Module Four Lesson Three: Singing Full Circle: A Practice Outline for Physical, Mental, and Emotional Connection
Go Deeper/Links:
Song Interpretation Sheet
The song is the script. As the singer, it’s your job to make that script come alive. How? By drilling down into the who, what, where, when, and why. The more you know about who is singing the song and why — the easier your job becomes. This sheet will guide you in your discovery.
Storyboard A Song
Now that you’ve discovered who you are and why you’re singing a song try visualizing the script like a movie. When you create a storyboard for the setting, characters, and scene(s), the song will become deeply embedded
in your imagination and emotions.
TRANSCRIPTION:
In lesson two, you learned about the physical, mental, and emotional areas of practice. Now, we’ll use those areas to structure your practice sessions.
PHYSICAL: WARM-UP
What makes it possible for your voice to move smoothly from one note to another, stretch for high notes and shrink for low notes? Flexibility.
The purpose of your warm-up is to get the circulation going in the muscles that work the vocal folds. Easy legato exercises that stretch the muscles and vocal folds are key. The siren that you learned in Module Two is an excellent exercise to begin your warm-up.
Whatever exercises you use, make sure that you’re not asking the voice to do too much too soon. You don’t want your warm-up to be a marathon. Get the circulation going and the muscles feeling limber, and then move on to the main event — singing songs.
WARM UP YOUR MIND & KEEP WARMING UP YOUR INSTRUMENT
I recommend that you have about three songs that you’re working on at a time — a new one, one you’ve been working on for a while, and one in its final stage of development.
After you’ve warmed up, sing the song that’s in its final stage of development unless it’s really physically demanding. Singing a song you know fairly well from start to finish allows you to warm up your voice a little more and gives you a “win” early in your practice session.
Twice through is usually enough.
Now it’s time to start working on the newest song.
Do you have yours ready? Let’s go through this process together.
MENTAL: HOW TO LEARN A SONG
Whole to Chunking to Whole Again
Step One: Whole
Start by listening to a recording of your song from start to finish. Absorb the whole thing. It’s like you’re at the top of a mountain, getting ready to descend into the valley below. You need an overview of the landscape laid out before you — an auditory picture and mental map like the one you learned about in the last lesson.
OK. If you’re ready, pause this recording and go listen to your song. I’ll wait!
Step Two: Chunking
Next, you take the whole song and chunk it out, just like I did with Mary Had A Little Lamb.
Sing from the beginning until you hit a section that trips you up. Go back and sing that section again. If you’re still having trouble with it, try these strategies:
1. Listen to that section in the recording, but don’t sing.
It’s hard to be on output (singing) and input (listening to the recording) simultaneously. If a section of the song is fuzzy in your auditory memory, reinforce it by repeated listening.
2. Lip-synch the section while listening to the recording.
For some reason, it’s easier to hear where your voice isn’t matching the model when you lip-synch rather than sing out loud. You can hear where your auditory memory and the actual notes don’t match up. Try it! This strategy really works.
3. Slow it down. Speed it up.
Slowing the section down is invaluable when it comes to correcting mistakes. It forces you to carve out a space for each note in your auditory map. My sense is that it also helps the muscles in the vocal mechanism memorize where they need to be and when.
After you’ve slowed a problem spot down and can sing the phrase accurately, speed it up until it’s almost impossible to sing. Then slow it down to a performance tempo. After rushing to keep up, you’ll be amazed at how slow the performance tempo feels and how easily the notes fall into place.
You can either sing a capella when you do this or use an app like The Amazing Slowdowner to slow down the recording without changing the pitch. We’ll take a deeper dive into tools for practice later in this module.
4. Put the section in context.
After chunking out the problem spots, put the corrected pieces back in context. Go back four bars or so, sing through the problem section, and see if it sticks. Then go back eight or sixteen bars and repeat the process.
Step Three: Make It Whole Again
End by singing the entire song from front to back. Stop and work out any trouble spots along the way. Repeat steps one through three until all the trouble spots are smoothed out.
One other tip. Vary where you begin working on the song. Mix it up by starting in the middle of the tune. The back half often suffers when you always start at the beginning. The problem spots in the second half of the song take longer to work out because they come last.
The other place you can begin your practice is at the bridge. Starting with a section of the song that’s not repeated forces you to learn all parts of a song equally.
OK. Go find those problem spots!
HOW TO MEMORIZE LYRICS
Now that you have the notes of the song worked out, it’s time to go “off book” and memorize the lyrics.
This is one of the hardest things for me — and for many of my students. Some people have a knack for memorizing lyrics. They hear a song once, and the lyrics somehow become embedded instantly and forever in their brain.
I have to work a lot harder to get lyrics to stick. Here are some strategies that I’ve found that might help you memorize them more easily:
Transcribe the lyrics by hand
Lyric sheets are readily available on the internet for download, but unless you’re in a hurry to learn a song, I recommend you transcribe the lyrics by hand. Listening (auditory), writing (kinesthetic), and seeing what you’re writing (visual) are powerful combinations for implanting new lyrics in your mind.
Now it’s time to use the lyric sheet and the recording in various visual and auditory combinations:
1. Sing the song while listening to the recording AND looking at the lyric sheet.
2. Sing the song with a recording w/OUT looking at the lyric sheet.
3. Sing the song w/OUT the recording while looking at the lyric sheet.
4. Finally, sing the song w/OUT listening or looking. When you find a problem spot, highlight it on the lyric sheet.
Sing the song all the time - everywhere you go. Have the lyric sheet available for when gaps appear. And don’t let the gap stay there. Fill them in with the correct lyrics immediately.
When you think you’ve got it DOWN - sing the song at a tempo that’s too fast for thinking to test it, just like you did when you were learning the melody. Any lyrics that aren’t deeply embedded will be easy to spot when you’re singing too fast to think!
STRATEGIES FOR STUBBORN SONG LYRICS:
Some song lyrics defy almost all learning strategies. They aren’t linear, so the verses are easy to mix up. Here are two more strategies for memorizing those stubborn Teflon lyrics:
Create a Mnemonic
Strategy number one: create a mnemonic.
Take the song, Hey Jude, by The Beatles.
Here’s a mnemonic I created for it:
First, I took the rhyming words in each line and highlighted them.
Hey Jude, don’t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
Hey Jude, don’t be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better
And anytime you feel the pain
Hey Jude, refrain
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it’s a fool
Who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
Na-na-na, na, na
Na-na-na, na
Hey Jude, don’t let me down
You have found her, now go and get her (let it out and let it in)
Remember to let her into your heart (hey Jude)
Then you can start to make it better
All you really need to memorize these verses are the words in the first and third lines because the second and fourth lines have the rhyming words in them.
So let’s highlight those:
Hey Jude, don’t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
Hey Jude, don’t be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better
And anytime you feel the pain
Hey Jude, refrain
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it’s a fool
Who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
Na-na-na, na, na
Na-na-na, na
Hey Jude, don’t let me down
You have found her, now go and get her (let it out and let it in)
Remember to let her into your heart (hey Jude)
Then you can start to make it better
So there you have it.
Verse one: Bad Heart
Verse Two: Afraid Skin
Bridge: Pain Fool
Verse Three: Down Heart
Each word pair is like a title for each section of the song. Memorize the titles, and it’s easier to remember what lyric comes next.
2. Strategy number two: Create a movie in your mind.
Visualize a scene for each line, verse, or chorus. The more bizarre and unrealistic, the better!
If you’re still working on memorizing the lyrics in your song, go ahead and spend some time with them now. Experiment with some of the strategies you’ve just learned and see if they work for you.
Practicing Original Songs
Practicing original material without a recording or singer to use as a model can be tricky. You have to create an auditory map entirely from scratch. When you’ve written a song, it’s important to take off your songwriting hat and practice as the singer. Shift gears by recording yourself. Listen to see what works and what doesn’t in your interpretation of the song.
Stay curious about what you intended for the song when you wrote it and how you, as the singer, can improve it through your interpretation.
Practicing With Your Instrument
If you perform with an instrument while singing, it’s essential to practice with the instrument and without it. Record a backing track for yourself with your instrument, and then sing with the recording. This is helpful for two reasons — when you record your instrument without singing, you’ll become a better instrumentalist. And when you sing without having to accompany yourself, it will free you up to concentrate solely on your singing.
Once you’ve practiced each part separately, ditch the recording and practice singing and playing together. After practicing each instrument by itself, the two halves will make a stronger whole.
Sometimes singers get hung up about their playing when they accompany themselves. It makes sense, especially if you’re not a strong player. But don’t obsess about your instrumental prowess. Work on becoming the best instrumentalist you can be, but when performing, your singing should always come first in your mind. After all, it’s what your audience cares about most. If you’re communicating, that’s what matters.
WHAT NOW?
So you’ve created the musical map. You know the song - the form, the melody, harmony, and lyrics. What do you practice now?
EMOTIONAL:
Once you’ve learned the song, it’s time to get back to why you’re singing it in the first place. No one wants to hear the technique or mental machinations that go into learning a song. Listeners want to be moved. They want to feel something.
And they will only feel something if you do.
So forget about technique and the chunks of the song you’ve been working on. Focus on the emotions you feel and want to share with your audience. Reconnect with who you are and why you’re singing the song, and sing from that place.
All the physical and mental preparation you’ve done provides a backdrop. The emotional content takes center stage. When something goes wrong, reach for the tools you know will fix the problem. Then shift right back into a performance mindset.
If you’re having a hard time connecting with the emotional content of a song, I’ve got some things to help you in the notes and links above.
AN INVISIBLE AUDIENCE:
Another way you can bring a song back to life emotionally is to create an imaginary audience.
In my own practice, I have two different imaginary audiences I sing for.
The first is a small one — six or seven people who love and support me and a few mentors whose feedback I trust. They’re in my practice space, just a few feet away, smiling, loving, and supportive in their listening.
The second is a larger audience. I’m in a performance hall where bright lights are shining on the stage, so I can’t see them. But I can feel them. They’re listening intently to every note. The energy in the room is electric. I imagine that I’m singing the best performance of my life, and the audience is helping me make it magical.
Singing for an imaginary audience might sound crazy, but it works. If you can’t be in front of people singing every day, an imaginary audience will add some performance pressure. It will also prepare you to focus on someone outside of yourself when you sing. When you practice connecting with an audience in your mind, it prepares you to communicate with them when they’re actually there.
Just make sure the audience you conjure up is supportive and kind.
