The Drifter

Learning lyrics is always something that I find challenging. What seems to work for me is approaching the learning in varied ways; singing along alone jsut doesn’t work for me. Currently I am learning four songs and for each I am adopting a learning by doing (active learning) approach that includes;

• listening and writing out by hand – then look up lyrics online and correct;
• singing whilst playing along on guitar;
• sing along to varied YouTube performances including covers;
• breaking into chunks whilst singing along to backing tracks paying attention to dynamics, vowels and note length
• transcribing / transposing (if applicable) when changing key to match my Bass register. Then paying attention to pitch.
  
  

Currently applying this approach to Ray Pollard’s ‘The Drifter’, a new Soul Choir song but also one that I noted when learning ‘The Night’ sung by Darrel Smith at the Northern Soul Proms performance at the Royal Alber Hall