13 Mar Top 10 Tips For a Better Performance
Original Article Found On: Making Music Mag (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)
Author: Mark Bosnian
- Know Your Song – have the words memorized and have 2 or 3 emotions that you want to evoke when you sing. Trying to sing with emotion is hard when you don’t know whichemotion(s) to use. “Knowing your motivation” will help you connect to the audience.
- Use Dynamics – nothing says boring like a song that sounds the same from beginning to end. You have to change up the volume, the intensity, the tone and all other vocal elements to keep people engaged. Accent key words in each line by make them different—louder/softer, brighter/darker vowel color, staccato/legato, etc.
- Sing To Your Audience, Not At Them – split the audience into quadrants and sing to each quadrant for a few seconds. Even if you’re not making eye contact with every single person it will look and feel as if you’re singing to each audience member. Your voice goes where your eyes go—don’t close your eyes a lot or look over people’s heads. Look us in the eye for a few seconds and you’ll win our hearts.
- Make Friends With Your Belly – learn how to use Bosnian Belly Breathing™ and “sing from the diaphragm”. It is difficult to create a flow when you sing or speak if we can see your shoulders lifting up and down and hear you sucking in air. Knowing how Nature intends for us to breathe and make sound will make a huge impact on your control and confidence.
- Be an Intentional Singer Not a Hopeful One – by learning to choose numbers on a scale of 1 to 10 you’ll be able to give your body specific directions about volume, tone, etc. You can move from saying to yourself, “I hope this comes out sounding good”, to “I need a 6 power to sing the high note the way I want”.
- Turn Off Your Vocal Defense Mechanism – you have a mechanism in your subconscious that tries to protect you from embarrassing yourself when you perform. By learning what triggers it, you can stop it from sabotaging your performance.
- Make It Your Own – borrow from the best singers but don’t imitate. Take elements of what great singers do and combine them in your singing—you’ll create your own recognizable style.
- Tell The Story of Your Song – almost all singers obsess about being in tune or forgetting the words. If you put your intention on telling the story of the song instead of trying to “sound good”, the audience won’t pay attention to the imperfections.
- If You Don’t Show It, They Won’t Know It –if you don’t react to a mistake no one will notice it. Practice making a mistake and continuing as if nothing happened and this will become second nature.
- Make A Move, Make a Connection – shift your weight from foot to foot, take a step forward or to the side, change the position of your hands or your body—movement is the key to looking confident on stage.