Improve your singing by becoming a great actor. Inside this video I’ll help you improve your singing with acting.
Improve Your Singing by Becoming a Great Actor
Hi I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing.
Learn From Great Actors
As a singer you want to connect with people. You want to excite, motivate and inspire your audience the moment they they hear you sing. How do you do that the next time you sing?
You act. Yes act.
Great actors become the person they’re portraying. They think, act, speak, walk, even breath like the character. The actor immerses him/herself into the character’s life and becomes that person. As they perform they listen to every word spoken to them and react to the words and emotions of other characters around them.
The actor finds hidden meanings, motivations and relationships within themselves and with others in the story. They begin feeling the fears, hopes, hatred, desperation, heart ache, elation, conflict and the love that their character is experiencing.
The actor is transformed into that person. Then we’re able to connect to them and experience their life on a deeply emotional level. Often we’re forever changed by it.
Here’s an acting moment that moved me. Notice how the music makes it even better. Warner Brothers Blocked my first video, Chariots of Fire. Here’s another one from It’s a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart.
Improve Your Singing by Becoming a Great Actor
You can improve your singing immediately by becoming a great actor.
- Solidify your singing technique so you never have to think about it when you’re singing. Take lessons and practice.
- Memorize the lyrics of your song. Internalize their meaning to you. If you can’t relate, make a story up in your mind that means something to you.
- Answer these questions: Who’s singing this song? What are they like? What do they love? What do they hate? Who are they singing to? What is it they want from the other person? What to they want for themselves? What emotions are they feeling in the song? Sad? Happy? Broken hearted? Love?
- Analyze the lyrics…each word…and find meaning to you. Forget yourself and share the story of this song.
- Place yourself in this person’s life. Have you felt these things before? When? Why? What happened to cause that in your life? Relive the experience in your song. The more fully you can feel and experience the greater the feeling will be when you sing.
- Read the Book “Audition” by Michael Shurtleff. It’s a great book about auditions and acting and it will improve your singing. For example, Shurtleff says:
“The most important element in singing at auditions is not the forming of sound but the creation of a relationship…
Most singers don’t which is why they are dull and lifeless, concerned as they are with making notes and pear-shaped vowel sounds. Audiences are concerned far less with the quality of voices than with the emotional life that is being created. The great singers of popular music are not those with the greatest voices but those who know how to communicate feeling….(Audition; Michael Shurtleff, Bantam Books, 1980, pp.205-206)
This is one of the fastest ways to improve your singing. By becoming a great actor you find meaning and emotion in the song. If you’re feeling it, we’re feeling it too. That’s when we say “Wow, that was amazing!”
Here’s one caution: You must not go so far into the emotions that you lose control. For example, if I start crying when I’m singing my larynx goes through the ceiling and my vocal cords shut down. Some people can sing and cry. I can’t. Monitor yourself so your performance is better, not worse.
Vocal Type
The first step in number 1 above was to solidify your singing technique. To help you do that learn your vocal type at PowerToSing.com. Take that the vocal test which I call the PowerTest and then take the quiz and discover your vocal type.
Visit the Knowledge Center and watch the videos about your vocal type and download the free exercises. Practice these exercises for your vocal type. They’re designed to help you progress so you don’t have to think about technique while you’re singing and performing.
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I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing. You can sing higher with beauty, confidence and power. I’ll see you inside the next video.
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