I was having a chat with a local artist recently about developing vocal style and development of artistry. One of the topics that came up was about learning new things and expanding one’s palette of available musical ideas, genres, musical phrasing etc. The whole point of doing so is to expand and grow one’s musical vocabulary and knowledge, to understand more of the nuances to the musical landscape than we did previously.
Let’s call this element of style exploration: “expansion“.
Expansion is invaluable, because it expands your knowledge, your vocabulary, etc. Many amateur musicians fail to expand their musical knowledge and forever hover around the same few ideas, but most musicians do tend to understand the importance of expanding musical vocabulary and knowledge.
On the flip-side, something that isn’t often discussed is the idea of focusing in and niching down on such components. Instead of just endlessly adding new things, we’ve got to start to home in on some of those new ideas and turn them into something…
Let’s call this element of style exploration: “contraction“.
As discussed above, to develop musical facility we need to expand our music knowledge – “expansion”. This is what stops us saying the same two or three musical phrases we start with over and over again. But if music is a language, at some point we need to divert our focus away from just learning new words for the sake of new words, and we have to say something useful and meaningful with those words – “contraction”.
Most of us have a friend who has great vocabulary but perhaps has very little of substance to actually say. In reality, most of us use a remarkably narrow selection of words in our day to day language, and even those with a wide vocabulary don’t use the most extreme words they know every day. The greatest speakers, artists, creators, etc, continually strive for new information, then pare it back so as to integrate it into what they are already doing – this is the nature of expansion and contraction.
We must expand our style, but then also start to contract around certain musical points in our expanded musical map. This is what helps to crystallise those new ideas into something that is both musical, and also representative of our own personal preferences/stylistic sensibilities. THIS is what makes for a compelling development of style, rather than ending up with a frenetic or patchwork collection of stylistic elements that randomly appear in sequence.
A side note:
This whole concept is heavily linked with an article I’ve previously written on ‘putting in the reps’. Its far too easy to learn a song such that we complete it ONCE, then move on to something else. Instead, it’s invaluable to go deep into the things you do well, and create a narrow but very nuanced vocabulary around those points.
Learn More: Related Articles
If you want to learn more about vocal style, you may enjoy these related articles:
Style vs Hyper-style: An analysis of Modern Vocal Style
Learn to riff: why it’s easier than you think
Why singing is like clothing
Double check your musical diet
Styling songs: 3 versions of the same song
Why do singers resort to gimmicks to get noticed?