Teaching Blog

Welcome to the blog. Take a look around.

Below you will find posts on string and vocal technique, as well as various aspects of classroom and private teaching, music theory, and any other subjects that might arise as a result of my years of teaching and performing experience. Some posts are geared toward music teachers, others toward students, but almost all of them will have good information for musician (if I do say so myself).

KJ Bell 6/2/22 KJ Bell 6/2/22

Supporting the Vocal Tone

Before you read this post, make sure you check out my posts on breathing and quantifying the breath which both deal with the initial phase of singing. The intake of breath is the basis for all of our vocal technique, but a good, supported sound is the next step. I will once again use a couple of terms from

KJ Bell 5/19/18 KJ Bell 5/19/18

Vocal Warmups

There are countless books with exercises that are good for warming up the voice. Some of these books even give examples of sets of exercises to do, but they don’t go into much more detail than that. It can be helpful to see a sequence not only in terms of the exercises themselves but also in terms of the range used. In this post I’ll detail my personal sequence and how I modify it for my private voice students and choirs I work with.

KJ Bell 5/7/18 KJ Bell 5/7/18

Finger Patterns for Upper Strings

Intonation is one of the biggest issues string players face. Getting the left hand fingers to the proper positions at the right time can be incredibly complicated. There are so many different scales and keys and exercises that have the potential to confuse and misguide us. The more I have worked as a string player and a teacher the more I have come to realize...