Give Me Wings

The next few posts will be about some of my favorite songs to assign to new beginners. The bonus with these is that they are available as octavos, so students don't have to spend a lot of money while I am getting to know their voices.  Some, like today's song, "Give Me Wings", are available a book in one key and in the octavo in another.

In creating "Give Me Wings",  Mark Patterson wrote new words and set them to the familiar tune of "O Waly, Waly".  Teens respond well to the text that essential says give me space to be everything I can be, but let me also return to the safety of home.   Most of my young singers can totally relate because they really want to be seen as adults and given the privileges and rights of an adult, but they still need that connection to home, family, and people that take care of them.

"O Waly, Waly" is one of my favorite tunes to teach.  Many of the concepts I cover in "Give Me Wings" could also be worked on in any setting of "The Water is Wide".  It's not necessarily an easy song, but I do think that it can be done by young singers.

• One of the first things we work on in this song is the idea of keeping the sound moving and growing through the long notes.
• If needed, I let students breathe mid-phrase (after the long note), but I also use the 4-bar phrase to work on going further with the breath.  
• For some students, moving into the high phrase requires a register shift. Young students often haven't sung in anything but chest voice before, so this gives us opportunities to figure out how to negotiate the "break".  And the first thing I tell them is that they can't use the word "break".  A break is a problem. A passaggio is a passage, something we move through, and it can be done with ease.  
• In this particular setting, the first high note is on the word "reach" so we work on how to sing an [ i ] vowel beautifully without compromising the integrity of the vowel.  
• The first verse end on the word "below" and provides a great opportunity for discussing how to deal with diphthongs and creating a clean cut-off without a consonant to help.  
• I also use the opening Sol Do to reinforce this pattern that shows up frequently in other songs.  

"Give Me Wings" is available in the key of G in the octavo from BriLee, or in the key of D in the book Heroes and Vagabond:  Solo Songs for the Male Changing Voice.  The book comes with a CD that has both demos and accompaniments.  If the student is learning the song from the octavo, they can listen to the choral demos on the JWPepper or BriLee Music websites.