Coaching with Story

Been a while since I blogged - I missed it!  Been very busy with Groupanizer and Realtime's third album, so Owning The Stage has been on the back burner.

However, I've been coaching quartets a lot and I continue to be amazed at how effective it is to coach through the vehicle of story. I don't choose that vehicle with every group, but if they have a baseline level of skill and they have been working at their craft for long enough to acquire some bad habits, I always start with story - not for any philosophical reason, not because I have a point to prove (although I do), but because in my experience it's the most efficient and pragmatic way to get a singing group to the next level.

For example I worked with one great ladies quartet in Victoria, BC, Regional contenders, and the story was really interesting.  The song was "Over The Rainbow" which as you know has been done *an awful lot* so there's a real danger of glazing over and just singing it the way it's always been done.  But by the end of the session their story was so creative and compelling that it really brought new life to the old chestnut.  (It also cleaned up their technique as a side-effect as it always does, but I've written about that many times before.)

At the beginning of the song, where the verse goes "When all the world is a hopeless jumble" etc. they chose to be speaking to a little girl (Dorothy?) and trying to cheer her up.  It's about a minute and a half of music, so they tried a few different approaches to bring the girl out of her funk - simple empathy and encouragement at first, and then describing how wonderful the world is at the familiar chorus: "Somewhere over the rainbow way up high, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullabye..."

Then at the bridge, they became the little girl to sing the first-person lyrics, "some day I'll wish upon a star" etc.  When they took on that new identity it changed everything about their approach, demeanor, body language, even vocal quality.  A wonderful transition.

The third identity was around the pivotal lyrics "why then oh why can't I".  Up until then they were "fourth wall up," treating the performance as theater, but on those lyrics just when the arrangement is about to climax, they chose to address the audience directly and bring them into the story!  They stood straight on and really drove home the positive, optimistic and passionate conclusion.

All in all, the story transformed the song from a technical exercise into something that has a good chance of keeping an audience engaged and on the edge of their seat because it's so real, and they were flirting with the parts of performance that are authentic and human and therefore beyond judgment.

Sometimes it's that simple!