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Hi everybody!
My name is Justin Stoney and I'm the founder of
New York Vocal Coaching here in New York City.
Welcome to episode 27 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you guys as singers
by answering your questions from all over.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later
But our question for this week comes from Alexa J. in Newark, New Jersey.
And Alexa writes, "Dear Justin, can you teach me how to riff?"
Now if you remember back to episode 3 we had part one of Alexa's question.
And we're going to do a whole series actually on Alexa's question.
A series on how to riff.
So this is going to be part two of that series.
And today we're talking about up slashes and down slashes.
So each one of our episodes on riffing is going to give
you guys a new element of riffs to understand and to work on.
So the first one we talked about, the pentatonic scale.
That's this scale right here the five tone scale...
♪
And then today with up slashes and down slashes
this is a whole new vocabulary for you for riffs.
And really riffs are a kind of...
In classical music they'd be called a cadenza.
They're a series of improvisational notes that move around quickly.
There are a lot of different elements but in classical music what we're
talking about today would be referred to as a grace note.
Now if I take this little scale right here-
This five tone scale-
♪
Now that's not the pentatonic, that's a major five tone scale.
And I added the grace notes to it, it would be this-
♪
So here's without grace notes-
♪
And here's with grace notes-
♪
Now within the pentatonic we would have this-
♪
And here's with, what I'm calling, slashes...
♪
So there you can see what they are.
They're little movements quickly up to or down to a note in question.
But I want to first show you how this applies in song.
And then I think this is going to make a lot more sense to you.
So we'll take "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles.
And again, I'm not trying to sound like Sara Bareilles
I'm just breaking down specifics of what she does in the song
so that you can know how to apply these concepts to music.
Go back and listen to her version and you're
gonna hear some of the things that I'm talking about.
But I'm going to illustrate it for you as best I can.
♪
So if I have the chorus of this song...
♪
And she sings-
♪ I'm not gonna write you a love song ♪
♪ 'Cause you asked for it ♪
♪ 'Cause you need one ♪
Just that much.
Now if we take the first part-
♪
♪ I'm not gonna write you a love song ♪
She does-
♪ You a love song ♪
She could have done-
♪ You a love song ♪
♪
But she does-
♪ You a love song ♪
And there's an up-slash...
♪ You a love song ♪
Go back and listen for it in the song.
You're gonna hear a little-
♪
slash, or grace note.
So...
♪ I'm not gonna write you a love song ♪
♪ 'Cause you asked for it ♪
Now that little ♪ ask ♪, we'll talk about that another time.
♪ 'Cause you asked for it ♪
♪ 'Cause you need one ♪
Now there you have two...
♪ 'Cause you need one ♪
♪
She could have just done-
♪ 'Cause you need one ♪
♪
But she does-
♪
♪ 'Cause you need one ♪
♪ Need one ♪
And that little slash, up and down,
adds so much to her song.
It makes it more poppy by adding an element of riffs.
So I hope that makes it really clear what a slash is.
Now again I'm just calling it a slash.
You could call it a grace note, but pop terminology
and classical terminology tend to be a lot of times the same thing.
But people refer to them in very different ways.
In pop stuff, a riff that sounds edgier that a cadenza
and slash that sounds edgier than a grace note.
But you can use whatever term you want.
But just know that slash-
♪ 'Cause you need one ♪
Those are just little baby movements of notes.
Now we're going to do an exercise that's going to
help you work on both your up slashes and your down slashes.
So you could call these ascending grace notes
or descending grace notes.
Now these are great of course for this specific element of riffs.
But these are also going to be good for you
as far as agility in general.
And then also as far as vibrato,
because if you remember vibrato is fast moving notes.
And these are going to be pretty fast moving notes.
So this is a great thing for you to work on for your
vocal technique as well.
But right now I'm going to give you the exercise that
I want you to work on as far as incorporating
up slashes and down slashes into your work as singers.
So we're first going to do up slashes.
Okay.
♪
So we'll do it on a HEY.
And we'll do, starting right here,
♪
For guys we'll do-
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Right, do you hear that?
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
I'm going up to the note.
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
And ladies you'll be up here-
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
So we're going to do this together.
I want you to work first on your ascending slashes,
your ascending grace notes, your up slashes.
Here we go!
♪
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
♪
Nice.
♪
Great.
♪
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Good.
♪
Nice.
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
That's it!
♪
Nice.
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Awesome.
♪
Good for you!
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
That's it.
♪
Good.
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Good job.
♪
Last one.
♪
Good stuff.
So that was nice work finding those ascending slashes.
Now we're gonna try the exact same thing
with descending slashes.
So that you can get the sense that your voice can
move quickly up or down.
So these ones go above the note but they're
actually descending slashes.
So we're going to do the same exact thing.
We're gonna do-
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Did you catch that?
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
That's for the guys.
Ladies up here-
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Ready for it?
Here we go together.
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Good.
♪
Nice job.
♪
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
That's it!
♪
Good.
♪
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Good.
♪
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
♪
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
Good job.
♪
Yep.
♪
Good.
♪
Last one!
♪ HAY - AY - AY - AY - AY ♪
♪
Awesome stuff!
So, now you've experienced ascending and descending slashes.
Add these to your pop and you're going to have
a whole new element.
I want you to practice this.
You can also make up some crazy exercises on your own
that go up and down.
That's really helpful.
We won't do that today, maybe in the future.
But we won't do that today.
So I want you to work on that.
But I also want you to listen in pop music.
Because this is the kind of detail work that's going to
make you guys great riffers and great pop singers.
You can't just sort of hear the melody go by.
When you have Sara do-
♪ 'Cause I need one ♪
♪ Need one ♪
It's very easy just to hear-
♪ Need one ♪
And not hear the-
♪ Need one ♪
If you guys are really listening closely to your pop songs
and listening with detail, you're gonna hear those things.
You're gonna hear what I talked about before,
about the pentatonic scale.
You're gonna hear that over and over again.
Then you're gonna start to catch on to these little slashes,
these little grace notes.
And if you can have that kind of detail work
and you know how to access that in your voice
it's going to make you not only better singers
but much more advanced musicians.
So that's part two of our riff series.
And I hope that's been helpful for you guys today as singers.
If you have questions that you'd like to see us answer on the show
you can send an email to, Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
And we just encourage you not to lose that joy, don't lose that passion. [♪]
Don't stop working on the details of your voice. [♪]
Things like your riffs, things like these slashes [♪]
that we learned today. [♪]
Make sure that you're really fine tuning your instrument [♪]
and becoming a more advanced musician [♪]
by trying these things and by listening really carefully [♪]
to the details of a song. [♪]
Get with a voice teacher in your area [♪]
who can help you with this kind of thing. [♪]
If you guys are in New York City [♪]
you can check us out at, www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com [♪]
And if you like these videos you can visit, [♪]
www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
We'll see you next time. [♪]
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