, and culture of the piece. When students have more of a framework about the song, there is usually more buy-in to the song. This philosophy can transfer to general music and choral settings. 

Stephenson (2018) surveyed elementary music educators about their daily vocal use. Teachers said they struggled with vocal longevity and health even when minimizing verbal usage during lunch and other times during the day, hydrating, and minimizing background noise. General music teachers further stressed the importance of incorporating technology such as videos, music clips, and other multimedia options into the classroom to help save their voices. 

Stephenson stressed the need to train in-service and pre-service teachers in vocal health, best practices for teaching, and strategies for healthy singing and modeling songs to students. She advocated that a mental shift needs to occur in teachers from a reactive mindset to student music-making mindset, more student questioning, and less teacher phonation.  

Non-verbal communication is a tenet in acting classes and seminars. Therefore, if teachers learn a few basic acting strategies, they might find ways to program more student engagement without doing most of the phonation in class. 

“We don’t go to the theater to watch reality… We go to the theater to watch heightened reality.” (Esper and DiMarco, p. 34). The same goes for students in our music classes. They come to school to learn, be engaged, and transform into better versions of themselves.  

Merely acting as you would typically do in your daily conversations might not command or engage students. It is the job of music teachers, who happen to also be performers, with the students as our audience, to get past any physical or mental impediments such as masks during the pandemic or the emotional drain that can accompany teaching. 

Songs are usually not written about mundane tasks or events such as brushing your teeth or combing your hair. Composers write about epic moments in time (Brunetti, 2006; Carlson and Freedman, 2015; Esper and DiMarco). “Follow the Drinking Gourd,”; “Itsy Bitsy Spider,”; and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” are well-known songs with a story behind them.  

Music teachers and students teach the lyrical meaning, and the context behind the story is character acting and embodiment. When you sing a song, the goal is to perform it with authenticity and respect for the music.  

Think about the character and his or her role, journey, and mannerisms. Truly embody the character, and have the students represent the character. Have students create their characters, so long as you maintain the integrity and authenticity of the original.  

Character creation is a great skill to transfer to choral music. Singers can have their individual story that they embody as a singer, but this story must remain unified within the entire ensemble’s scope. By becoming the character, complete with the mindset of being in that role, you pay respect to the culture, the composer, and the music itself (Brunetti; Carlson and Freedman; Esper and DiMarco).  

Further, by having students create more stories and characters, they learn higher-order thinking skills, and teachers save their voices. However, suppose teachers want students to know character embodiment. In that case, we must first understand the craft and embody our role as a teacher-actor-singer, complete with a seasoned performer’s confidence. 

References 

• Baughman, M. (2020). Mentorship and Learning Experiences of Preservice Teachers as  Community Children’s Chorus Conductors. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 29(2),  38–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/1057083719876116 
• Brunetti, D. (2006). Acting songs. North Charleston, SC: BookSurge. 
• Carlson, R., & Freedson, J. (2015). What do I do with my hands?: A guide to acting for the singer. Las Vegas, NV: Personal Dynamics Publishing. 
• Carrillo-González, A., & Atará-Piraquive, A.P. (2020). Vocal health and stress. Revista de Investigación e Innovación En Ciencias de La Salud, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.46634/riics.38 
• Esper, W., & DiMarco, D. (2014). The actor’s guide to creating a character: William Esper teaches the Meisner technique. New York, NY: Anchor Books. 
• Gavin, R. B. (2016). An Exploration of Factors Affecting Persistence to Degree Completion in an Undergraduate Music Education Program. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 26(1), 43–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1057083715608501 
• Siebenaler, D.J. (1999). Student Song Preference in the Elementary Music Class. Journal of Research in Music Education, 47(3), 213–223. 
• Stephenson, K. J. (2018). Teacher Views on Teacher Voice: Elementary Music Teacher Perceptions of Voice Use in the Workplace [ProQuest LLC]. In ProQuest LLC.