Professional Voice Training
One hand at a time, folks, one hand at a time…
…uh, and don’t let that hand come up above your waist unless you know how you’re going to get it back down…
Points of focus (where do I look?!) are way too wide and all over the place.
In other words, this presentation is so lacking we barely hear her singing, which, oh…
Maybe they planned it that way.
Sports. Theatre. Life.
What the NBA Spurs’ coach Greg Popovich said after a heartbreaking loss to the Lakers in a must-win playoff game says it all.
Not a bad mantra for performers, either.
No wonder he’s coached the Spurs to four NBA Championships since 1999.
An affirmation isn’t only defined by “yes.”
An affirmation can be a statement of intention or agreement with one’s self.
Affirmations can also be negative. Many people affirm their own negative feelings or attributes on a daily/hourly basis.
Typically, those negative affirmations begin with the words “I’m too…” or “I can’t…”
Got any of those?
A chant is something that gets repeated over and over. Chants can be fun. “We Will, We Will…Rock You!” comes to mind.
Kobe Bryant just got the MVP.
“M-V-P! M-V-P!”
That’s fun, too. Easy for others to chant along.
“Nam Hyo Renge Kyo” for Buddhists…
Just before the cameras would roll, Jack Lemmon would say, “It’s magic time.”
We all can use a Performance Chant or “Mantra.”
My personal one before each performance is “Energy, Attention, Awareness.”
Let’s see…to perform, I will need a ton of energy. Okay. Good. Got it.
I will also need to pay attention to what is going on at all times so I can stay in the scene, thus becoming an essential element of the storytelling. I need to pay attention so I can stay within the context of the song (no mental drifting). When I pay attention, creativity is present and spontaneous. Paying attention makes performing fun.
Finally, awareness. My consciousness needs to be fully aware of the stage, the lights, the building, the walls, the dimension, the audience, the front row, the back row. This awareness needs to be stored as ongoing background information. We’re in the business of play and pretend, but we shouldn’t be in denial of our surroundings. Awareness is crucial. Thirty years ago, I was at a live show about a guy in prison for murder. It was called “In The Belly Of The Beast” at the Taper, Too! Andrew Robinson was the star. About ten minutes into it, an audience member in the front row passed out and fell on the stage. Andrew, being in the midst of a very intense monologue, yet also being quite aware, came to the rescue of this person. He didn’t try to improv with the guy on the floor. He certainly couldn’t ignore it. He was aware. He was aware that he himself was acting, he was aware that he was on stage and he also was aware that another human being was in distress. Andrew even asked, “Is there a doctor in the house?”
Thirty years later, I remember him and his awareness much more distinctly than I can remember the play he was in.
More later.
Addendum: If you don’t have a performance today or tonight, but would like to practice a mantra anyway, say this out loud every 30 minutes:
Ready?
“It’s a good life.”
Singing is only as hard as you make it.
Don’t confuse that with me saying, “Singing is easy.” It’s not. It takes tremendous energy and the whole body has to participate.
For me, the first step in singing is: Get used to being loud. And get used to using your whole body when you sing.
Next step: Get “loud” under control.
Last step: Practice & Perform.
That’s about it.
We don’t need to be pre-med students to figure out that if something hurts, we’re not doing it right. We don’t need to have majored in anatomy/physiology to figure out that lifting 400 lbs. on our first day in the weight room is not an option.
But we do need to keep things simple. Make the “hurdles” physical, not mental. Incorporate the body into the voice first — not the brain. “Feel” pitch with full energy, you’ll never sing flat again.
Simple.
If you are studying voice for Musical Theatre, it helps to have a little composer history under your “belt.”
Ever heard a “Whenandthen-er”?
“Whenandthen-ers” sound like this:
“When I lose 20 pounds, THEN I’ll get headshots.”
“When I have every song in the universe memorized and perfected, THEN I’ll go on auditions.”
“When I quit smoking, THEN I’ll take voice lessons.”
“When I get my teeth fixed…”
“When Pilot Season starts…”
The best “THEN” is the “THEN I’ll be happy…”
“When I get that series, THEN I’ll be happy.”
“When I make my first million, THEN I’ll be happy.”
“When I get a boyfriend/girlfriend, tour, new car, house, apartment, THEN I’ll be happy.”
There’s no law against being happy right now. There’s no credit card for happiness. Happiness is a bill we owe ourselves everyday. It can’t be saved up for later. So, practice happiness every minute, every hour, every day. Sometimes you won’t be so good at it, but if you practice it constantly, you’re bound to get better.
Artistic careers are fluid things.
Artistic growth is like water in a river; it continually flows from the source.
“Whenandthen-ing” dams up the river and puts everything on hold. It’s up to us to knock down our own dams and let the river roar.
Be the Mississippi River.
Forget “whenandthen-ing.”
Happiness is within this very moment.
Start.
I confess that I am extremely resistant to listening to soundtracks of new musicals.
A hit song or two from a show is fine — it’s what I use to train Broadway singers, but I’m a composer also. I don’t want to be influenced by someone else’s hooks constantly looping in my brain.
Entire soundtracks do that to me.
And I don’t need to write LES MIZ music.
It’s been done.
A lot.
By the same guys, as a matter of fact.
Show after show after show…
So, I rarely listen to Original Broadway Cast Albums unless forced.
And that’s how I got into listening to WICKED.
Two years back, my five year old daughter insisted on listening to it every day on the way home from kindergarten.
She could read a little bit by that time and her vocabulary really increased by reading and singing along with the WICKED soundtrack lyrics. It was fun to hear her sing in the back seat.
Oh sure, we listened to “Popular” three or four times a day. “The Wizard and I,” “Defying Gravity,” “I’m Not That Girl” and that guy with the funny sounding pudding-in-the-throat tenor voice on the first track always got a laugh from her.
“No One Mourns The Wicked!”
**gargle**
So, my resistance became futile and, having been a “Son of Sondheim” these last thirty years, I finally had to come to the conclusion that musical theatre had moved on and, with WICKED, Stephen Schwartz had just changed the game for us all;
HIGH FIBER LYRICS
No “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry”
no repetitive “this is the moment,” “this, too, is the moment,” “and, oh yeah, this is also the moment”
no already drawn “Send In The Clowns” summations.
These are “high fiber lyrics.” They have layer upon layer of character exposition and development.
Each character speaks to, and in many cases, denies/accepts, their own truth. The King in THE KING & I had three hours to debate with himself. The folks in WICKED have about three minutes before making a move.
Inside rhymes are EVERYWHERE. And not the obvious clever composer, “look at my lyric” inside rhymes — these rhymes are rhythmic, conversational and belong because they are right.
Philosophy: Not every character has their own musical theme (in an opera sense) but each character has a definable philosophy through song. Wagner would be proud.
THE HUMAN VOICE:
Elphaba is a rock star. She belts a high F (as do all my student/client belters), but good on ya, Stephen Schwartz for recognizing that the use of one’s true vocal chords can also be “unlimited” for eight shows a week.
THE IMPACT
It’s already happening, but in the next five years, a “critical mass” of interest in musical theatre will occur at the junior high and high school levels due to WICKED.
And where the chicks go — green though they may be — so do the boys.
So, yeah, Stephen Schwartz changed the game with WICKED; artistically (high fiber lyrics), physically (uh, high fiber belting), and, best of all, he guaranteed those of us who love musical theatre a whole new generation.
Oh, lol, and I still haven’t seen the show.
Because when you get out of bed in the morning, you don’t wonder if you’ll be able to walk, do you?
So why should you get out of bed and wonder if you’ll be able to sing?
Athletic singers put the body in charge of the voice.
If you can walk, you can sing.
Unathletic singers allow the voice to be in charge of everything.
That’s why they always have to drink this, gargle this, swallow this…
It’s counter-intuitive.
Let the body lead the voice.
The voice will follow.
(The voice has no choice!)
The Dramatist Guild held its first “annual” West Coast membership meeting yesterday at Theatre West on Cahuenga.
I put “annual” in quotes because you can’t really have a “first” annual because annual events only become annual when you have a “second” annual.
Go figure.
Anyway, Stephen Schwartz was the special guest and, as he is a member of the Dramatist Guild board, the discussion was mostly around the mission of the DG, assistance they can offer to playwrights, composers, et al, and some of the current issues facing dramatists.
About a hundred members and guests attended the meeting.
As a musical theatre composer, I felt a little outnumbered — most of the attendees were obviously non-musical playwrights who asked about copyright, copyright infringement and submission policies. I figured many of them would be able to sing “Day By Day,” but was confident that only two or three of us actually knew the lyrics to “Lion Tamer.”
I didn’t get around to asking Stephen whether he writes lyrics or music first or both at the same time.
I kinda wanted to know that.
I also wanted to ask him about “Meadowlark” (from “The Baker’s Wife”) and how it came to be at such a young age that he composed what is easily one of the greatest musical soliloquies for a woman in the theatre — next to, of course, his newest greatest musical soliloquy for a woman in the theatre, “The Wizard and I.”
And then I wanted to ask him where is the male counterpart to “Meadowlark” and “The Wizard and I.”
Of course, afterwards, I didn’t ask him any of those questions because I had a more important mission.
I wanted to get his autograph for my daughter Julia Rose (who could sing the “Wicked” score backwards and forwards at the age of five).
For those of you with five year olds running around, you KNOW how much they like to listen to their favorite music in the car….over and over and over and over….
I saw it this way: getting Stephen’s autograph for my daughter (now seven) would have been like my dad getting me Richard Rodgers’ autograph or Cole Porter’s or Willie Mays, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. I wouldn’t have cared if my dad had talked to any of those guys (he was a bartender in Santa Monica in the early 60’s, I’m sure he talked to plenty of athletes and artists) — that wouldn’t have been a big deal.
But what’s thrilling to a child is a person of achievement or celebrity taking a moment — albeit an incredibly quick moment — to recognize them.
Upon my request, Stephen immediately obliged and signed his name on a lined sheet of paper in my notebinder.
And when I brought it home to Julia
and told her that I met the guy who wrote all the music for “Wicked,”
and that I got his autograph for her,
her eyes got big as she read the lined piece of paper
“To Julia Rose, Defy gravity! Stephen Schwartz”
Then she laughed and jumped up and down and cheered “Oh, wow!”
It’s now in a frame on the family piano.
Yup.
Daddy did the right thing!
L.A. Times February 4th — Daryl H. Miller reviews Mandy Patinkin at the Kodak Theatre.
One passage of the review seemed particularly apt for An Uptempo and a Ballad:
“Yet what was increasingly apparent was how comfortable in his skin Patinkin appears to be nowadays. He is a prickly perfectionist, but he seems finally to trust himself and his material. He doesn’t oversell, as he did in the days that earned him a spotlight parody in “Forbidden Broadway” as “Super-Frantic-Hyper-Active-Self-Indulgent-Mandy.” Aside from occasional indulgences in showy, chesty, buzzing-with-vibrato fortissimos, Patinkin spent most of the concert in focused stillness, suspending notes — softly, tenderly — in his impossibly high, pure upper range.”
Keyword: Stillness — if you have a spare minute, take a look back to my October posts.
For the last few months, I’ve been telling students to “lead the fun” in performance.
If your mantra is, “I am the leader of the fun,” your audience will pick that up and trust your leadership. If they’re going to heckle, they might as well leave, right?
If you abdicate your leadership of the fun, choosing instead to “push the fun up a hill from behind,” it all becomes work, obvious work, and no one has any fun at all.
“Pushing the fun up the hill from behind” is a performer waiting for the audience to start having fun first.
It’s a long wait…
It doesn’t matter if you like to sing big and loud (omg; “showy, chesty, buzzy”!) or soft and quiet (“impossibly high, pure upper range”).
Mandy Patinkin was just leading the fun.
Own yourself, you own the stage.
Lead the fun, the audience follows.