Rehearsal

Had some great conversations last week at Harmony University about how adoption a story-centric performance philosophy would change rehearsals.  Some surprising conclusions!  Read on.

Sometimes it can be difficult to decide what to work on next, to get the most bang for the buck.  When I'm working with performing groups they often ask me if it's too early to get into the "emotional stuff" with a new piece, if they haven't even quite got the notes and words nailed down.

My short answer would be "no", but I can imagine why they might think so!  First, when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail.  Lots of performers, especially musicians, are first and foremost great technicians.  They love to fine-tune their technical skills, above all else!  Just like a bowler who spends hour after hour down at the lanes, trying to bowl strikes.  It's very "flow" - clear rules, instant feedback.  It's fun!  But bowling isn't a performance art.  I mean, people may like to watch it, but it's a sport, not an art, and the spectators aren't having to suspend disbelief.  Their expectations are rather low, in terms of the emotional depth of the experience of watching a bowling tournament.  So treating stage performance like bowling isn't the best approach.

Also there's a prevailing attitude that the "fluffy stuff" is pointless until the technique is in place.  And to some extent that's true - if you don't know the notes, you're not going to make big gains by delving deeper into the character and the objective!

However, that's not the end of the story.

Firstly, the strategy of "finishing the technique" before getting into the emotional guts of the piece is fatally flawed because the technique can never be finished.  There is no perfect.  If you wait for perfection before moving on, you will never move on.

Secondly and maybe more importantly, having a clear concept of the piece at an emotional level gives you a framework to hang all that technique on.  If you ground your musical and performance choices in the human purpose of the piece, you might actually remember those dynamics!  I wouldn't take the artistic analysis to its conclusion right away, but if you can just figure out the basics (who are you, who else is there, what's the relationship, what are the changes), you will find all that technical work will be more exciting and more efficient too.

Finally, you get a whole lot of technique "for free" when you give yourself over to the human, emotional concepts that form the purpose of the piece.  A thousand little details fall into place without discussion, springing naturally and forcefully from the scene.  And just like the tennis player who finally just watches the ball instead of obsessing on the details of their swing, letting your "self 2" take over will let you get out of your own way, letting your best technician shine through for a change.

So it's never too early.

OK let's say you're a singer.  You have enough technique under your belt so that you can carry a tune, and you can hit all the necessary notes well.  You've got some material that is matched to your technical skill, neither so easy that you will be bored, nor so difficult that you will be anxious.  You've decided to perform for the benefit of the audience rather than ego gratification or to please your teacher, and with that goal in mind you have breathed some life into that material by creating a compelling story that connects it to real life and authentic emotion, and you have some idea of a plan that will convey your story.

Got all that?  It's not as difficult as it might seem.  Technique -> Material -> Story -> Plan.

The purpose of rehearsal is to take all that conceptual stuff and make it real.  You don't sing a song by writing down your plan - the song only exists when it is sung, and the first time you actually sing it, you can expect to learn all sorts of things about your plan that don't work, and maybe you'll want to revise elements of your story too!  Funny thing about reality - it's a lot easier to see than abstractions.  And when you can see it, you can decide whether it works or doesn't work.

The biggest sin of rehearsal is so obvious it's almost embarrassing to say it: you have to rehearse what you intend to perform!  Many groups get together and work exclusively on technique, perhaps because they view singing as a technical challenge.  That's a bit like viewing a book as a printing challenge - it's missing the point.  I mean it's true that if you don't get the words on the page, nobody can read them, but what people care about is exactly what the words say!  The meaning of the book is delivered *through* the printing, not *by* the printing.

So for many people, the biggest challenge is simply accepting their level of skill, whatever it happens to be.  There is no such thing as perfect, and striving for perfection beyond a certain point is all about you, and having fun trying to master the game of technique.  There's nothing wrong with doing that of course, but don't confuse it for a performance goal.  The audience cares about their experience of your performance, they do not care about your skills as long as they aren't getting in the way.  So if your skills are good enough to remove distractions for your audience, as far as performance is concerned any further work on skills is a waste of time.

In reality of course nearly every performer will need to work on skills.  But as long as you realize that the skills are only a carrier for what your audience cares about, you should have no trouble organizing your rehearsal accordingly!  Try splitting it 50/50 for a while - spend the first half of each rehearsal working on skills, and the second half working on higher level concepts.

For example, talk about the story of your piece until you are crystal clear about it.  Make sure every bar of your music has some meaning attached to it.  You'll have an easier time accessing that meaning if you have a rich set of images or movies that relate to the story, that you can run through in your head as you communicate your piece.

Once the story is clear, spend some time performing, and decide what needs to change about your plan.  What techniques could make the story more clear to the audience?

Get objective feedback - record yourself, audio and video, and then review the recording.  Does everything seem to work?

Rehearsal can be incredibly rewarding and enjoyable in itself if you do it right.  Try to turn each rehearsal into a "flow" experience by making sure that it has clear goals, instant feedback, and that you really concentrate your attention.  (If you can't tell from that last paragraph, I've just read "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  There's a book review post on the way soon!)

It may be common sense stuff, but if you can make your rehearsals really effective, you'll have a big advantage over 90% of the other performers on the planet who commit this Deadly Sin routinely.  There's an awful lot of wheel-spinning going on out there!

I first learned about the Emotional Freedom Technique from my Dad, Charlie Metzger, but he was using it for health rather than improving performance.  Now I warn you, some dyed-in-the-wool rationalists are going to find that the whole concept of EFT makes them uncomfortable.  To them I have two things to say.

First, just because you can't figure out how something works and can't explain it doesn't mean it's invalid.  Especially when it works as well as EFT seems to work.  I mean come on, explain to me how placebos work!  You're not going to argue that placebos don't work, are you?  The whole FDA approval process is based on a drug performing marginally better than a placebo!  So placebos work, but if you want an explanation of WHY they work you'll have to ask Deepak Chopra, not me.

Second, if you think I'm a young upstart maverick just making this stuff up, talk to my Dad!

So now that we're over the skepticism hurdle, what is EFT?  EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique.  It's related to acupuncture and acupressure, both of which are based on the Eastern concept of Chi.  Chi is like energy that moves through your body, and if your Chi gets blocked, you will develop issues.  The issues can manifest physically, like a backache, or emotionally, like depression.  My Mom gets acupuncture for a soft tissue injury she received in a car accident years ago, and it's the only thing she has found that takes away the pain.  The Chinese have been doing this stuff for thousands of years, and if it didn't work, I think they would have stopped!  (Don't get me started about the irrationality of the Western brand of medicine - oh yes, we have a pill for you!)

EFT is basically repeating an assertion in the form, "Even though [something you want to fix], I deeply and completely accept myself" as you tap on various meridians around the body.  Some of the points are shown in the diagram to the right.  You can learn exactly where to tap by reading this.  So it's extremely simple to learn.

So as a performer, how does EFT relate to you and your concerns?  How can EFT make you a better performer?  Well in this article, EFT guru Gary Craig discusses a wonderful concept called the "comfort zone."  Whether you are an athlete or a stage performer, your comfort zone is the level of performance where you feel you belong.  It's tied up right at the core of you, in your identity or self-concept.  For a golfer, maybe you feel that you "are a mid-80's golfer."  If you're in a barbershop quartet, you might feel you are a "high 60's" quartet.  This is your comfort zone.  And because you are human, you will tend to behave in ways that will ensure that you stay there.

Yes, once again it seems that you are just getting in your own way.  This concept makes complete sense to me, because time and time again I have seen groups perform "above their level" because of one kind of trick or another.  Often just asking for better tuning, and asserting that they can do it, you will get it.  Get someone to believe they are an effective, engaging public speaker, and they will become so.  It's a very self-fulfilling thing.  We're not talking about telekenesis here - the performance realm is full of head games.

So how does EFT play into this?  Well EFT can remove the emotional barriers that you have, that prevent you from achieving outside your comfort zone.  For example, tap your meridians and say "even though I have never scored high enough to go to the international contest, I deeply and completely accept myself."  Or this one: "Even though I got a lukewarm review out of my last acting job, I deeply and completely accept myself."  The phrase can and should be tailored to your own situation.

One really obvious application of EFT is in the management of stage fright.  It might enable you to bypass weeks of work, and save thousands of dollars on talk-therapy with a highly-paid psychologist.

I would encourage you to read the whole article on EFT and performance.  It should take about five minutes of your time.

One way to explain how we're getting in our own way here is to consider the penalties, real or imagined, involved in achieving above our comfort zone.  Maybe if you started singing better, you would have to stop seeing the vocal instructor you're so fond of.  Maybe if you were able to really commit to a vivid, impactful scenario, your peer group would think you were showing off!  Try to find the penalties that keep you in your comfort zone - just asking yourself the question, "what would happen if...." might bring them quickly to mind.

Have you ever tried EFT in a performance scenario?  Tell us about it!  If you haven't yet, give it a try and report back to the Owning The Stage community.

OK, if you've been following along with this series, you've already developed all the singing skills you'll need.  You have put yourself in the judge's shoes.  You understand the music in terms of its notes and words, story, scene, objective and development.  You have exercised all your creativity and intelligence to make a truly a great plan.  You're already miles ahead of 99% of the groups in terms of your preparation.  Unfortunately, if you fail to execute during that six minutes when you're doing it for real, some would say that all your hard work was for naught.

(I'm not one of those people - I believe the journey is more important than the destination, but I suppose it's easy to say that when you've already got a gold medal!  LOL.)

I believe that if you can come to the stage well prepared, your voice is in peak form, and you're in the right state of mind, you will knock it out of the park.  Let's treat each piece separately.

Come well prepared

Yes you have a fantastic plan.  It's creative, it's insightful, it's engaging.  But making the plan is the beginning of the journey, not the end.  I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, but amateurs rehearse until they get it right, but professionals rehearse until they can't get it wrong.  Your best insurance policy against something going wrong at exactly the wrong time is to rehearse to a professional level.  And that doesn't mean getting together with your group and banging through the tunes a hundred times - that isn't going to do it.  If someone tells you they have ten years' experience, do you ever wonder whether it was ten different years or the exact same year ten times?  Makes a big difference.

Professional rehearsals follow a pattern.  If you're staging a play, you start by memorizing your lines, understanding your character, your motivations, and objectives in each scene.  Then you read through it with your fellow actors.  Then you run through it many times on the real stage, under the guidance of the director.  Then generally you'll have a "preview" performance of some kind, with a well-chosen audience, usually friendly.  Then and only then is it opening night.

So let's steal what works, shall we?  Learn your stuff, make your plan, and then move through the professional rehearsal pattern.  Start with just the foursome and a video camera.  Then invite a few friends to come watch and give you feedback.  (Keep an open mind.  They are right - you are wrong.)  Then take the contest tunes onto the stage for a real audience, like on a chapter show or some other public performance.  Video tape that, and review the tape together with your trusted advisors.  At each level you will learn a lot - bake those lessons into your performance at the next level.

The key is that you'll be rehearsing what you're actually planning to do, in an environment that is closer and closer to the one that counts.

Get your voice and body in peak condition

All that professional level rehearsing was a lot of work, so let's not blow it in the last four hours before going on stage.

One of the most important things is making sure your voice is 100% when you hit the stage.  Stay healthy, be well rested, stay hydrated, take your allergy pills - whatever it takes to feel right.  You don't need distractions like a tickle in your throat.

Being at the peak of your potential vocally means warming up the right way for your voice.  With all that pro-level rehearsing you might be in what we call "perma-warm" which is an awesome place to be - do enough singing every day and you'll be ready to sing without much work at all, and your stamina will be fantastic too.  If you can arrange it, sing every day for a few weeks before the big day.

Another pitfall many groups fall into is banging the tunes a dozen times in the warm up room.  I think they do this because at some level they know they are underprepared, or they just don't know what else to do when they're together.  Of course you'll be rehearsed to a level where you can't do it wrong, so you have the luxury of not worrying about it on game day.  Hit the intro of each song a few times.  Sing other stuff that isn't strenuous.  Play with your iPhone - whatever.  Metropolis used to play hackey-sack!  Whatever you need to do, to stay relaxed and focused.

Head games on game day

A lot of this is covered nicely in my previous series on stage fright, but that's not the whole picture.  You get to choose what kind of dialog goes on in your head, and in the last two hours before you go on stage it's even more important that the self-talk is heading in the right direction.

Which of the following phrases would you like to have running through your head, as you prepare for the big day?

• Everyone is going to pick us apart out there.
• They are going to love us - they won't know what hit 'em!
• What if I trip as I go on stage?  What if I wet myself?  What if the theater burns down??
• Everything is going to be fine.
• If anything unexpected happens, I can handle it.
• Gosh my butterflies are getting worse!
• I can feel the adrenaline pumping, ready to back me up.
• I know our baritone will be flat on that note, and everyone will notice.
• Little imperfections are glossed over when the story is strong.
• We never duetted the last two phrases!!
• We are the most prepared group they will see today, and our plan is awesome.

Take your pick - what you hear as you go on stage is all up to you!  One tip - if you're one of the people who like to tell yourself negative things in order to motivate yourself, game day is TOO LATE for that marginal strategy to do ANY good.  Ditch it.

It's also important that you stay on the same page with your fellow singers at a time like this.  Try reminding them about the best phrases in the above list if it seems like they need it.  In extreme cases, you can also take them by the shoulders and say, "we're never going to make it.  This is going to suck."  That usually breaks the ice.

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!

Have you ever left it in the green room?  Most performers have felt that way - that they could have done better, and that what they actually brought to the stage was not up to their own standards.  Here's how one reader put it to me recently:

The obstacle that currently vexes me is the "level drop" that occurs between a quartet performance in a rehearsal or informal setting versus the one that happens in front of a large audience.

When we rehearse or sing out in an informal or relaxed setting (e.g. after chorus rehearsal, or to our chorus-mates at retreat, or on a street-corner after a fun evening out ~ the product astounds us. We are so proud of it, and it matches our expectations. We have fun producing the sound, and are truly performers.

When we get in front of a formal live audience, I feel a significant level drop. Chords we always sing in tune are suddenly faltering. The strong resonant sound we always produce is intermittent. The product lacks the "pride" and the performance doesn't feel "fun" like it does in the informal setting. Video and audio recordings reveal some evidence of nerves, but nothing unexpected.

I am left feeling disappointed after a public performance, thinking that it "could have been so much better". My initial solution to this is to just keep doing it. The more audiences, the more exposure to this, the better we can learn and adjust to keep the level up.

And so, my question to you: what is your advice on how to help the level of rehearsal translate to performance?

Everyone situation is different, so face-to-face I would always ask more questions and dig a little deeper before offering advice.  But going by what this reader has written, here's what I would say.

First, it's quite possible that there isn't a problem!  Because it's not about how you feel when you perform, it's about how other people perceive it, and what it does for them.  I bet that a group like this leaves behind a lot of happy audience members, even if they feel like they didn't do their absolute best.  Find some people that you trust for their perception and their honesty, and get them to watch your performance.  Then ask them for their opinion, which is 100% more objective than yours!  You might be surprised.

There was a big study done about this perception gap, and I read about it in Psychology for Performing Artists, an excellent book that is listed here on my resources page.  After viewing a sequence of five performances, the audience often disagreed with the performers about how good each one was.  Sometimes when the performers thought they were exhibiting nerves, the audience perceived more passion!

However, assuming that there are some real things "going wrong" then we're looking for interference, as in the Inner Game concept P=p-i (Performance = potential - interference).  So what's getting in the way?

The reader does talk about nerves, and that's a biggie, even if they aren't any worse than expected.  And there are some great methods of dealing with them head-on.  I've tried to give a summary of those methods in my series on stage fright, which might be worth a read in this case.

Ultimately, I feel that the reader's intuitions are correct - performing more will probably lead to closing the gap between the mastery of technique in rehearsal vs. performance.  That's kind of how it works!  There's no better way to get better at something than to just do it!  Do it, notice what happened, and do it again.

There's an important point buried in there - you want to "notice" what goes wrong, and not to try and correct it in real time.  That, however, is a topic for another day.