Vocal Music

The Vocal Music Department at SPCPA provides rigorous, well rounded training designed to develop healthy, skilled, expressive, and independent vocal artists. Students receive dedicated technical instruction while studying musicianship, music theory, ear training, interpretation, performance, and the art of communicating through song. Our teaching artists bring varied professional backgrounds and perspectives, exposing students to a range of vocal styles, repertoire, techniques, and approaches to performance.

Students learn that becoming a strong singer requires more than having a beautiful voice. Training emphasizes understanding the voice as an instrument, developing healthy and sustainable technique, strengthening music literacy, and making thoughtful artistic choices. Through individual and ensemble work, students develop the technical foundation, confidence, versatility, and artistic identity necessary to become thoughtful musicians and compelling storytellers.

The program also encourages students to understand themselves as singing artists. Whether interpreting existing repertoire, preparing for an audition, collaborating with writers and musicians, or developing original work, students are challenged to bring together technique, musicianship, storytelling, and their own authentic artistic voice.

Vocal Technique: The Singing Artist

Students develop the technical foundation necessary for healthy, expressive, and sustainable singing while discovering their individual identities as vocal artists. Through focused study of breath, resonance, registration, range, articulation, vocal flexibility, musicality, and interpretation, students learn how the voice functions and how to use it with greater freedom and confidence. Technical training is paired with repertoire study and performance, encouraging students to make intentional choices about phrasing, style, text, and emotional communication. The goal is not to make every voice sound the same, but to give each singer the technique, vocabulary, and artistic independence to understand and develop their own instrument. 

Theory for Voice & Beginner Piano
Designed to strengthen musicianship for singers and developing keyboard players, this course combines practical music theory, ear training, sight singing, solfège, rhythm, notation, and functional piano skills. Students learn to read music more independently while using the keyboard as a practical tool for understanding pitch, harmony, and musical structure.

Speech to Song | Audition and Performance Techniques
Students explore the relationship between text, vocal technique, musical interpretation, and storytelling while developing practical audition skills. Work may include song interpretation, transitioning naturally from spoken thought into singing, repertoire selection, audition cuts, self tapes, callbacks, professional presentation, and responding to adjustments.

Creative Writing for the Singer/Songwriter | Songcraft
Designed for vocal students and offered in collaboration with Songcraft | Music & Arrangement, this course explores songwriting from the singer and lyricist’s perspective. Students develop original lyrics through the study of storytelling, imagery, structure, rhythm, rhyme, point of view, phrasing, and authentic artistic voice while considering how words function when they are sung rather than spoken.

Students collaborate with musicians studying composition and arrangement to develop original songs from initial idea through performance. Vocal students learn to shape lyrics, melody, phrasing, and interpretation while discovering how musical choices can strengthen or transform a story. The course gives singers the opportunity to become creators as well as interpreters, developing the skills to communicate their own ideas through original music.

Vocal Music Faculty