Vocal Performance (VOCL)

Stage to Studio is the gateway course of the Vocal Performance B.F.A. It orients singers to the field and to their own artistic identity through listening, discussion, reflection, and cohort singing. Students examine the working life of a singer across live performance and recorded media, from book musicals and concert work to film, television, voiceover, and commercial sessions, and they build a foundation of ear-based musicianship before formal notation study. The course also begins a longer conversation that runs through the foundations sequence: the difference between the music theatre and commercial paths, and where each student's voice and values might lead. Students sing together from day one, learning to match pitch, tune, and hold a part by ear while they locate their voice within the broader field.

Vocal Studio I is the first of four progressive one-credit studio courses providing ongoing instruction in vocal technique, musicianship, and performance practice. Progressive levels support artistic growth and professional readiness. The course runs on two tracks that complement each other. In the weekly private lesson, the applied instructor works with each student on individual technique, diagnosing the specific instrument in front of them and assigning repertoire suited to that voice at this stage. In the Friday studio class, students perform for one another, receive coaching in front of the group, and learn as much from watching a peer be coached as from being coached themselves. Studio class is where private work becomes public, and where the habit of performing under observation is built. Level I establishes the working practices of a serious singer: how to prepare and mark a score, how to run an efficient practice session, how to receive and apply a note without defensiveness, and how to walk into a room and perform prepared material.

Vocal Health and Wellness grounds the singing voice in an understanding of how the instrument works and how to keep it working for a lifetime. Students study the anatomy and physiology of respiration, phonation, resonance, registration, and articulation, and they apply principles of breath, alignment, and release to their own singing through body-awareness practice. The course builds practical habits, including a personal warm-up and cool-down routine, vocal hygiene, and early recognition of the warning signs of vocal injury. Beyond the mechanics, the course treats the singer as a whole person. Students learn evidence-based practice and motor-learning strategies, techniques for managing performance anxiety and stress, and how physical and mental wellbeing feed performance. Throughout, students adapt healthy technique across musical theatre and commercial styles, including belt and mix, in service of a durable, sustainable voice.

Music Foundations I is the written and aural musicianship course for vocal performers, and it moves quickly. Rudiments are handled through a required pre-quarter onramp so that class time is spent building fluency rather than introducing the alphabet. From the first week, students work at speed across notation, sight-singing, dictation, keyboard, and part-singing, treating theory and ear as a single integrated skill rather than separate subjects. The course develops scales, keys, intervals, and the four triad qualities in root position and inversion, then presses past those minimums into seventh chords, figured bass and inversion symbols, Roman-numeral analysis of diatonic function, cadence and phrase structure, lead-sheet literacy, and transcription of a heard melody with its changes. Students sing in two and three independent parts, tuning a cappella, and finish the quarter fluent enough to enter the harmony, form, and arranging work of Music Foundations II already holding the vocabulary of functional harmony. The course is deliberately pitched to challenge experienced readers. A diagnostic in the first session establishes each student's pacing tier. All students meet the same outcomes and sit the same assessments, but coursework is tiered: students who arrive with strong reading, keyboard, or ear skills take an independent challenge track with more demanding repertoire, extended analysis, and advanced sight-singing and dictation, while students who need reinforcement receive targeted drill and coaching support. Nobody coasts and nobody is left behind.

Music Foundations II assumes fluency and builds on it. Students arrive already holding seventh chords, Roman-numeral analysis, cadences, and lead-sheet literacy from Music Foundations I, so the course opens at the level of functional harmony rather than working toward it. From there it moves into chromatic harmony, including secondary and applied chords, tonicization, modulation to closely related keys, and modal mixture, and into the extended harmonic vocabulary that commercial and theatre repertoire actually uses: ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, suspensions, slash chords, and reharmonization. The course reads and writes both lead-sheet and Nashville number notation, and it analyzes loops, harmonic schemas, and song forms across musical theatre and commercial repertoire, treating harmonic and formal choice as an instrument of text and story. Work at the keyboard grows from identification into creation as students harmonize melodies, transpose on demand, and voice their own progressions. The quarter culminates in an original vocal arrangement, prepared in notation, rehearsed by the cohort, and performed, alongside each student's informed choice between the music theatre and commercial paths. As in Music Foundations I, coursework is tiered to placement. All students meet the same outcomes and sit the same assessments, while students on the independent challenge track take more demanding analysis, chromatic sight-singing and dictation, and a more ambitious arranging project. The pace is set for the strongest musicians in the room, with structured support to bring everyone to that standard.

Exciting content coming soon. [This 1 credit hour course may be taken up to three times for credit.]

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Exciting content coming soon. [This 1 credit hour course may be taken up to three times for credit.]

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Exciting content coming soon. [This 1 credit hour course may be taken up to three times for credit.]

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Internships offer students valuable opportunities to work in a professional environment and gain firsthand experience to help them prepare for careers. In an approved internship setting, a student typically spends one quarter working with an on-site professional supervisor and a faculty internship supervisor to achieve specific goals and objectives related to the program of study.

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