Singing With Emotion

Singing With Emotion Vocal Exercise to the song What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor.

What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor is such a well-known Children’s Song, and it is incredibly wordy, which is great for warming up lips and facial muscles. Also it is a fun song to sing when you need to work on emotive singing  Try singing each verse with a different emotional emphasis as described in the video below..

We have used each verse of What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor to try singing it while expressing a different emotion. We prompt you on each verse to sing either Happy, Drunk, Scared (panic), Angry, Flirty, Sad, Secretive, Funny. We have included the sheet music and the lyrics.

Observe what each emotion does to your voice whilst singing.

Do the dynamics change?

Does your vocal quality change?

Do some verses feel easier than others to sing?

How does it come across?

Do you feel different when singing that emotion?

What could you do to improve the feeling you are trying to replicate?

Ask yourself these questions and maybe get someone in to listen to you and let them guess what emotion you are trying to put across. You can use this exercise as a singing warm-up, a diction or emotive exercise, or you may just want it for the nursery rhyme backing track.

Singing exercises when done on a regular basis, will help strengthen, increase the flexibility and the range of your voice too. They will also help with your tone and resonance and placement of the sound.  This particular exercise is for all voice ranges, but please see our other videos for Low, Middle and Higher Voice Ranges if you think these are more suitable to your needs.

Lyrics

Verse 1

What shall we do with the drunken sailor,
What shall we do with the drunken sailor,
What shall we do with the drunken sailor,
Early in the morning?

Hooray and up she rises,
Hooray and up she rises,
Hooray and up she rises,
Early in the morning!

Verses
2. Put him in the longboat until he’s sober, (x 3)
Early in the morning!

3.Put him in the scuppers with the hose pipe on him, (x 3)
Early in the morning!

4. Pull out the plug and wet him all over, (x 3)
Early in the morning!

5. Give ‘im a dose of salt and water, (x 3),
Early in the morning!

6. Scrape off his chest hair with an old razor, (x 3)
Early in the morning!

7. Stick ‘im on his back with a mustard plaster, (x 3)
Early in the morning!

8. Put him in a leaky boat and make him bale it, (x 3)
Early in the morning!