Practicing with Emotion
Analyze the song’s lyrics and meaning. To really be sure you’re performing emotion, you first have to familiarize yourself with the intended emotion in a song. Of course, you can always interpret a song to fit your own mood or emotional associations, but it’s best if your emotion connects with the lyrics. Try to figure out the story that the song is telling, and where the emotion rises and falls.
Practice performing in private. It can be scary to perform with vulnerability and emotion in front of a crowd. If you’re too anxious to perform in front of crowd right away, start by singing in the shower or somewhere else where nobody can hear you. Practice by thinking of times when you’ve felt the emotion the song’s lyrics are trying to convey, and then try to express that in your tone of voice. For example, if the song is about the end of a relationship, think about a time when you’ve felt heartbroken. When you’re feeling more confident, perform in front of a few trusted friends.
Start with exaggerating your emotions. Most singers start out singing without enough emotion, because they’re self-conscious. To begin with, exaggerate the emotions you want to display. You might feel ridiculous, but it will help break down the self-conscious barrier. You can always tame down your singing later if it sounds melodramatic. But normally that’s not the issue at the beginning. The first step is to let loose!
Record yourself practicing in video and play it back. A video recording will show you what you look and sound like when you’re singing. You may be surprised that some of the passion you were trying to emote didn’t come through. Or you may find that one part of the song feels melodramatic. By watching a video of yourself, you can see what parts of your delivery to keep and what to adjust. Watching a video of yourself is a great way to tell if you’re moving enough or too much! You want to strike a balance where you don’t look stiff, but you also aren’t moving around so much that it’s super distracting. That is, unless you’re singing and dancing at the same time in a musical theater number, in which case, dance away. Standing stock still will make you look nervous and uncomfortable, which isn’t a fun performance to watch.
Consider taking voice or acting lessons. A vocal teacher can help you with the basics of performance singing, like breath control and projection. If you’re already confident in your singing, but just want to add a bit more emotional flair, then acting lessons can be a big help. It may seem ingenuine to act when you’re performing, but remember, you’re not always going to feel as tragic or joyful as some of the songs in your set. While you can tap into your own emotions, a little acting is often necessary. Acting lessons can also make you feel more comfortable standing and moving on stage, so that you look natural when you’re performing.
Performing in Front of People
Warm up your body and your voice before the performance. Do a few quick jumping jacks to get your blood pumping and your muscles limber. Then warm up your voice. You can either do this by singing scales, humming through a straw, and doing musical “slides” in which you sing an “ooh” sound from your highest note to your lowest note. All of these exercises help open up your voice so that you can sing in a relaxed and natural way, with enough breath-support.
Manage stage fright with preparation and positive self-talk. Feeling stage fright before you perform is perfectly normal. Even experienced performers get nervous. But you can reduce your stage fright by practicing the songs you are going to sing so much that you can sing them practically in your sleep. As you approach the stage, practice positive self-talk: “I’m ready for this,” and “They’re going to love it,” and “It’s going to be great,” or whatever positive message you need.
Make eye-contact with your audience while performing. Don’t scare one of your audience members by staring at them the whole time. But it does help engage your audience if you look at their faces, and make brief eye-contact occasionally. Smile and show you’re having a good time if it’s a joyful song, and don’t be afraid to get teary if you’re performing a ballad. You can’t reasonably make eye contact with everyone in the audience. Instead, break the audience into 3 or 4 zones, and make eye contact with one person in each zone, for a bit, and then move on to the next zone. This will give your singing a feeling of connection.
Vary the volume throughout the song. Singing emotionally doesn’t mean that you are at a top-volume belt all the time. The best emotional songs have a rise and fall of emotion. You can inflect different parts of the song with different emotional tones by varying the dynamics: how loud and soft you’re singing. If you’re singing a sad song, try to have a place where your voice gets quiet and breaks a bit. Sure to break your audience’s hearts! If you’re singing a joyful song, try saving your full-on triumphant belting for the chorus, and making the verses a bit quieter and tamer. Play around until you find dynamics that work for your song and feel genuine.
Experimenting with Vocal Techniques
Elongate and accentuate vowel sounds. The vowels in your lyrics are where you can get creative! Sustain them for a long time, separate them into staccato chunks, warble them--you name it! Just don’t try to elongate a consonant. It doesn’t really work. Make sure you’re enunciating clearly. Even if most of your emotion is in the sustained vowel, don’t forget to pronounce the consonant at the end of the word, so the audience knows what you’re saying.
Use vibrato to sound passionate and mournful. Vibrato is a vocal technique in which your voice vibrates on a long sustained note. This sounds intensely emotional, like you’re struggling not to cry. To approximate singing with vibrato, hold one note as you press your fist gently into your stomach above your belly button, and back out again. Your voice will make a wavering sound. The only way to sing true vibrato is to practice! Once you can sing high, middle, and low notes comfortably, your voice will be relaxed enough to slip naturally into vibrato when you want it to. Just keep practicing!
Use riffs to emphasize important moments. In a riff, a skillful singer takes off, improvising on the notes that appear in the melody, running up and down the scale. Riffs can add a lot of flavor and spontaneity to your song, and they can express joy or heartbreak depending on how you use them. They draw attention to a particular part of the song. Soul and gospel singers are known for their amazing riffs. Check out Aretha Franklin singing “Amazing Grace” for a superb example. Just make sure not to riff on every line of the song or you’ll sound a bit melodramatic.
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