Author: Mark JW Graham

Christmas is nearly upon us and I find myself looking back on a year gone by, asking myself ‘did you achieve your musical dreams?

So, did you achieve your musical dreams for 2013? How about 2014?

Many exciting things have happened this year – from teaching students who got fast-tracked for the Voice, to teaching the lead singer for the Soul Sista Tina Turner experience, to beginning vocal coaching at AEDA Performing Arts Academy, winning Entrepreneur of the Year for Nottinghamshire, being on BBC Radio Nottingham, and more.

Here’s the funny thing…
But I’m not just a singing teacher, I’m also a singer. I’m a musician. And so at the end of the year, deep down, I think I’m less concerned with having a list of accolades from others and I think I’m more concerned about feeling I’ve progressed with my voice, my music, my general ability to make and coax music from others, as well as having achieved specific goals.

Here are the top three things I’m really pleased I’ve achieved musically this year… but also where I have to go next (keep thinking about ‘how you can achieve your musical dreams’ when reading this).

1) I can sing songs happily through my third bridge – For those of you who don’t know what bridges are, they are passageways in the voice that we all need to learn to navigate to get to higher notes (and conversely get down through to lower notes). I’ve had access to third bridge for a little while, but this year things have really settled down. It’s never easy for a guy to sing that high, but with practice it’s doable. I’m pleased because now I can actually sing words through there consistently… there’s nothing quite like singing a song your female student is struggling with to show them there’s NO reason they can’t do it!

Where next: I can control the volume, but the next step is to be able to take it down to whisper quiet volumes ala mesa di voce. Then I will feel truly in control of this part of my range.

2) I can now play piano better – I can teach well from a piano, but I am not an accompanist by trade. It’s an entirely different skill set. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in bettering my overall musicianship and teaching skills, so I set out to learn to play piano better. I can now get through various pieces with some basic ornamentation even on the fly when students bring in music, and I’m getting better all the time. It’s a wonderful skill to have, and it’s a rewarding instrument to play.

Where next: I can play basic pieces, but more complicated chord structures sometimes throw me… so the goal is to get more exposure to complex songs, and get more of these under my belt.

3) I can now write better songs – I’m not a prolific songwriter, but when I do have writing stints, I want to get better at being a songwriter. I’ve spent a lot of time this year honing my skills as a songwriter, and while it is not what I aim to earn money at doing, it is immensely useful to understand the commercial rules of writing songs to be able to craft songs that are accessible to others… this is also really useful when it comes to guiding students to writing more accessible songs. It’s not that we all have to write songs intended to be Radio #1’s, but we can all take a leaf out of hit songwriters books to understand how to write songs that really capture the ear and imagination of listeners, using those techniques to a greater or lesser extent.

Where next: I need to write MORE!… but I also need to decide how much of the commercial songwriting tools I understand and use in lessons are ones that I want to keep and use, and which ones I will choose to ignore. By doing this, I know I can create songs that are simultaneously accessible while being simultaenously unique to me.

So what about you? What did you achieve this year? What are you looking to achieve next year? How are you going to go about achieving those goals?

Do comment and lets get some discussion going!

Do you want to conquer stage fright when singing or performing generally?

So, I was having a chat with a fab student of mine on Friday night about how to conquer stage fright. Despite having a sickeningly good voice, and performing regularly, they still find the nerves knock them off balance whenever they perform – so, how to conquer stage fright is the question to answer! I have also been chatting over Twitter with one or two people who find then same problem. Sometimes it’s mild nerves, sometimes it outright destroys performances.

While chatting with my student in their lesson about this, I explained my approach to being on stage and dealing with stagefright.

Most people, when they speak to amateur performers or people who do public speaking a reasonable amount, about how to get over stage fright, they often tell them ‘look over their heads’, or ‘imagine them naked’, or ‘pretend they’re not there’… but I think that approach is flawed. In my opinion, the whole issue of stage fright stems from an overawareness of one-self. It stems from being way too aware of how one looks and sounds on stage. And by doing all of the above it reflects an inward acceptance that you look stupid on stage (which isn’t true!), and only buys into that mindset even further. This approach doesn’t dissolve the issue of stage-fright, it actually makes it MORE concrete, but tries to ‘deal with it’ by placing this imaginary stage-fright demon character on the sideline.

Instead, I advocate changing the focus. I advocate changing the focus not AWAY from the audience, but specifically focusing ON the audience. Yep, you read that right.

Focus ON the audience to conquer stage fright.

Follow me if you will.

When people go to watch a performance, they think they are there to watch the performer – i.e. this places the performer as the ‘subject’ of this situation. They will watch the performer sing, dance, jump around on stage, and they will watch eagerly for the stuff you do, and the audience will think that’s what they are there to do… and the performer thinks that is what the audience is there to do. The audience has specifically turned up to scrutinise your every move and observe every mistake you make *cue hyperventilation*

Well let me tell you, this is 100%…

WRONG

This sounds petrifying! Til you realise this is WRONG and is not what’s really going on.

Yes, the audience is watching you, but it is not what the true situation is. The watching of you stems from what the true situation is. The audience watches you, because THEY are the ones who are there to be entertained. They are not there just to watch someone, they are there to be entertained and ultimately ENGAGED by you.

Wait a minute…

…if they are there to be engaged by you, then that means THE AUDIENCE is the subject in this situation. They are the stars of the show! They have turned up wanting to be charmed, won over, entertained, brought up and brought down. It is not their job to watch you, it is YOUR job to entertain them.

How do you entertain someone? Well, unless you are a hermit, you’ve all had conversations with people, and you can probably remember some great conversations you’ve had with friends and family members.

Whenever you have a chat with someone, you naturally try to talk about topics you have in common, and you exchange lines of conversation with them. When you are in a group, you organically take turns to speak, you make eye contact, your tone rises and falls, topics change and the people you look at change depending on the conversation at hand. These are simple social tools you can use and weave into the way you perform songs in order to focus on and engage with an audience. Treat them like they are the participants in a musical conversation. Of course, you are doing most of the talking, but you know in any conversation when someone is bored and when you need to change your tone or topic of conversation.

How much do you hate it when people can’t look you in the eye when they talk to you? Or when you are talking to them and they keep checking their phone? Or when people zone out because they don’t understand what you’re saying. Don’t let the audience do these things, and certainly don’t do these things yourself when performing. These are the goals to focus on, because when you’re doing all these things, you don’t have the TIME to focus on yourself.

Simple tips:
1) Make eye contact with the audience – your goal is to hold their gaze
2) Address whole sentences and thoughts in the lyrics to specific audience sections – your goal is to make them understand what you’re saying
3) Treat it like you are telling a story in front of a group – your goal is to hold their attention

THIS is observing the rules for enjoyable social interaction nature when it comes to human nature, and you can capitalise on this when on stage.

Remember, although they are watching you, they are the real stars of show. If you focus on the audience in the same way as you would when holding a conversation with someone, focus ON them and make sure they are looking at you, then your focus CANNOT be on yourself. When you make your objective to hold people’s attention, the focus on yourself very quickly abates. By changing the focus, you completely castrate and neuter the power that stage fright stems from. By focusing on the audience, they focus on you, without ‘you’ having to focus on ‘you’!

The audience is the subject, and they are the star of the show. By focusing on the audience and being so tunnel-visioned on engaging them, you don’t worry about yourself. In doing so, you make them focus on you, and engage with you, which makes your performance all the more compelling.

So, when it comes to the psychology of singing, we have the emotionally over-sensitive camp, and the emotionally insensitive camp.

I’ve already highlighted that we need a balance, so where does the balance lie?

Here’s my take:

The problem with the over-sensitive camp is that it takes responsibility away from the singer, and stuff doesn’t get done – right?

And the problem with the insensitive camp is that it’s not respectful of how emotions affect our voices – right?

So here’s my advice and where I think the balance lies:

Be respectful of the fact that your emotions affect your voice… and sing anyway.

If you fall prey to the whole ‘my emotions hold the key, so I gotta solve them’ camp mentality, then you will go round and round and round in circles trying to fix an issue that may not even have an answer! And all the while you’re not actually singing, let alone enjoy singing and getting better at it.

If you fall prey to the whole ‘my emotions are my weakness, gotta ignore them’ you’ll end up just as frustrated… or worse, not even ENJOY singing because you’ve taken the joy out of it! Don’t do either of these things.

Respect and appreciate your emotions are always going to be a part of your voice… AND SING ANYWAY!

How do you do this?

Simple – set aside 20 minutes every other day or even just once a week just to sing through your favourite songs in their entirety.

Don’t second guess yourself while you’re doing it, don’t stop yourself, just keep going. Don’t try to work out whether you sound awful, or better or worse than last time, just do it, and enjoy it.

What?! Why should I do this? Why do you think I should ignore trying to figure out the ‘why’ behind my emotional state?

Because I don’t think worrying about the why will ACTUALLY benefit you in the long wrong (plenty of studies out there on the misapplication of worry). Like my blog article on the Quickest Route to Your Goal, I think there is a far quicker and more practically applied route to enjoying singing and unlocking the clamp that your emotions have on your voice. And I’ve got science to back me up! (that’s right! actual science!).

Scientific studies are plastered all over our newspaper and news sites week after week about the physical benefits of singing on our minds, how it releases endorphins that make us feel good (the same way exercise does), how it reinforces new neural pathways in our brains and can even rewire the brain. This stuff happens whether you want it to or not – it’s a biological response to the act of singing (in particular singing in groups).

So if you’re feeling down, and you start singing, you’ll release endorphins and feel better. If you do this regularly you’ll start to reinforce this behaviour in your mind and body and associate singing with feeling good. Speaking from my own experience, this can really alter your whole outlook on life and result in you being mentally empowered to actually change the circumstances that you earlier believed were holding you back from singing.

Just. Sing.

The take-home message I want you to absorb is this: just sing.

Stop over-analysing why the mess you find yourself in today is affecting your ability to hit that particular high note with power and clarity. Stop second guessing yourself or thinking that you’ve got to fix your life to fix your voice. It’s a tension we all have to live with. If we want to be better singers we need to take control of our voices, and simultaneously have fun with them.

Respect the fact that your emotions affect your voice… and sing anyway.

RETURN TO PART 1

Many people ask me about the psychology of singing…

…in particular they ask about the psychology of singing by way of posing the question: ‘do you think your emotions affect your ability to sing?’

The answer is obviously yes, and there’s virtually no-one who’d disagree with this. There’s also lots of content out there on the internet that discusses the nature of the emotional battle. But in true Mark Graham fashion, I want more than just a discussion out of it. I want to know what the ‘take-home message’ is from all this discussion about the psychology of singing… and I rarely see a discussion about it that I feel gives a single useable conclusion for singers to take home and use in an effective way to help them with their voices.

This blog post is not intended to be definitive on this topic, but to share a little bit about my own views on this and to hopefully give some helpful pointers for those who perhaps feel their emotions are to blame for their voices not doing what they want them to do.

Q: Are our voices affected by our emotions? A: yes!

Why? Simple.

Wait. No. Ridiculously complicated.

To the point that I think it is fruitless to answer the ‘why’ – because you can’t. And you can spend more time arsing about over the why, than actually fixing the issue in the first place. What I’m going to address is why this question is a colossal waste of time and asking it and trying to ‘solve it’ is not the best use of your time or energy.

The Two Camps

There are often two ‘camps’ that singers, musicians, and singing teachers fall into:

1) The Emotionally Over-sensitive
We all know these sorts of singers or this teacher. They are the ones who say you’ve just got to ‘feel’ everything. It’s not your fault you can’t sing at the moment – it’s because your boyfriend/girlfriend left you, it’s because things are tough at work, it’s because it’s raining and you feel down – emotions affect your voice and that’s why you can’t sing at the moment.’ I also encounter students who are having a particularly tough time at the moment and they feel this is affecting their singing ability.

Regardless of the how or why, those in this camp pseudo-psycho-analyse EVERYTHING to pin why their voice isn’t behaving just so on something (something I’ve been guilty of in the past). While I’ve already acknowledged I think that emotions affect our voices and how we sing, I think that this polarised view is way too extreme.

The issue as I see it with the over-sensitive camp, is that stuff never ACTUALLY gets done.

There’s always another excuse hiding under the duvet waiting to take us down when we deal with the last big issue. I’m not disputing that sometimes some of us are in some really rubbish situations (believe me I’ve been in some bad situations myself, suffering from prolonged severe clinical depression on more than one occasion) and that this can affect your voice.

However, at it’s core, the underlying mentality of this camp is (in my opinion) fundamentally broken and unuseable for singers – why?

Because it’s core mantra is ‘you can’t do anything about it, you can’t help it’ – it takes responsibility for own voices out of our hands and says it’s all down to just chance and how you’re feeling. The mantra of this group is practically leads to the conclusion that you need a perfect life to be able to sing unhindered.

This is not only wrong, but I believe it’s a lie.

The Emotionally In-sensitive
There are fewer of these ones about, but they still exist. They are the ones who get cross with other singers for missing notes or forgetting lyrics, because, after all the voice is an instrument like any other – they should just be able to do these things on demand. Typically, these sorts of people are either not dedicated singers themselves, or are teachers so focused on technique for the sake of technique they cannot (or fail to) empathise with the struggles of singers (something I’ve been guilty of in the past as well).

Now, as a singing teacher (and – dare I say it! – a bloke!) I would say I fall ever so slightly on the side of being emotionally insensitive. However this extreme is also wrong and totally disrespectful of how much more the vocal instrument is affected by emotions.

The issue as I see it with this camp, is that it is not respectful of how the emotions affect the voice

Like the first camp, I think that this second camp is also a fundamentally broken mentality to have. By being bullish and harsh with singers who are perhaps struggling, even ourselves, we are ignorant of the obvious fact that how a singer is feeling will affect their voice. Shout at a singer and get them worked up (this can even be yourself), and I can guarantee the resultant anger or sadness will manifest in their voice.

Try and drill that emotional response out of a singer and you end up with a flat performance. While emotions can wreak havoc on our voices, it is the simultaneously the biggest benefit to a singer – our emotions and use of that in our voice allows us to connect with our voices on a far more instinctual level when singing a song than playing any other instrument. On top of this, our emotions allow us to connect far more powerfully with listeners than any other instrument.

To neuter the emotional element of singing by repeatedly instructing someone/yourself to ‘get over it, leave your emotional baggage at the door’ over and over will either break a singer, or leave them devoid of emotion in their singing. Both bad scenarios!

OK, we’ve got two extremes – so where’s the balance?

Let us send you part two so you can find out for yourself. Rest assured your email is secure, and we will never give your email to anyone.

 

Submit