Denna studie syftar till att belysa undervisningsmoment utöver musikalisk och sångteknisk träning som i yrkesförberedande sångundervisning förbereder sångeleven för yrkeslivet som professionell sångare. Detta för att främja arbetstrivseln hos professionella sångare. Studien har sin teoretiska utgångspunkt i hermeneutiken och socialpsykologin och har utförts med kvalitativ intervju som metod. Fyra professionella sångare har använts som informanter. I bakgrundsavsnittet presenteras litteratur och tidigare studier kring musikerns yrkessituation, arbetstrivsel, yrkesförberedande sångutbildningar, pedagogens möjlighet till påverkan på musikstudenten och för musikern vanliga yrkesrelaterade hälsonedsättningar. Studiens resultat stödjer tidigare forskning då flera teman är överensstämmande. Denna studies resultat är dock specificerat till sångarens livsvärld till skillnad mot den tidigare forskningen som mer generellt beskriver musikerns yrkessituation. Resultatet belyser också förslag på undervisningsmoment lämpade i yrkesförberedande sångutbildning på ett sätt som inte har visats i tidigare forskning. Exempel på enligt studien yrkesförberedande uppdrag lämpliga för sångpedagogen är att skapa trygga elever i en trygg undervisningsmiljö, att skapa självgående elever och att ge eleven insyn och praktik i sångaryrket. / This study aims to highlight educational elements, as well as the musical and technical training, which, as part of a professional vocal study program, prepares the student for a professional career as a vocalist. This in turn, should help ensure a degree of satisfaction for professional vocalists. The study has its theoretical basis in hermeneutics and social psychology, and has been performed with the qualitative interview method. Four professional vocalists have served as informants. The background section presents both facts and previous studies of the voice used as an instrument, the employment situation of the professional musician, job satisfaction, vocational vocal training, the instructor’s ability to influence the music student, and also the health risks associated with professional musicians. The study’s findings support previous research as several themes are consistent. The results, as opposed to previous research that more broadly describes the musician’s professional situation, is here specifically related to the daily life of a musician. The study also highlights specific suggestions for educational elements applied to professional vocal training in a way that has not been shown in previous research. Examples of vocational objectives, which, according to the study may be suitable for the vocal instructor, are creating confidence in the student in a safe learning environment, creating self-sustaining students, and providing the student with insight and professional experience in the profession.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka fyra respondenters syn på hur körsång har påverkat deras välbefinnande. För att uppnå syftet har vi valt följande forskningsfrågor: Hur beskriver respondenterna att de mår före, under och efter en körrepetition? och Hur beskrivs körsång påverka respondenterna på kortare, eller längre sikt?   Vi har valt att använda oss av en kvalitativ intervjuform. Ett kriterium för att delta i studien var att respondenterna skulle vara aktiva körsångare på icke-professionell nivå. Fyra kvalitativa intervjuer har legat till grund för undersökningen och den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien har varit det sociokulturella perspektivet. Studiens resultat belyser främst sex kategorier som utkristalliserade sig under våra forskningsintervjuer. Vi tar upp socialt samspel, vilket är både en kort- och långsiktig effekt som av respondenterna upplevs leda till bättre samarbetsförmåga. I vår diskussionsdel tar vi också upp självförtroende, KASAM (Känsla av Sammanhang), körsång som copingstrategi, glädje och förväntan inför och under körrepetitioner, samt fysiologiska aspekter som hälsovanor, kroppshållning och andning. Som en del av diskussionen drar vi även paralleller till pedagogik samt gör pedagogiska reflektioner. / The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of choir singing. To reach this aim we have chosen the following research questions: ”How does the respondents describe their feelings before, during and after a choir rehearsal?” and ”How is choir singing described to effect the respondents in a shorter, or longer period of time?” The perspective is sociocultural and the method is qualitative interviews. Four interviews were conducted and one criterion for participation was that the respondents were active choir singers on a non-professional level. The result highlights mainly six categories based on social interaction, which is a both short- and long-term effect that the participants of the study associate with better collaborative skills. In the discussion self-confidence, KASAM (sense of coherence), choir singing as a coping strategy, joy and excitement during and before a choir rehearsal, as well as physical effects such as health habits, body posture and breathing, are discussed. As a part of the discussion we also draw parallels to the science of education and make pedagogical observations.

Epigastric assistance is a breath management system for singing, that functions as a means for activating the requisite muscles needed for breathing, monitoring the action of these muscles, and regulating subglottal pressure. The manner in which the breath is managed determines how the vocal folds vibrate, this ultimately influencing the quality of sound produced. This fact alone demands a thorough investigation and understanding of breath management and the importance of the role of the epigastrium. In order for the reader to understand the role of the epigastrium in breath management, it is necessary to be familiar with the following information: 1) a definition of the epigastrium, 2) an understanding of the physiology of breathing, 3) a review of the literature that addresses breath management and the role of the epigastrium, 4) a perspective on the importance of epigastric assistance for the teacher and student, 5) an understanding of how subglottal compression affects phonation, and 6) a knowledge of scientific research that furthers the understanding of epigastric assistance. This knowledge will allow the understanding of the concept of epigastric assistance to be defined in the totality of singing. The primary focus of this treatise is a research study that measures the effects of epigastric activity upon respiratory and acoustical output. The results from the respiratory trials indicate that the subjects with a functional understanding of breath management experienced longer duration, greater volume of air, and a more efficient rate in the use of the air. However, for non-singers and those without breath management experience, there was decreased duration, less volume of air, and a less efficient rate in the use of air. Changes in the acoustics for both singers and non-singers with epigastric assistance included an increase in harmonics, greater intensity in the fundamental and harmonics, more consistency in the harmonics, and the addition of high harmonics at and above 1100 hertz. The results of this work reveal the importance of epigastric activity in singing and point to the need for further research, study, and discussion. / text

In musikklasser in the Swedish compulsory school a special musical training focusing on choral singing is offered students from the age of ten to sixteen. Regarding singing with children, choir teaching in these classes represents conventions developed in accordance with the Swedish choral tradition. Students are trained in large groups of (30-60); in parallel, they receive individual singing voice training in order for the choir to perform with a communal musical expression. This complexity places high demands on the choir teachers' ability to foster the specific musical skills required in a choir. Starting out from a cultural-psychological theoretical perspective, this study explores two choral teachers' interaction with their choir classes, respectively, by means of a method inspired by ethnography. Participating students were aged 10 and 11. Observation data of four lessons was collected, two with each teacher. Lessons were documented by field notes, one lesson of each teacher was video-documented. Analysis included three methods of data transcription: First of all, by writing thick descriptions. After that all events during the lesson were written down in a timetable and finally, a short representative sequence from each lesson was transcribed into a music score. Thus, the variety of methods enabled a deep analysis of data. The results show, on the one hand, that the teachers use a similar overall pattern for interaction. On the other hand, within this overall pattern they interact with their students in different ways that are being described as personal designs of interaction according to which each teacher uses the available cultural tools in individually different combinations when distributing knowledge to the students. In spite of this, differences in quality between the performances of the two choir classes were not recognised during the observed lessons. Accordingly, one conclusion of this study is that the overall music cultural context has a larger impact on students' ability to perform choral music than teachers' personal design of interaction.

Detta självständiga arbete utforskar min egen interpretationsprocess och musikaliska gestaltning av stycket O wüsst’ ich doch den Weg zurück tonsatt av Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), text av Klaus Groth (1819-1899) utifrån ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv. Insamling av data har skett under en termin med hjälp av loggbok och videoinspelning. Syftet med denna studie är att få en större insikt i, och förståelse för vad ett interpretationsarbete innebär. Analysresultatet visar att interpretationsprocessen innehåller många olika moment och delmoment som sammanfattats i dessa sex teman: Översättning och tolkning, uttal och textning, inre scenografi, musikaliska uttrycksmedel, memorering samt samspel med pianist. Resultatet diskuteras därefter i relation till tidigare forskning och bakgrundslitteratur inom området. / This study explores my own assimilation process, and musical interpretation of the piece O wüsst’ ich doch den Weg zurück composed by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), text by Klaus Groth (1819-1899) from a hermeneutic perspective. The data was gathered during one semester and has mainly been taken down in form of a logbook and at some selected occasions video recording was used. The purpose of this work is to find out what an interpretation process can include and how it might be structured in order to be able to develop the interpretational process. The results of this study show that the interpretation process includes many different elements, which is summarized in six themes: Translation and interpretation, pronunciation and articulation, musical expressions, internal imaging, memorization and interaction with the pianist. The results are then discussed in relation to previous research and literature.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the management of tessitura in the choir though the use of choral pivoting in Frank Martin's Messe pour double choeur a cappella (1922), since the ranges of a vast number of choral works extend beyond the limits of what the American Academy of Teacher's of Singing have deemed "best" and "safest." According to the American Academy of Teachers of Singing, many great teachers of singing hesitate to allow their "pupils to participate in choral singing because experience has proven that, due to the unusually high tessituras dominating the arrangements of many choral works, harm is done to the voice. "This study includes an in-depth summary of the anatomy and physiology of the vocal mechanism in specific registers and the potential for harm, vocal strain, or vocal fatigue when singers must sing in an extremely high or low tessitura for an extended amount of time. Three methods of vocal pivoting are examined and explanations given as to how choral pivoting may be applied in Messe pour double choeur a cappella.

In this thesis you will meet people that are members of a “health-choir”. This people are singing together once a week and the purpose is to get a better health. You will also see if choir-singing can be seen as A rites of Passage. You will get a direct link to the informants. The choir singers who participate will speak to you.

The present study is a qualitative and quantitative interdisciplinary investigation of young children's vocal development. It investigated how vocalizations of young children mutate in relation to the children's linguistic and musical development, and the contexts in which these developments take place. Eight girls age eighteen to thirty-eight months participated in this study. Four spoke Chinese and four spoke English as their first language. Each child was visited every four to six months over a 42 month period. Acoustic analyses were performed on recorded vocal responses, and three judges classified the vocalizations and provided perceptual evaluation. It appears that young children have established communicative pitches that are associated with different forms of vocalizations by age two. All children consistently sang with higher fundamental frequencies than they used for speaking, while other forms of vocalization appear to be positioned consistently between singing and speaking. Both the mean fundamental frequency data and the qualitative data suggest some possible differences in vocal pitch behaviours across language. Chinese bilingual children made comparatively less but stable distinction between their speech and song; in their acoustic intermediate vocalizations however, the boundary between speech and song was "fuzzy". English monolingual children made increasingly clearer and wider acoustical distinctions between their speech and songs; their contextual intermediate vocalizations were made up of intermittent singing and speaking. The intermediate vocalizations observed in the present study appear to confirm that singing and speaking are two vocal phenomena that exist along a continuum. They call into question the entire concept of differences between singing and speaking both acoustically and contextually. These intermediate vocalizations offer a rich account of the linguistic and musical development of a child; they suggest that while first spoken language appears to affect vocal development, a child's non-speech auditory environment is also crucial to the understanding of her vocal behaviours.

Song repertoire structure, organization, and use were studied in 68 male Canada Warblers (Cardellina canadensis) in a breeding population in New Hampshire in 2010-2011. On average, males had complex repertoires of 12 phrases and 55 variants. Repertoire sharing was negatively related to distance between territories, and positively related to longer territory tenure, evidence that males learn songs from neighbours. Males used two singing modes: (I) slow, regular delivery of less variable songs, and (II) fast, intermittent delivery of more variable songs interspersed with chips. Males used Mode I when unpaired and when near females, and Mode II at dawn and during territory disputes, a pattern similar to other warbler species with two song categories. Detectability (whether a male sang) differed little between 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-min count intervals. Song output and detectability were highest at dawn and in unpaired males, and lowest in paired males late in the season.

Poor breath management is problematic for singing. Voice students and singing teachers typically attribute breath management issues to abdominal-diaphragmatic breathing technique. The present study seeks to determine whether glottal insufficiency may also contribute to singer’s breath management problems. Studies have revealed a relationship between incomplete vocal fold closure and inefficiency in the speaking voice. However, the effect of incomplete vocal fold closure on vocal efficiency in singers has yet to be determined. Since the larynx cannot be observed without the assistance of clinical instrumentation, not readily available in the voice studio, issues at the glottal level may be underappreciated as a contributor to poor breath management in the singer. Two groups of voice students identified with and without breath management problems underwent aerodynamic and acoustic voice assessment as well as videostroboscopy of the vocal folds to quantify the prevalence of incomplete vocal fold closure. These assessments revealed four groups: (1) those with glottic insufficiency and no perceived breathiness; (2) those with glottic sufficiency and perceived breathiness; (3) those with glottic insufficiency and perceived breathiness; and, (4) those with glottic sufficiency and no perceived breathiness. Results suggest that previously undiscovered glottal insufficiency is common, though the correlation with identified breath management problems was not statistically significant. Acoustic and aerodynamic measures including noise-to-harmonics ratio, maximum phonation time, airflow rate, subglottal pressure and laryngeal airway resistance were most sensitive to glottic insufficiency.