Music Essentials for Singers and Actors

Music theory has an unfair reputation as an arcane, complicated subject. But it can be easy to learn and beneficial for a successful career in singing. In Music Essentials for Singers and Actors , award-winning composer Andrew Gerle offers an accessible presentation, conveying an in-depth, practical method for learning the fundamentals of music theory and sight singing for aspiring and working singers alike. Gerle leads readers step by step through every aspect of written music, using examples pulled entirely from real-world Broadway scores. Drawing on his years of experience as a Broadway vocal coach, Gerle shows readers how to use music theory to analyse a score for character development and create a more detailed and powerful performance. He delves deeply into each concept, working thoroughly through its basis in theory and connecting it to the music that we hear and sing every day. His incremental and methodical approach demystifies abstract concepts, and his unique 1-START method for score analysis teaches singers to scan a new song for large-scale patterns, encouraging them to read musical words instead of single notes. Gerle also shows how to focus on the visual, graphical nature of musical notation, learning to read music as a series of shapes a technique useful for all readers but especially those with dyslexia and other visual learning challenges. Each chapter is accompanied by downloadable audio examples and exercises to lock in newly learned concepts.

ANDREW GERLE (New York City) is an award-winning composer/lyricist, music director, arranger, and pianist. He has lived in New York City for over 20 years, working on dozens of Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, and touring productions. He is the author of The Enraged Accompanist's Guide to the Perfect Audition, and teaches musical theater performance, theory, and composition at Yale University and the Manhattan School of Music.

Singers and actors who can learn music quickly and accurately have an enormous advantage in today's increasingly competitive field. With Music Essentials for Singers and Actors, award-winning composer and music director Andrew Gerle has written a music theory text especially for singers, focused exclusively on topics and techniques that will help them in the rehearsal room and on stage.Gerle leads readers step by step through every aspect of written music, using over one hundred real-world examples from Broadway scores. His common-sense, methodical approach demystifies abstract concepts, and his unique 1-STARRT method teaches singers to read musical "words" instead of single notes, enabling confident sight-singing of any score. Drawing on his years of experience as a Broadway vocal coach, Gerle also shows readers how to use music theory to think like a composer, analyzing scores for dramatic clues to create a more detailed and powerful performance. Each chapter is accompanied by downloadable audio examples and exercises to lock in newly learned concepts.

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