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Posts Tagged ‘vocal skills’

If you’re relatively new to singing, you’re likely to be thinking mostly about your vocal skills and how you can use singing techniques to develop and enhance your sound. However, when you reach the stage where your singing technique is stable, secure and providing an adequate level of support, it is important to consider how you are communicating the sentiments in the song you are singing.

An expressive vocal performance as well as a physical connection with the song on stage will produce an extremely powerful performance. However, the process of engaging with the sentiments of the repertoire and creating new levels of expression can be particularly challenging if you don’t have any experience in acting or drama.

Expressing repertoire effectively and communicating the story behind the lyrics not only helps an audience to fully engage with your performance but the process will also help you develop the tone and colour of your voice.

There are many different ways to develop these skills. Most importantly, you need to connect with the lyrics and completely understand the context and meaning of what you are singing. This may take a little time and even some research depending on what you’re singing. But once you’ve done this, you will naturally begin to express the material more effectively. This is why choosing to sing songs which already mean something to you and that you can relate to will help you to create a more expressive performance from the outset.

Following this, there are two main ways you can develop more expression in your performance:

#1 Personal Performance:

A ‘personal performance’ means you are singing the song as yourself. To do this, you need to identify the sentiments and emotions in each section of the song and then think carefully about how you would normally express these emotions in your day-to-day life. So, if you experience joy-how do you react, how does your facial expression change and do you do anything different physically? Once you’ve thought about your normal reaction to the range of emotions in the song, you simply apply your natural expressions to your performance. This can often be an excellent way to create a genuine performance and become more expressive without deep exploration of a character.

#2: Character Performance:

If you choose to perform the repertoire as the character who sings the song, the process will be lengthier. This obviously applies more to repertoire in opera, musical theatre and classical genres. It may be the repertoire you choose to sing is not sung by a particular character. In this case, you will need to sing the song as yourself.

Singing as a character involves exploring the character and developing a good understanding of the context in which you’re singing. Research into the character and the context of the song will provide an excellent basis for experimenting with the physicality and demeanour of the character. Think about how the character would walk, talk and react in particular situations and surroundings. This process of exploration and experimentation will help you when it comes to communicating the sentiments of the repertoire effectively as the character singing the song.

Ultimately, however, whatever method you use, providing you are effective in expressing the sentiments of the repertoire and communicating these to the audience, your performance will be greatly improved.

Achieve performing arts success with mystagedoor.co.uk – the global community of aspiring performers. Join the performing arts platform at mystagedoor.co.uk and get free access to training tips, career advice, showbiz news and the opportunity to meet thousands of other like-minded performers.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

Whether you want to train to sing in a stage show to hundreds of people a night or whether you strive to be a vocalist in a band, developing and maintaining strong and secure singing technique is crucial.

First, in the process of working on your technique you must ensure you do not push your voice – straining your voice can cause long term damage and should be avoided at all costs.

To develop good singing technique, you must begin to think about singing from a different part of your body. Instead of thinking about breathing from the chest and singing from the voice box in the neck, we must develop the concepts of:
1.    Using the diaphragm (which is just below the lungs) for effective breathing and
2.    Supporting the voice with the contraction of the ‘core muscles’ located in the lower abdomen (the muscles just below the tummy button)

The following exercises will help you to apply these fundamental singing techniques:
#1: Breathing:
Put your hands around your waist with your thumbs at the back and fingers at the front – this will help you to become aware of the exact movements of the diaphragm.
- In front of a mirror, breathe in for 8 counts, hold your breath for 8 counts and hiss the air out slowly and consistently.
- Watch yourself carefully to make sure your shoulders stay still. You should feel your tummy go out as you breathe in and go in as you breathe out. You should also feel a similar movement around your side and back.
- You may want to imagine having a rubber ring fitted tightly around your waist and as you breathe in you push out onto the ring.
- As you repeat this breathing exercise, you should remember three things:
1. You should try to take as much air into the lungs as your breath in – using more of your total lung capacity
2. As you hiss out, you should try to maintain as much control of the air flow as possible – keep a consistent flow to the hiss
3. You should try to encourage as much air out of the body  – towards the end of the breath use the tummy muscles to direct the remaining air out of the lungs

- Once you have completed this slow breathing exercise, you need to try speeding up the breathing process.
- Breathing like a steam train, produce short, sharp bursts of air. Remember to ensure you are breathing ‘diaphragmatically’ – tummy going out when you breath in and in when you breath out.
- Gradually speed the breaths up – stop if you feel dizzy at any stage.
- Use the contraction of the ‘core muscles’ (the band of muscles below the tummy button) to pressurise the air and maintain as much control of your breathing as possible.

#2: Support
- Progressing from the breathing exercises, instead of producing short sharp breaths, produce three short sharp bursts of sounds on a note which is easy for you to sing (try singing to ‘HA’)
- Gradually increase the number of sounds you are producing on each note until you are singing scales to ‘ha’
- With each note, you should feel the diaphragm flatten and the tummy expand as you breath in and the core muscles contract to support the voice as you sing the sound
- Repetition of this simple exercise will establish an initial awareness of what ‘support’ is and how the contraction of the core muscles can be used to help create security, stability, power and projection to your singing.

Achieve performing arts success with mystagedoor.co.uk – the global community of aspiring performers. Join the performing arts platform at mystagedoor.co.uk and get free access to training tips, career advice, showbiz news and the opportunity to meet thousands of other like-minded performers.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com