The Society for Spontaneous Singing

Now that our experiments with duets are complete, it’s time to come back to basics. We’re just going to open our mouthes and sing. In past weeks we had open-ended prompts that asked you to sing for two, three and five minutes. This week your mission is simple: Sing for seven minutes. That’s it. Just open your mouth and Read More

It’s Secret Santa time! To ensure that everyone gets a duet partner on the piece they did last week, we’re assigning partners. It’s Secret Singer, I suppose, or Mystery Melodist, or something along those lines. So if you did a Part 1 last week, you’ll get a Facebook Private Message from us today with whose Read More

Do you ever find yourself singing along with others’ recorded improvisations? I do. I know that the original musician didn’t intentionally leave space for me, but I find it… above, below, snuck in-between phrases, or just utterly contrasting in character so that it fits without obscuring the first singer’s song. I’m betting you’ve done this Read More

This week, we’d like to try a new kind of challenge — a visual prompt. Here it is: (The image is a colorized version of an engraving made by the French artist Camille Flammarion in 1888.) We hope that this image will provide us with a gentle but precise launching point, a suggestion about where to begin.

What’s the reasoning behind these time-length Prompts? Why do they keep getting longer? And, how far will we go? Here come some answers. But first, your Prompt: sing something for five minutes. You may meet this prompt in any way that is comfortable or meaningful for you. Our intent is that you should go solo, Read More