This article concerns singing education in folk music, Western classical tradition and improvised music in a music teacher education programme in Sweden. The study investigates how conditions for bodily learning and interpretation are semiotically designed and carried out by vocal teachers in one-to-one singing lessons. Video documentations of singing lessons with three vocal teachers and three students are transcribed and analysed with focus on how musical knowledge and practices of knowledge are bodily represented, designed and expressed, and how students respond to the teachers’ affordances. The theoretical point of view is based on a multimodal and social semiotic perspective. The result shows that all students have the possibility to learn the studied music through bodily understanding, expressions, associations, contextualisation, and interaction, yet the function and the meaning of these bodily learning aspects are varied in the studied lessons. The views of what is counted as musical knowledge, which norms and values are focused on, and which attitudes and methods the teachers work with thus vary depending on context and genre. New knowledge about bodily learning processes and bodily musical meaning making is contributed by the study.

Keywords: Music teacher education, Singing lessons, Bodily learning and expression, Multimodality, Social semiotic