Robert Styron is an established Colorado vocal music educator who has taught middle and high school students in areas such as musicals, music theory, and a cappella performance. One major area of focus for Robert Styron at the Denver School of the Arts was teaching vocal jazz.
With jazz known for its improvisational elements, the most basic songs can be expanded to the point where they resemble a new work of art. A key facet of this is scat singing, a technique in which the lyric’s words are switched for rhythmic phrases that create new syncopations and vocal possibilities.
Also known as a voice instrumental, scatting is often composed of nonsense words and phrases that have no meaning beyond the sounds produced. Alternatively, scatting can be in a vocalese style that utilizes the song’s lyrics in new forms that build on, but do not closely resemble, the original melody line.
Because scats are pitched indefinitely, vocal inflection takes the place of a traditional melody in suggesting the underlying musical theme. Accents tend to be articulated strongly, often through altering the vowel and tying a primary accented note to a series of tied notes that follow in rhythmic succession. All while utilizing coordinated breath energy.
Tone is another important element of scatting, and it can be endlessly modified through techniques such as changing the shape of the mouth, altering vowel sounds, and effectively ppsinging with solid diaphragmatic-costal breath coordination. Some scat stylists, like Bobby McFerrin, go so far as to pound on the chest as a way of creating unexpected percussive and tonal modalities.
Robert Styron 