Hey everyone and welcome to The Singing Studio! I’m so excited to be with you all today and I hope that you have enjoyed our videos where we have really focused on dissecting our songs, breaking them down, and also talking about memorization. I encourage you to watch those videos if you haven’t: Breaking It Down Part One, Two and Three and also Memorization Tips because those really apply to what we are going to talk about today.
So you’re probably wondering why we have been so focused on breaking down our song and learning how to memorize it. I don’t get it – why aren’t we singing? Why aren’t we really getting into it? Well, the reason why it’s important to focus on these different techniques for breaking down the song of memorization is because that is the best way we can get comfortable with our song. Sometimes it’s really daunting to look at a song and think, “Well where do I start?” And sometimes we just start with singing it and listening to a recording and that’s about all we do. When we actually break down the song and when we actually utilize the tools we have to memorize it then we can really start to have fun with it which is what I’m going to be discussing right now. When we truly get to know our song so much that it’s so comfortable that we can just spit it out and it just rolls off the tongue naturally, we can begin to start looking at the different artistic elements that we can add to our song. When we are singing a song we want to put in emotion and we want to tell a story and the best way to do that are a few different ways.
The first way is to add dynamics. We have talked about dynamics: piano, forte, mezzo-piano. We’ve talked about these different things, but think about what those different dynamics can do when we add them to a song. If we’re singing about something that makes us really happy, what if we decide to put a dynamic in there that’s really loud? Maybe that’s how we show happiness – we’re just really loud and excited. Or it could go the other way. What if we’re really sad or angry in the song and we decide to sing loud? That can also have a cool effect on the audience. So it’s really fun to play around with different dynamics and it’s really fun to see how creative we can be with those dynamics.
The next thing we can do to add our artistic flair to the song is to really notice which words we should emphasize. So using my example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, we may want to emphasize the word “little” so we can say, “Twinkle twinkle LITTLE star. How I wonder what you are.” Or let’s say we wanted to emphasize the second twinkle so we can go, “Twinkle TWINKLE little star.” So as you can see those are two very different interpretations of the line “twinkle twinkle little star”. Choosing which words to emphasize can really help with our artistic choices.
The final thing that you can do is you can look at where you breathe. Oftentimes when we’re looking at lyrics, if there’s a period or a comma typically that indicates this is where I need to breathe. But we need to make those breaths intentional. We need to utilize those breaths not only so we can sing the next phrase healthily, but maybe using that breath is a chance for our character to think or to have a moment or to change our acting tactic. Really looking at those breaths and making decisions is important. So for Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are” – if I were to have the breath in the middle there I’m going to begin excited and then I’m going to end curious. See how I utilize the breath: “Twinkle twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are.” Do you see how I utilize the breath to launch me into a new sort of emotion or tactic? That is definitely a wonderful way to look at the song and to have some artistic choices and decision-making.
So I’ve talked about three different ways we could add our artistic flair to a song. Those were dynamics – we can utilize dynamics to show emotion. Second, we can choose specific words to emphasize in order to help with our storytelling. Finally, we need to be purposeful with our breath and we need to look at our phrases where we’re supposed to breathe in order to launch us into different tactics and acting choices as we sing a song. So dynamics, emphasizing words, and breath are really what are going to help us add some awesome artistic decisions and storytelling into our songs.
I really hope that you’ve enjoyed this video and our previous videos that have tied everything into how to put together a song and how to really embrace what we’re singing. We’re not just singing notes on a page. We’re not just singing words. We’re performing this. We are actually putting in our creative minds and ideas into a song rather than just copying someone else or just singing it the way we hear on the radio – which you shouldn’t do. We should always be singing with our voice and not copying other people. I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. Please make sure to like this video and we’ll see you in our next one!
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.