Two singers may be singing the same song with the same musical arrangement and yet, one singer delivers the song with such feel, passion and gusto that get the teary eyed audience clapping away non stop whilst the other singer just belts out the song to a bored audience. Guess who will be the superstar and who will always be the mediocre singer? Why is this so?
To most people, good singing simply means just memorizing the lyrics and hitting the correct notes without going out of key. If a singer can just do that and is blessed with a "good singing voice", then this singer will have great potential in his/her singing career.
Well, if it is just that simple, then many of us will have great potential as a singing superstar but that obviously isn't the case, isn't it?
Do remember that although some famous singers are born with a good voice, all of them will have to be trained to capitalize on their voices to take them to the maximum distance their voices can go. The other less fortunate who are not blessed with a "natural good singing voice" will have to take more vocal lessons and training to develop it. In other words, to develop voice quality and to sing well requires scientific as well as artistic vocal training whether you are a superstar potential or not.
Since the title of this article is about how to sing with feel, passion and emotion of a superstar, we will only touch on this topic although there are many many more factors to good singing.
Often overlooked by singers, singing is all about communication. You are telling a story or delivering a message to your audience in a musical tone instead of giving a lecture or reading poetry.
For example, when a speaker delivers a speech, the bad speaker will deliver the speech in a deadpan manner or worse, reading off a prepared script. A good speaker will be full of life, punctuating his speech with emotion and passion, using a soft delicate voice to coax sympathy and an authoritative firm voice to capture attention or to inspire. Sometimes the good speaker speaks slowly to get his point across and then speak quickly to inject urgency into his message.
Now, good singing is not just about having a good voice, it is about how you convey your message to the audience that they not only be able feel you, identify with your lyrics but have an emotional reaction to your singing too!
It is because of this reason, before you put musical tone to your lyrics, you will have to read the lyrics out loud and then phrase the lyrics with cadences as if you are telling a story. Imagine yourself as the character in the lyrics, and immerse yourself in the position of the character so that you can feel the emotions of the character, so that you can capture how the character would feel if he/she were singing the song instead of you.
After which, you will then to sing in the musical notes. At this point, you will be able to sing with feeling and emotion with a passion for the song. This is the time when you decide when do you want to hold the notes a little longer to achieve a desired effect or when to sing faster, softer or louder.
When you are able to do this, along with other good vocal techniques, with every song that you sing, you will be known as a singer who is able to capture the feel, emotion and the passion of songs and this skill alone will put you way streets ahead of other singers who simply just belt out the lyrics. |
