Singing Guide: Pete Kelly's Blues

Singing Guide: Pete Kelly's Blues

Vocal technique, exercises, tips and relevant resources

Pete Kelly's Blues

Pete Kelly's Blues is a 1955 musical crime film where the main character, Pete Kelly, is a jazz musician and singer performing in speakeasies in the early 1900s. Inspired by the movie, this article will delve into how to learn singing through jazz, highlighting the unique vocal technique and songs of Pete Kelly portrayed by Jack Webb. Jazz is a genre that originated in New Orleans among African American communities in the early 20th century. It emphasizes improvisation, syncopated rhythms, and sophisticated harmonies.

Vocal Technique:

Jazz singing requires a specific vocal technique that is different from other genres. To sing jazz, singers must learn to improvise and decorate melodies using scatting, a vocal style that uses nonsensical syllables. Scatting is a way to play with rhythms, melodic lines, and textures. It requires an excellent sense of timing and a deep understanding of the song's harmony. Additionally, jazz singing requires singers to use a more relaxed and natural voice than in other genres, emphasizing syncopation and subtle phrasing.

To develop your scatting technique, Singing Carrots offers a great Pitch Training educational singing game that allows you to practice your timing and precision skills while improvising over jazz chord progression. Another essential aspect of jazz singing is improvising lyrics. To improve your improvisation skills, check out the How to learn a song effectively and Singing with intuition, skills, emotion, and thinking articles.

Songs to showcase technique:

Sing, Sing, Sing by Louis Prima and his Orchestra
Fever by Peggy Lee
Take the A Train by Duke Ellington
Peanut Vendor by Stan Kenton

Practical Advice:

To learn to sing like Pete Kelly, singers must listen to a lot of jazz music and learn the fundamental jazz standards. Developing a keen sense of timing, phrasing and improvisation can take years of practice, so start small and progressively build up your abilities.

One important point is to develop your ear training skills. Knowing how to identify chords, melodies, and intervals by ear is essential to improvise over jazz standards. You can use the Vocal Pitch Monitor to visualize and identify the notes you sing.

Another important aspect of jazz singing is to develop a broad vocabulary of chords and arpeggios. The Singing Course is an excellent resource to learn the fundamental music theory concepts needed to understand jazz harmony.

Singing Carrots resources:

Learn more about this artist vocal range, voice type and repertoire.