MY BOOKS

The Singing Voice: An Owner's Manual
by Pat Wilson

Published by Currency Press in Sydney and Nick Hern Books in the U.K.
Original publication 1997, revised edition 2000.
ISBN 0-86819-494-8 / 0868194948

A concise, intelligent and informative book, The Singing Voice offers the professional singer – and those embarking on a singing career – good, sound, sensible advice on how to maintain a healthy singing voice. All aspects of the performer’s emotional and physical well-being are covered in detail and the book is crammed with handy hints, timely warnings, health tips and practical facts. The book covers sound studio recording work, discusses the specific demands of pop/rock work, and the place of a vocalist within a rock band, as well as suggesting how to choose, learn and perform songs, how to work with an accompanist, and how to incorporate acting techniques into sung performance.

The Singing Voice: An Owner's Manual - Voted one of the Top Ten Reference Books by members of ANATS:
http://www.anats.org.au/statechapters/sa/

What the experts say:

• "I can’t think of a performer in this country who doesn’t need to have a copy of this book."
– Noël C. Tovey

• "Very good and comprehensive; there’s a lot of information in this book, and it’s the sort of stuff that nobody ever tells you, and you have to learn along the way."
– Jack Webster

• "It is an unbelievably clear account of what a singer must do in order to survive. Every kid going through … whatever learning institution should have a copy of this book glued to his or her hand. It’s concise, intelligent, helpful, correct, funny, and eminently readable. Maybe not everyone should have this book, but everyone who sings should."
– John O’May

• "Worthwhile and informative… there’s great advice, great facts, and great humour."
– Dean Carey

• "I am sure that your readers will enjoy your charming, chatty style and will learn much from your book."
– Robert Thayer Sataloff, M.D., D.M.A., Professor of Otolaryngology, Thomas Jefferson University

• "I love Pat’s courage in stating her point of view. It’s a resource book which should be in (performance) school libraries … Its strength lies in its readability. I think it’s an excellent book."
– Isobel Kirk

How to Sing & See: Singing pedagogy in the digital era
by Jean Callaghan and Pat Wilson

The teachers' manual to accompany Sing & See software.

Published by Cantare Systems, Sydney, 2004
ISBN 0-646-42925-6 

Pat Wilson’s Repertoire QuickLists: 
Music Theatre Songs for Children and Young People

[Self-published;  2nd edition,  December 2004]

This is a resource book designed to help anyone who wants to find appropriate music theatre solos for younger performers.  It does not pretend to be comprehensive;  I admit to reflecting my own preferences and interests in this selections,  while listing from several readily-available anthologies as well.

I feel passionately about the rich,  lively and diverse range of material available to artists from the field of music theatre,.  It spans all imaginable musical styles within the standard Western traditions  - and a few more besides!   There are music theatre songs that demand a solid classical technique and styling,  there are great jazz songs,  rock-and-roll songs,  pop songs,  country-and-western songs,  Gospel songs…  and all from musicals.

With younger singers,  teachers tend to be concerned about the vocal and emotional appropriateness of  material for their students.  It is for these reasons that I have collected this range of songs,  most of which I have enjoyed worked on with students over the last 25 years or so.

Here’s the range of information that is presented about each song title:

1.         The voice type for which it was originally written  (although some songs are written for a ‘child’ in the show or film from which they come,  the character is played by an adult;  this information is very useful when assessing the suitability of a song to a developing voice)

2.         The style of the music  (up-tempo, ballad, waltz, character, comic…)

3.         The name of the character who sang it in the show

4.         The name of the show or film from which it comes

5.         The name of the composer/s

6.         The date when the song was composed.

If the song is printed in any of the widely-available song collections anthologised for this book,  symbols indicate in which book/s the song appears.

Songbook Collections

Boytim,  Joan Frey,  ed.
The First Book of Broadway Solos
Published by Hal Leonard
(Issued in four volumes:  Soprano / Mezzo / Tenor / Baritone)        

Broadway Songs for Kids
Published by Hal Leonard

Great Songs from Musicals for Teens  -  Young Women’s Edition
Published by Hal Leonard 

Great Songs from Musicals for Teens  -  Young Men’s Edition
Published by Hal Leonard 

Kids’ Broadway Songbook
Published by Hal Leonard

Popular Solos for Young Singers
Published by Hal Leonard
(Issued as a follow-up to Kids’ Broadway Songbook)
Walters,  Richard,  ed.

The singer’s musical theatre anthology
Milwaukee,  WI,  Hal Leonard.
(Issued in 12 volumes:  Soprano  /  Mezzo-soprano/Belter  /  Tenor  /  Baritone/Bass)                          

A few facts:
•Over 200 separate song titles listed
• Songs from stage and film musicals
• Songs suitable for singers aged from tiny-tots to ‘teens'
• Because there are many different occasions for which we need to find appropriate repertoire,  all the songs are indexed in four separate lists –
Alphabetical, by Title
Alphabetical, by Composer
Chronological (date of composition)
Alphabetical by Voice Type  (i.e., the voice type for which the song was originally written)
• Includes a bibliography of research and reference books

For singers,  singing teachers,  musical directors,  course programmers,  researchers and everyone who loves music theatre.

Pat Wilson’s Song Workbook

[Self-published;  2nd edition,  2005]

The text of a song matters a lot.  It is easy to be seduced by a familiar tune that you enjoy…  too easy to let it waft you through the words of the song so that you get to the end and say to yourself ‘What was that all about?’  And if you don’t know, your audience will have even less of an idea.

This WorkBook offers a way of making sense of song lyrics,  by giving a three-step text preparation technique.  Once these steps have been completed, it then provides eleven different games to play with the song words; 

• Springboard
                                                                                  
• Through Phrase   
                                                                         
• I Say, I Say… The Dialogue Game 
  
• Colour Me Emotional 
                                                
• Action!           
                                                                                  
• Hot Words
                                                                             
• Graph of Temperature and Pressure
  
• Song Without Words 
                                        
• Language of Intent, or Ad. Slogans        

Using at least four of these eleven games should guarantee a very clear actor’s grasp of the importance of the song lyric to the singer.

The intention of this graphic-rich WorkBook is to provide a thorough,  easy-to-use system to make a singer’s lyric preparation as imaginative and thoughtful as possible. 

‘If the words didn’t matter it wouldn’t be a song.’

PUBLICATIONS:

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Wilson, P. (2004). The voice and its metaphors.  Australian Voice,  10,  16-19. (Download article as PDF: Click here)

Wilson,  P. (2004). On singing straws and water bottles:  The physics of pressure. Australian Voice,  10,  16-19. (Download article as PDF: Click here)

Wilson, P. (2003). Sinful modern music: Science and the contemporary commercial singer.  Australian Voice, 9, 12-16. (Download article as PDF: Click here)

REFEREED PAPERS IN PUBLISHED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Wilson, P.H., Lee, K., Callaghan, J., and Thorpe. C.W. (2007). Learning to sing in tune: Does real-time visual feedback help? In: K. Maimets-Volk, R. Parncutt, M. Marin & J. Ross (Eds.) Proceedings of the third Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM07). Tallinn, Estonia, 15-19 August 2007, http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/cim07/
Download PFD – Click here

Callaghan, J. Thorpe, W., van Doorn, J. & Wilson, P. (2003). 'Sing and See'. In L.C.R. Yip, C.C. Leung & W.T. Lau (Eds), Curriculum Innovation in Music, pp. 75-80. Hong Kong: Department of Creative Arts, The Hong Kong Institute of Education.
ISBN 962-949-134-6.

REFEREED ABSTRACTS IN PUBLISHED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Wilson, P.,  Callaghan, J. and Thorpe, C.W. (2005). ‘The singer, the song, the voice and its visuals:  Can real-time visual feedback help singing students?  In Deliver the Voice. 7th Voice Symposium of Australia.  Sydney:  Australian Voice Association

Wilson,  P.,  Thorpe,  C. W.,  and Callaghan, J. (2005).  ‘Looking at singing:  Does real-time visual feedback improve the way we learn to sing?’  In 2nd APSCOM Conference.  Seoul,  South Korea:  Asia-Pacific Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. (Download PDF)

Thorpe, W, Wilson, P, Crane, J, van Doorn, J, Callaghan, J. (2003). ‘Real-time visual feedback of voice acoustics for the training of singing skills’,  presented at the 30th Australian Experimental Psychology Conference,  April 24-27, Sydney.

Callaghan, J. & Wilson, P. (2002).  ‘Sing and See’. In Voice: The Cutting Edge.  6th Voice Symposium of Australia.  Adelaide: Australian Voice Association,  112-113.

Wilson, P. (2002).  ‘Sinful modern music’. In Voice: The Cutting Edge.  6th Voice Symposium of Australia.  Adelaide:  Australian Voice Association.

• Pat Wilson's Song WorkBook (2nd edition), by Pat Wilson, 2005.

UNPUBLISHED CONFERENCE PAPERS

Keynote speaker,  Teaching kids to sing:  A SOUND future. NEWZATS 16th National Seminar 2004.  New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing,   Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Papers presented:  Appropriate songs, appropriate lyrics and ‘lerve’ / Disneyfication: Evaluating the Disney repertoire / How kids learn songs / How to stop a child from singing

Keynote speaker,  The Spirit of Singing, NEWZATS 15th National Seminar, 2003. New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing,   Waikato University, Hamilton,  New Zealand.

Papers presented: Auditioning for music theatre / Singing music theatre:  How broad is Broadway? / Tools of the trade

Callaghan, J. & Wilson, P. (2002). ‘I see a voice’. In Diversity of Voice: National Conference of ANATS.  Melbourne: Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing.

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