kari's blog

Do you find yourself in the audience sometimes, watching a group or a speaker, and suddenly realize that you haven't attended to anything they've said or performed? How many times have you, as an audience member, read the entire show program from front to back, surreptitiously thumbing the page over as the performer carries on?  I know that I have found myself in this position many times, surprisingly even when the performance is actually pretty good!  So why am I compelled to read the program instead of attend to the show?

Let's flip the situation the other way around now - how many times have you been to a performance where time seemed to stop, and you found yourself wishing that it would never end, and trying to absorb every minute of the performance, and milk every emotion you experience for all you are worth?  I know - it isn't too frequent, but I bet most of us can pinpoint at least one show we attended where we were fully immersed, and our experience transcended the music, speech or show we observed.  Thinking back, those experiences were also the ones which were met with thunderous applause, and often times standing ovations.  Why???

To me, there is one critical piece which can make or break a performance, which not many groups have mastered - authenticity from the moment you walk onto the stage.  It's almost like when I first see a performer as an audience member, I am immediately ready for them to tell me what to think - should I be nervous for them?  Excited for them?  I determine this by 'reading' their body and facial postures: are they positive, comfortable, excited, nervous, not totally present?  What are they relaying to me?  My first reactions are very strong (as are most of ours!), and those first few moment of observing someone perform I spend sizing up the situation and them.  If they are nervous, I spend the rest of the performance being nervous with them, hoping they won't mess up (for both their sake and my own!).

Now, lots of groups work on just this - the power of the first impression.  But here's my point - they work on how they want to appear.  They decide that they want to look confident, so they walk out with a swagger, tell some joke, or make some grandious move which is intended to 'bring the audience in', but ends up being inauthentic, because it isn't coming from an honest emotion - it's just a show.  As an audience member I admit that I certainly feel more comfortable than with the nervous group, but there is some small part inside of me that closes down, and feels a tiny bit manipulated by them - a small part of me suspects that they are not being authentic to what they are truly feeling (nerves, fatigue or other), and I spend a good portion of the next few minutes trying to suss out what they are really experiencing.

That's because they've gone about it the wrong way!  All this time they have spent working on how they want to appear, they could have been spending on how they wanted to feel in response to the story they are telling, the character they are becoming, or even the role they are playing with the audience.  Before going on stage, they should be setting a story with us - if they are singers, this may entail acknowledging the audience as a group and allowing themselves to feel a positive, true emotion in response to the welcome, but it could also be feeling the emotion of the particular story they are telling and they could jump right into their performance (see fourth wall discussions for more on this).

I most enjoy performers who seem to truly feel gratitude toward the audience - not an attitude of 'oh, we're so lucky to be here, thank you so much!', but more of an appreciation of 'we've been on stages like this before, and we still love it each time as much as the time before!  We're thrilled to be here - thanks!'  These groups do seem to be more 'real' than other groups.  They come out with honest confidence - they truly believe that you will enjoy what they do (and most often, I am more likely to do so because they believe it!), and they seem eager to share their experience with me as an audience member.  I feel like a team player in their performance.   I get this message from them subconsciously from tiny cues they inadvertantly give me (for more info on this, I recommend the concept of 'thin-slicing', coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink), and the 'stage is set' (pardon the pun) for a great performance.

The importance of this step can't be underestimated - when you are truly connected (authentically, not just 'acting' the part), you immediately set up a trusting rapport with the audience, allowing you to move yourself emotionally while performing to them (without fear) and allowing them to be moved as well as you tell your story.  My next post will address the actual performance, and how we can move our audience to that emotional brink and push them over without going out of control ourselves.

So, you want to know how exactly you can start integrating the left and right brain into your rehearsals.  I know, I know, you think it is impossible - I get that.  I know how it feels to try to keep your mind on the technical while also feeling all those emotions and keeping the story spinning.

First off, may I just put a caveat in here?  If you are a very beginner singer, and are just learning how to breathe, this may not be a topic you are ready to broach yet, and that's ok! I think that sometimes we get so attached to the road to perfection/excellence, that we miss a bit of the journey along the way.  Wherever you are in your musical journey is wonderful!  In the very beginning you are putting so much energy and thought into retraining your very muscles which have been spending the last however-number of decades focusing on speech and breathing, that there hardly seems to be much room for thinking about the music you are singing!  In fact, just keeping it in your mind to breathe in freely, or to relax your jaw can use up every brain cell you have!  Totally cool, and be happy with where you are.

Assuming you are past the basics now, and no longer have to concentrate on the mechanics of singing, let's talk about how to develop some new skills that will bring both your own musical experience to the emotional brink as well as that of your audience.  It starts with the vocal warmup, and today's article focuses on that very first thing we do as singers - how do we start this process of 'engagement' when we are doing the most technique-laden exercises of the day?  I mean, aren't vocal exercises specifically designed to exercise the voice, and be 'run through'?

Well, let's reframe this thought.  First of all, why do we do vocal exercises?  Believe it or not, I would say that the majority of the singers with whom I work do NOT work their voices regularly in a vocal warmup or exercise.  In fact, the majority of them probably only do vocal warmups inside the group that they sing with once a week, and for the rest of the week, it's out of sight, out of mind.  Here's a reminder of some of what vocal exercises enable us to improve upon/do for the voice (and thus the argument of why we should make them a part of our every day routine).  Vocal exercises:

• warm-up the voice before singing (relax the voice/larynx/vocal apparatus)
• develop vocal flexibility in range (i.e. help you go higher and lower in your range)
• increase accuracy and agility (help you move between intervals accurately and efficiently)
• develop breath control and strength (improve your ability to make it through long phrases and/or achieve intricate dynamic plans)
• focus the mind on singing
• practice difficult passages or skillsets in an isolated exercise, in order to perfect technique

Ok, so you know why warming up is good, and now you do it all the time.  How effective are you?  How closely does it mirror the stage experience for you?  I can say without exaggeration that the majority of singers I work with who DO their warmsups simply 'run through' them in a methodical way - reminiscent of chopping carrots on a cutting board.  However, the first level of excellence in a vocal warmup begins with each repetition outperforming the last.  In other words as you sing an exercise, be aware of what you can improve upon and as you go make adjustments that improve your result.   What would happen if you truly attended to your vocal exercises?  Let me paint a picture:

Option A:

Run through the following vocal warmup on an "aaah" :

1   3   5   8   5   3   1 (an arpeggio)

Were you vocally excellent?  Did you tune every note perfectly?  Was it well-supported throughout, with no obvious shifts through your register?  What was your experience?  Was it earth moving?  Was it grand?  Was it a little boring?

If you said a little boring, or even just 'nothing', I think that you might want to experiment with a little bit of conscious attention to the exercise.  Try this on:

Option B:

Before singing, close your eyes (ok, you might have to read this through before you actually attempt the exercise!).  With your body relaxed and easy, breathe in through your nostrils.  While you breathe, take a moment and sense exactly what parts of your body move as you breathe.  What sensations to you feel?  Do you feel your abdomen move as your viscera move out of the way of your diaghram?  Was there tension or tightness anywhere specific?  Did you notice the breath getting 'caught' anywhere?

Now, breathe in through your nose, and visualize your brand new baby sleeping in her crib.. you are going to sing her a gentle lullabye - sing your arpeggio.. what did you notice?  What new sensations occured?  Did your vocal texture or colour change? If you sang like that forever, what would you expect?

Breathe in again through your nose, and this time picture yourself as Pavarotti, commanding the stage.  Your passion is breathtaking - sing the arpeggio.  What changed this time?  What did you notice?  What new sensations occured?  Again, if you sang like that forever, what would you expect?

Lastly, breathe in through your nose, and this time, play with the arpeggio naturally - allow the beauty of those particular tones to shine through as you sing - get out of the way of them so they can shine through.. Do it a few times.  What do you notice??

Sometimes we wait for a coach to come in and 'save us' and tell us how to 'fix' our voices.  How often to we really attend to our voices ourselves though, and really feel what we are doing?  I think a lot of answers are within us as we sing - we just need to listen to and feel ourselves long enough to identify with our own voices!

Feel free to experiment with all your different vocal textures and colours - attend to your voice as you experiment - what hurts? What feels good?  What does it sound like?  What types of songs might you allow that voice to shine through in?  The most important concept here is that you take away the fear of not sounding 'perfect', and you allow yourself vocal play time, to just experiment!  While you do this, pay attention to what's going on in your voice - is it sustainable?  Is it healthy?  Is it pleasant?

Now, as you sing this exercise, build emotions around it.  Not stories, but emotions.  Try on moving only the emotions at a visceral level, and see how it affects your voice.  How do you feel when you sing that way?  Is it more rewarding?

As you work this at home, keep in mind that this is all experimental time, and that you are not only playing with the technique in your voice (the tuning, accuracy, freedom, etc), but also with the emotion - try to work both at once - if this is really hard for you, try working just your vocal technique a few times, until you feel you have made progress, then add some emotion to it, and work it until you feel you have made progress.  Go back and forth until you feel that you have a firm grasp of both concepts at the same time.

Good luck, and happy experimenting!

Lots of groups that I coach struggle quite a bit with 'left brained' vs. 'right brained' focus in rehearsals. It's not uncommon to hear within a practice, 'we're going to work the left brain today and clean up that music!', or 'we're three weeks from the show/contest, let's go right brained from now until then'! I think that we tend to underestimate our own abilities to multitask, and also to *learn* and that this idea of working one side of the brain at a time is actually creating more of a problem than it is solving!

I liken this to an analogy of tying a shoe. If we think of a shoe as representative of the two sides of the brain, and each lace is working within that side of the shoe/brain, it's very easy to see how we can get into a bit of trouble. Let's say you lace up one side of that shoe perfectly, and are careful to get it nice and snug, while leaving the other lace lying on the floor until you finish that first one. Obviously you have to lace up the other one as well, as the shoe will not work without both sides tied - that much is clear. I think we all agree that musical mastery includes using both sides of the brain as well, so our analogy fits.

Now, back to our present picture - you have one lace neatly laced up, snugged and ready to tie to the other half (which is still laying on the floor, waiting to be laced). The first thing that happens is that to tie up the other lace, you actually have to undo pieces of that first side that you tied. You can't actually get your fingers in the holes well enough to tie it up, as the first lace is so 'completed' that it leaves no room for the other lace to 'get in there'. How similar to our singing! For lots of groups, they spend so much time on that one side of the shoe/brain (often technical/left brained), that by the time they have gotten the product 'ready' for some right brained work, they have either run out of time before the performance, find that it's too difficult to cram the emotions back into the song without compromising all the work they did on the left side, or in the case of a few groups who are committed to it, they go back and undo some of that left brained work in order to get that right brain laced up. Ouch! That's a lot of wasted time!

But wait! What about that structure in our brains called the Corpus Callosum? This awesome broad band of fibers, containing millions and millions of nerves rests between the two hemispheres in our brain and facilitates the communication between the hemispheres. As if to prove its own importance to us, studies have shown that the Corpus Callosum is significantly larger in musicians than in non-musicians! Hello! So, what can we learn from this?

Well, to start, how about we challenge that we have to work one side of the brain at a time? When I work with choruses these days, we specifically work on the development of this amazing structure. Specifically, I challenge them to work both the technical and emotive halves of the brain, all at the same time. Now, let me just say, I absolutely realize that this is difficult work at first. Much harder than the time-honored "pat your head and rub your tummy" exercise. But trust me, as you work this more and more, the integration becomes more complete, and you are able to perform this more and more easily. I have had great success in groups working both technique and emotion, and moving audiences significantly as a result. This is like tying both laces at the same time - right, left, right, left, etc, until you get to the top, and tie off the final product. By creating new neural pathways through the Corpus Callosum, we are able to access both the technical and creative aspects of our music all at once, and work both congruently.

But what about 'leaving it behind' when you go on stage? When a group is really prepared, the music supports the emotion. The work that you do on the technical (while working emotion!) actually becomes less and less present as you work a song. A lot of that work becomes 'muscle memory', requiring less attention from you as it becomes integrated with the emotional message of the song. I think that it is less of a conscious decision to 'go right brained' before a show, in a group that has really developed this dual-hemisphere connection. Sure, there is a choice in deciding not to self-judge, not to listen to the technical pros and cons of the music as it goes by when on stage, and to fully dive into the emotional message of the song (work that has hopefully been going on since the beginning anyway!). I also think there is a greater commitment when you go on stage to move yourself and move your audience at the same time, and that pushes out that last bit of technical as well. Because of this, I like to see groups in the last 3-6 weeks of rehearsal practice singing to the audience (imaginary or real), to prepare for a big event, and really commit to the 'moment', or in Eckart Tolle language 'live in the now'.

In my next post, I will discuss exactly how we develop the Corpus Callosum during rehearsal, and the overall process of breaking free of the technique (and focusing on the music instead). Stay tuned!