Customer Reviews

Teaching Kids to Sing

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This book explores the history behind American vocal training, describing how different attitudes towards school singing has affected the choral sound as we know it today. The author also effectively presents how singing is a psychomotor process, and one that is not always easily taught or learned. He reviews the vocal parameters of younger and developing voices, and explains the difficulty with the adolescent voice change (especially with boys). He also encourages teachers to express singing as a "sport", one that requires physical involvement of the body! The second half of the book is dedicated to 90 specific exercise methods for teachers to use in developing their choir. He has broken it into three age levels so that teachers anywhere within the grades 1-12 spectrum can use it effectively, or just use it to supplement a program they may already use and like. The exercises develop repiration, phonation, resonance, diction, and expression within choirs. Eighteen wonderful vocal exercises are explained for each of these areas. This would make an excellent reference book for any music teacher who is involved with teaching singing to any age level. The exercises are specific and help coordinate the students' overall approach to singing.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who teaches singing- especially those who work with groups of inexperienced singers. Phillips goes a long way in demystifying singing technique and causes for singing problems as well as providing ideas for remediation in older inexperienced singers. The fact that Phillips approaches singing in a very objective manner makes singing an attainable skill for anyone who is willing to put in the physical work. The exercises in this book are intended for group use and when used consistently they really work! Many people ask me how I get my 4th and 5th grade boys to sing so willingly and I really think a lot of it has to do with the information that I have taken to my music classroom from this book. Some of the exercises may sound a little silly at first, but give it a try!

This is, in my opinion, probably the best book out there for teaching vocal technique to children. And children need it, especially today, as they are surrounded by bad vocal models in the media. If you teach choral or vocal music to anyone younger than 13, you really need to have this book, at least as a reference.

I was extremely disappointed with this book as another reviewer was, not because of the content but because the quality of this book is distressing when you've just forked out round about $100.00. The light printing and flimsy, low-grade paper is the same as you would find in a cheap, paperback novel. My sister has a hardcover copy of this which she purchased years ago which is beautiful and I thought I could make the investment for my music library. Nope, I'm pretty sure this one is going back and I'm sad about that. Phillips, you did great in writing such wonderful material. Shame on you, Schirmer Cengage Learning - I can hardly believe you missed the mark so badly in matching the great content of this book.

I purchased Teaching Kids to Sing for my graduate class, and it was very helpful. There are great descriptions and photos of the different exercizes and thoroughly covers the child's voice.

Content is great. However, I sent this book back because the pages were so thin that they wrinkled when I turned them. The text and photo printing looked like they used "econo-econo-gray" setting. Very disappointed, not in the content of the book, but in the printing and edition.