I’ve been a member of SAG since 1979 and have witnessed several big strikes since then.

And after all this time, I can tell you the one mistake we performers constantly make (and will continue to make) during a strike;

We treat it like a vacation.

Which it isn’t.

It’s an opportunity.

It’s a chance to go to the gym more.

It’s a chance for us to get in that dance class, voice class, acting class and improve our skills.

It’s a chance to READ more and become more literate.

It’s a chance to volunteer in something meaningful instead of waiting for the union to set up a Blood Drive.

Write a letter to the editor.

Meditate in an open field — even when it’s raining.

Do something instead of nothing.

Or do nothing.

But don’t blame the writer’s strike for it!

Every gig we do is a learning experience.

And if it’s not, then we’re not paying enough attention to what we’re doing.

That’s why, when my students/clients/pals record these vocal samples, I only give them three takes straight through the track to deliver.

My reasoning is thus:

1) With digital recording, three complete vocal takes should give me plenty of material to “comp” the vocals, which means that I simply take the best phrases — sometimes, even, the best word — and put them all together in a single vocal take. If there are too many takes to choose from, or if we start “punching in” single words, etc., the performance gets lost because we are seeking perfection over performance. I’ll always take performance first because it’s real and real humans are seldom perfect;

2) With three full takes on one song, the singer has to “go for the gold” each time. It’s a good practice to get in to. The singer is pushed to get to what that song means pretty quickly. No “warming up” for five or six takes and then expecting magic. Music producers come in all shapes and sizes with different demands and a singer has to be prepared for a session that could last fifteen minutes or five hours. If a singer goes for the gold on each take, giving it his or her all each time, then a producer is less inclined to throw out entire takes and ask for another one while also respecting that the singer is there delivering a high quality, fully energized product (the vocal line) in as efficient a manner as possible (studio time costs money — be a hero, not a diva).

Finally, digital pitch correction.

I don’t use it. The demos you hear are demos. Some major artists now touring are using pitch correction software in their live shows.

We don’t call that art. We call that “cashin’ checks”!

For a singer, the only solution for nerves (and the resultant disease, “cotton mouth”) is a humble little thing called “acceptance.”

Nerves are nerves. We get anxious or we overthink something and, “wheee!,” there they are.

No amount of water from the fountain, a cooler or 10-gallon plastic bottle is going wet your whistle enough to overcome a case of nerves before that callback, meeting with the director or producer, or life-changing performance opportunity.

Truly, the best way to deal with nerves is not to focus on them at all. Don’t expend good energy on trying to suppress something very normal. Accept nerves as part of your current condition.

Yeah, some singers go nutty with their water and throat sprays, lozenges, etc., because –at that point/by that time — it’s too late for them to treat the cause and they are now stuck treating the symptom.

How to avoid the cause?

Train your body to lead your voice, not your voice to lead your body.

Train athletically, incorporating your body into your voice, not just leaving your vocal cords to do all the heavy lifting.

Don’t think against yourself. Circumvent the mind by first training your spirit into your singing. The use of energy is crucial, whether you want to conquer a stage or a stadium.

Train body, spirit, voice in that order and the mind won’t be able to play the naughty tricks we like to play on ourselves.

Like talking ourselves out of our passion for singing, bringing up old wounds, rejections, resentments, criticism, childhood traumas… ferget ’em!

As in a 100 meter dash, when we train our voices athletically, nerves disappear at the sound of the starting pistol (or at the bell tone of our audition song). There can be no nerves, nor any awareness of nerves, when we are only focused on winning the race.

Interesting thing about learning how to sing and making it big and loud and round and warm and high and low and gorgeous and all…is, once we finally acheive that vocal apex, we have a tendency to forget what thrilled us about singing in the first place which, uh, “used to be” that direct, electrical and emotional connection between ourselves and our audience.

It was almost better when we didn’t know what we were doing, right?

Now we’re so good, we thrill ourselves every time we open our collective mouth.

We basically sing love songs to ourselves.

After all of our vocal working out, we now believe that a perfect voice is the perfect choice.

It’s not.

Someone may have a chiseled body defined by years of lifting weights and exercise, but if all they ever do is just stand there pointing out how great their lats, pecs, quads, etc. are, it gets pretty damn dull pretty quick, doesn’t it?

So why do we do that same thing as singers?

How many cabarets do we have to sit through with singers affecting emotion through vocal hi-jinks?

How about those musical theatre “actors” who stomp and knit their brow or scrunch up their face to show emotion?

(Yawn.)

We are singers. We sing the songs.

We can’t let the songs sing us.

If we “fake it,” all of us end up in Performance Hell where it’s more important to remember all the words and hit all the high notes. Fun, huh? The real drama on stage ends up being the game of catch-up we play with ourselves.

Not fun. Not dangerous enough.

Definitely not an artistic experience.

A live performance has to be electric.

Every time.

A live performer has to be present.

Consistently.

And a song is an ongoing journey that a singer takes the audience on.

Step by step by step.

Otherwise, the song sings the singer.

And we can’t have that, can we?

So what should we do?

1) Have fundamental, great technique;

2) Know our material upside down, inside out, backwards and forwards, fast, slow and in a foreign language if need be;

3) Get on stage, forget about 1 and 2 and focus on who you’re singing to and why you need to sing to them. Create the question, create the debate, make it a conversation and let it fly.