Babies responding to song: Insights from developmental science
Thursday 26th September 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
Around the world, parents and other family members sing to babies. Song can be an important avenue for cultural transmission, and a functional parenting tool for soothing infants to sleep, engaging them in play, or cheering them up if they are distressed.
In this lecture, Laura will review research exploring why and how parents sing to infants, and how infants respond to song. These studies use mixed methods, including parent questionnaire, acoustic analyses, physiological recordings, and behavioural analyses. These studies reveal that from very early in life, song can help us regulate our emotions and connect with those around us. These early experiences with our first musical mentors may lay the foundation for a lifetime of musical listening – indeed, parents who sing most frequently to their children also report having been sung to by their own parents in their youth. You will end by discussing the ways that these empirical results can inform early musical programming, perhaps especially for families with reduced support.
🏷️ Price £30 (UK VAT inclusive)
🎥 Recording automatically sent to all who book (even if you cannot attend live)
▶️ Rewatch as many times as you like
📜 Certificate of attendance available
Dr. Laura Cirelli
Dr. Laura Cirelli is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the director of the TEMPO lab (timing, entrainment, & music perception).
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Tuesday 5th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 12th May 2026
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Tuesday 19th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 26th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 2nd June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 9th June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
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Voice pedagogy has advanced significantly in the last decades in relation to knowledge of the vocal apparatus (anatomy and mechanics), acoustics, and performance psychology (to name just a few subfields) – this is a wonderful thing! Nonetheless, musicianship and the foundations of music theory are still relevant to the teaching and coaching of singers and this course aims to empower voice teachers and coaches with skills to support the fundamental musicianship development of their students.
Tuesday 19th May 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Staging A Coup: History meets science for the coup de la glotte!
Kourtney Austin
Historical vocal pedagogy, voice science, voice health, and performance practice come together in this presentation from Kourtney Austin! The session addresses the historical context for teaching the onset as a fundamental skill, along with a review of a recent publication examining the acoustic effects of different types of onset, and practical studio implementation of onset training. The aforementioned publication is the first known research to objectively measure the acoustic implications of the coup de la glotte, and delineate it from the hard glottal attack.
Thursday 21st May 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
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Louisa Morgan
This 2-hour interactive session is designed to help you make more deliberate, expressive choices in your speaking of the written word. It will involve plenty of practical exploration and will cover tips and techniques for working with the voice to lift the text off the page. Work with me to refine nuance, precision, and expressive range. We’ll explore a variety of text samples to cover a wide range of real-world situations, so you can get a feel for the different styles and approaches. If you want your spoken text to sound purposeful, engaging, and unmistakably yours, this session will invite you to play with some tools to do just that.