Speak the Truth
This week's post is an article from guest blogger Jim Dix. Jim is a Florida singer, trumpet player, and teacher. If you are in Florida and looking for voice or performance coaching, I recommend contacting him.
To make a song live and breathe, speak the lyrics.
Speak the lyrics of the song when learning a song (even if it’s your own original song) and check back in with this practice periodically. Speak them freely, as you would in a conversation.
This puts the meaning of the song in a context that is unsupported by melody or harmony. Speak it so that the lyrics communicate meaningfully through spoken voice alone. Connecting to the core meaning or feeling of the song like that brings you into a place where you’re really speaking from the heart or telling a story when you sing, as opposed to just singing a lot of notes with words attached.
Speaking the song also frees your phrasing from the rhythmic cadence of the rhyme scheme. It’s OK to use that cadence, but being unbound by it will yield phrasing that is conversational, natural, and fresh. You don’t generally repeat the same patterns of emphasis and rhythm in your day to day speech, right? So a conversational approach will tend to have a spontaneous and genuine delivery, which may vary naturally with every performance.
This approach will also aid in keeping a more relaxed and healthy vocal technique. Think about how much tension you have in your tongue, neck, and jaw while talking with your friends. Not much, right? That’s how relaxed it should be.
Next, speak the lyrics and add tone. It doesn’t even have to be the melody of the song. In fact, it’s probably better if it’s not. Just something to get you making tonal phonation while speaking the lyrics.
Finally, speak the lyrics over the melody, retaining the kinds of inflections and phrasing you used when speaking them without music.
Bring lyrics to life by speaking them to yourself. Make them live for your audience by speaking them in song.
Copyright 2010 Jim Dix
(c) 2010 Adrienne Osborn
Adrienne Osborn is a vocalist and performance coach based in Colorado. For more free articles and tips, visit http://PerformanceHigh.net.
Adrienne Osborn
Reader Comments (4)
Jim and Adrienne, thank you!
That's the kind of advice I needed, right at this time.
Just a question: I have tons of lyrics I wrote but did not use in any song. If I use Jim's technique, can it create melodic ideas, or at least "unlock" ideas?
Defniitely! Take the melodic pattern of your speech and fit it into the key of the song. Where your voice rises in speech, find higher pitches. Where it lowers in speech, find lower pitches. I have the feeling you already knew this, though.... :) hmmm?
I had a bit of an idea of it but no words to describe it. Wait, I will be able to...
Adrienne...I don't know how to thank you.
Oh, and recording myself should help too!