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WORKSHOPS

Through the Laughing Spirit Music Project, Cathleen Wilder offers an array of workshops designed for singers from all walks of life. Cathleen is available to bring Laughing Spirit workshops to communities, choirs, churches, retreat centers and private gatherings anywhere in the world! Workshops can be tailored to meet half-day, full day, weekend and week-long formats. For details, write: info@laughingspiritmusic.com.

Breathing for Singers
Choral Clinics
Ear-training from the Inside Out
How To Sing In The Shower
The Joy of Harmony
Singers' Saturdays
Voice from the Inside Out

How to Sing in the Shower

If you can talk, you can sing! This fun, supportive and highly informative workshop is a great opportunity to sing your favorite songs while learning key skills that will help you sing your best. Together we will:

Examine the myth of tone deafness

Explore the role of energy, movement and breath in freeing our voices

Explore the positive role of singing in our lives & confront the obstacles that deprive many of us of that joy

Get silly,dance around, make weird faces, and break taboos

Learn exercises to develop vocal control: breath support, range and projection

Sing songs together and (optional) perform them for each other

Discuss strategies for reducing and managing performance anxiety

Learn how to hold your own on harmonies

Get tips for memorizing songs

Singers' Saturdays

Singers' Saturdays is a seriously fun skill-building and performance class for singers of all levels and styles. Drop-ins welcome!

Classes include:
* A thorough technique workout: Exercises for improving breath control, range, projection, agility and vocal health
* Ear-training, rhythm and movement to enhance core music-learning skills
* Singing songs & harmonizing together
* Opportunities for those who wish to perform (and feedback if you want it)
* A chance to meet great people in a fun, supportive environment

The Joy of Harmony

Experience the joys of singing harmony together!

* Upgrade your musical "operating system" with skill-building exercises to learn parts faster, hold your part easier, hear your place in the chord better, and tune more precisely
* Learn two- and three- part harmonies to traditional American folk songs (and a couple surprises)
* Sing in large and small groups, as well as duos and trios (as desired), with optional feedback
* Discover the secrets to improvising harmonies
* Learn quickly in this fun, supportive environment
* Examine the life-lessons inherent in the harmony-making process, including greater self-trust and deepening community connections

A general ability to carry a tune is needed to get the most from this workshop. No music-reading ability necessary. Emphasis is on learning by ear. Great for friends, couples and families with children ages 12 and up. Participants receive a free follow-up CD.

"Thanks again, Cathleen - you bring joy to the world. I loved singing with you and our group." ~Barb I, Joy of Harmony Participant

Ear-training from the Inside Out

A fun, effective, and practical approach to enhancing the core, neurological skills (or 'operating system') that all singers rely upon to learn music quickly and accurately-- whether or not they read music notation. This unique, practical, and highly effective body-based approach efficiently addresses the skills singers need most, by-passing unnecessary theory and terminology.

Designed to empower singers to continue teaching themselves, we use rhythm, movement, listening drills, drones, rounds, solfege and easy-to-learn part-songs to unravel misunderstandings about the music learning process and LEARN HOW TO LEARN more efficiently and effectively. Study materials provided.

Topics include:

Information Processing: Insights and techniques for improved listening, filtering, recording, retrieving and vocalizing melodies and rhythms. The essential building blocks to all musical learning!

Developing Tonal Memory and Relative Pitch: Incredibly simple, powerfully effective, scales and drills for enhancing tonal memory and relative pitch. Clarifying the link between relative pitch, solfege and written music.

Hearing and Singing Harmony & Counterpoint : using beautiful, simple and fun-to-sing part songs, we'll address the special skills needed for holding your own part against another part or parts (counterpoint) and hearing/sensing your part within the fabric of the harmony.

Voice from the Inside Out

A fun, supportive and highly informative hands-on overview of the core technical issues for singers of all styles--beginning with the importance of sensory awareness (where all control begins), breath support and muscular relaxation, then moving on to more complex issues such as register changes and special considerations for "high notes".

Students will learn effective exercises to address each of these technical issues and will leave with a greater sense of how things FEEL when they are working. Handouts will be provided.

We will also apply these techniques to a song we learn together. Participants who wish to receive individual feedback will have opportunities to sing solo as time allows.

Breathing for Singers

A fun, hands-on demonstration covering the essentials of breathing for singing. Straight-forward explanation of how breath is turned into sound and how to develop control over that process. Includes valuable strengthening and relaxation exercises. Replaces common misconceptions about "breath support" with anatomical fact and body-awareness.

For singers of all levels and styles. Bring a blanket or yoga mat and dress comfortably.

Choral Clinics

Sometimes the insight and expertise of an outsider is just what your choir needs to raise its awareness, skill and expressivity to a new level. Cathleen works closely with directors to design clinics that zero-in on the choir's specific needs, then puts her keen diagnostic sense to work in either master class or workshop formats, zeroing-in on short and long-term solutions to technical, aural, rhythmic and interpretive issues.

Choral clinics can be arranged for two to three hour sessions, as well as full-day choral retreats.

"Cathleen's diagnostic powers are amazing. She quickly and accurately identifies limiting factors and guides the singers' perceptions to the solutions." ~Val Rogers, Director, Eugene Peace Choir.

"Cathleen is knowledgeable, skilled, enjoyable, efficient and very good at what she does." ~Eric O'del, Director, Choir of Light, Seattle.

To register for a workshop or inquire about bringing one to your community, email us at info@laughingspiritmusic.com or call: (206) 290-8904.