Sing Jazz for beginners

*vibrato is the 'shaking' of the tone. Instead of a steady tone with one clear frequency, a tone with vibrato fluctuates between frequencies directly above and below the 'core frequency'.

*embellishments are 'decorations'. Instead of singing just the notes of the melody, all kinds of different notes are added in between. To make it sound fancy or soulful. Or to impress. It's what the Baroque period was famous for.

*timing in general is the rhythmical placement of your notes. They could be on a beat (the counts in each bar, in jazz usually 4 in a four quarter beat: 1,2,3,4) or somewhere in between. 

A straight timing can be used in jazz ballads or Bossa Novas for example.

But a straight timing isn't unique to jazz. It's also used in classical music and pop for example. 

The swing feel is. That's why we focus on it here.

Most singers learn to sing jazz with a certain repertoire. The so-called Jazz Standards. What songs are great to start with?

I included a list of great jazz standards for you. These songs are known all over the world, so whenever you feel like singing on an international stage, you’ll be fine with these. You’ll find them at the bottom of this page.

Many titles yet may be unfamiliar to you. In that case, you can always go to Youtube and hear Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan or Frank Sinatra sing that certain song. The list I included are a great starting point and you could make it your first goal to sing all these songs.

Then… when you want to go a step further – it’s a good thing to be aware of this:

Finding repertoire that fits you like a glove and that helps you expressing who you are as a jazz singer is a wonderful and interesting journey.

In the Great American Songbook, the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century, you will come across songs by famous composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington. The vocal jazz repertoire isn’t limited to this material, but it is an essential part and a great place to start since it is part of the repertoire of virtually every jazz musician. It has become part of the jazz language.

Real- and Fakebooks are books that contain collections of songs by many composers; the ones just mentioned and others. They are an important source!!!

Real/Fake books can be purchased! For high or low voices! Including lyrics! Here they are on Amazon, but Google “Vocal Real Book” and add “high voice” or “low voice” and you’ll find other vendors as well.

Low voices: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Vol-Low-Voice/dp/1423451228

High voices: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Vocal-Book-voice-Second/dp/0634060805

Going through individual songbooks of those composers is a great way of finding lesser known repertoire.