Singing Tips Using Drama
Learning to Sing Is Aided by Gesture, Movement and Posture
Vocal training is often more effective if it uses the whole body expressively. Try these singing techniques that use dramatic posture, movement and gesture.
Learning to sing is learning to use your body. The voice is an instrument, not just a sound, and the instrument is your body. So use singing techniques that consciously involve your body fully and freely. Gestures and body-movement are valuable tools in music education, especially if combined with imagination. This approach works well with children and can be adapted to benefit adult singers too. Try some of the suggestions below in your singing lessons.
Let Hands Lead Your Vocal Training
- Put your two index fingers each side of your mouth to remind your lips that they should open vertically rather than horizontally. This helps to produce a more resonant tone.
- It’s nothing new, but clapping the beat, or the off-beats, or even short rhythmic phrases is a tried-and-true way of energising vocal music. If wanting to place emphasis on just a few specific notes, try hammering an imaginary table with your fist.
- Good singing uses the muscles of the abdomen for support, especially in the high register (or “head voice”). Your hands can remind your body to do this. As you sing higher notes put your cupped hands in front of you at a level just below the navel, as if holding up a bag of groceries.
- In your warm-up exercises try singing a single note to a single vowel-sound (e.g. “ah”), beginning softly, then swelling to loud and finally dying away. Simultaneously, use your two hands in front of you to direct your voice. Begin with them together, and then slowly move them up and apart and down and back together again. You might pretend you are tracing the outline of a “love heart”. For breath control it may be best to keep the hands at belly level.
- A generous, warm sound can result from gently extending your hands out in front of you as if offering a gift to your best friend or food to starving people.
Learning to Sing with Your Feet
Stepping can help you to engage your whole body in singing, especially at the start of your practice. March on the spot to 4/4 or 2/4 time. For 3/4 songs tap your toe on the floor for the first beat in the bar as you simultaneously sway a little to that side. This works well for 6/8 too, although the feeling might be better if you lean a little forward on the first beat and a little backward on the fourth. (Of course to do this safely you should have one foot slightly in front of the other – a stance that makes for good singing anyway!)
Some songs have a pattern in the music or text that lends itself to some emphasis on the beginnings of phrases. You might find it helpful to step on the first beat of a phrase. The result may be a movement from side to side or forwards and backwards. A four-phrase melody could be accompanied by stepping in a square pattern.
Make Singing Lessons a Drama
Certain songs invite more complex sequences of movement or even role-playing to act out their mood or text. The Ghost of Tom, a traditional folk song, is a round in a minor key which lends itself to a series of gestures. Have you heard the ghost of Tom? is the first phrase, so you might cup an ear to listen and then point in awe at the spectre floating past. Finger tips trace the arm of an imaginary skeleton as you sing long white bones with the skin all gone. The third phrase is an extended, eerie oooo, at which you hold your hands in front of you, palms outwards, to ward off the horror. Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on? is the final phrase, when you can hug yourself in cold insecurity.
The song William (in Catch a Song, D. Hoerman & D. Bridges, 1985 and reprinted later) is excellent for exploration of timbre, tempo and tone in the voice – particularly with younger children. The song introduces William’s friends, each described by a single adjective – thin, fat, tall, short, straight, bent, and slow. Ask youngsters to find for each character an appropriate timbre, tempo, or tone that illustrates the dominant personality trait. Thus singing “Mr Lin was very thin” could use a narrow mouth-opening and reedy voice, while Mr Hort who was “very short” may deserve staccato notes. This is great fun and holds a wealth of potential learning for all – even the teacher perhaps!
If you grasp the basic concept of this technique, use it to develop devices of your own. Putting the body and drama into your singing lessons makes vocal training not only more effective but more fun as well!
