Carrie Grant
About Author
Carrie Grant along with her husband David Grant are probably the best known pop vocal coaches in the UK having coached clients including Take That, The Spice Girls, Gwyneth Paltrow and Charlotte Church. It was their involvement with Fame Academy which brought them to the attention of the nation as well as Pop Idol.
Her husband David Grant's career has included vocalist for the Brit-Funk duo Linx as well as a successful solo career with three Top 30 hits, "Stop and go", "Watching you watching me" and "Love will find a way" followed by the Top 5 duet with Jaki Graham "Could it be Im falling in love.
David has also presented various TV shows and is now also a top-session singer, and vocal arranger and vocal producer, appearing on various TV shows including Jools Holland's 'Later'.
Carrie has had various roles in the entertainment industry. Starting as a dancer on Top of The Pops and moving into presenting for Children's television and for various network programmes. She then moved into session singing where she became one of the country's top session singers, working with the likes of Diana Ross, Roberta Flack, Rod Stewart, Lighthouse Family, Fat Boy Slim and many others.
As well as being seen as the foremost vocal coaches in the UK Carrie and David also teach on Senior Business Management training courses and together they are also involved in mentoring work.
Carrie and David are passionate about singing and released an award-winning vocal coaching DVD/Video, You Can Sing, and book Total Singing Tutor.
They have also now launched into publishing with a series of picture books aimed at encouraging young children to sing, supported by their parents and carers, and called Jump Up and Join In.
Interview
JUMP UP AND JOIN IN:
ELEPHANT'S BIRTHDAY BELLS / LION'S SPEEDY SAUCE
PUBLISHED BY EGMONT
JUNE 2013
A new series of picture books from vocal coaches and TV presenters Carrie and David Grant is aimed at supporting young children to make music and to sing, and to help parents and carers to encourage children to explore sound and rhythm.
The idea behind the series began when Carrie and David Grant created the Pop Shop television series for Pop Idol. Carrie Grant says, "We wanted to introduce very young children to good quality music. Most of what they were offered was unremarkable; very good song writers tend not to work in this area and the void is filled with uncrafted songs and a plunky plonk Barbie keyboard doing the back-up. We wanted children to be introduced to quality music that's accessible with lots of styles, so we created Pop Shop."
After making some 30 Pop Shop programmes, they started to think about books that had the Pop Shop themes but which would encourage reading, too. Initially they were going to make one picture book with a story and sounds for the story, but their publisher Egmont suggested a more ambitious publishing programme. "When we visited one day they brought together a number of their staff and we got them doing all sorts of things like four-part harmonies. Our publisher Cally Poplak said, 'Can't you get this into a book?'"
Grant realised that there was little available that helped children learn about music, or loud and soft etc. "They might get it at school, but how can you give them a tiny sliver of that early on?," Grant asked. "Also, we wanted children to have multiple ways to access what was in our book because our children have SEN so we have some understanding of this.
"So, if children have the book but can't read it, then we want them to be able to make a track, or do an exercise or make some bongos, and perhaps listen to the story while they play the bongos and look at the pictures. We all learn in different ways so how do you help children to access music in different ways?"
Music, she adds, "is soul food and singing is free, so you can listen to music and sing and keep it on the agenda. In many of our schools music is taking a back seat but we want children to engage with it."
Grant has used what she has learned about music to support her children at home, and the house is never without music. "We have never stopped singing to the children, we even had to put a ban on singing at the table - there had to be somewhere where we just talked! - so from the year dot we have sung to the children and they have all sung and harmonised before they learned to speak.
"We don't let our children do homework until they are at least 11. One of the first things we do when they come home from school is dancing and singing or doing acrobatics, and we've found it's a great way for them to calm down and unwind. I want my children to get home and to know that it's different from school, that they are free to do what they want. They might do dancing, writing, poetry or read comics and all these things help them learn and communicate."
Music has been particularly important as a tool to help their children communicate, she adds. "You put on a piece of music and dance and the child joins you, they will reach out and take your hand and it's not seen as something confrontational like cuddling, so you might swing them around and get very physical with them without it being seen as threatening.
"Another way I communicated with my daughter, who has asperger syndrome, was to make a character out of my hand and she would lavish attention on 'Mr Hand' and we would have long conversations that she could engage with because it didn't need eye contact. So art, music and design are all ways we have used to communicate with children."
They do not, however, see themselves as therapists or using music in any special way. "For David and I, it's about bringing music and singing to everyone whether they are six or sixty years old. Singing is for everyone!," says Grant.
They have also worked with an organisation called Sing Up in the UK, who published a report showing that "teachers no longer wanted to sing in front of their pupils because they feel they would be judged," says Grant. She adds, "Parents can also feel very self-conscious about singing. The human voice is very powerful and when we ask people what is the song that most attached to, they often say the song that their parents sang to them in the cot and often it's a made-up song."
Carrie and David Grant's series of six books, branded Jump Up and Join In, will be published over the next ten months. They will each cover different aspects of music including rhythm, loud and soft, confidence, breathing and vocal care. Other books may well follow including books for younger children and older children aged seven to ten years, to help schools to teach singing. "Singing is a great learning tool, if you think about it," says Grant. "We may remember six or seven speeches or phrases, but we know 60 or 80 songs."
Each of their picture books includes a number of follow-up activities following the story to help the adult practice some of the themes of the book, for example how to make bongoes or practicing loud and soft sounds. "You can work through the activities bit by bit and develop what you're able to do with the children," Grant adds.
The books have also been formatted into apps so that children can hear things and copy them; they can even create an avatar who does their singing for them.
