If we genuinely meant what we sang – it would be so easy. If we genuinely need to express ourselves or a specific perspective in order to be understood, many technical problems disappear. The key, I believe is to be emotionally honest and connected – being ‘in tune’ with your emotions.
Sadly, our culture doesn’t look favourably on being ‘emotional’ and tends to be reticent in allowing people their passions and expressing their feelings or opinions. Singing however requires us to be emotionally honest with ourselves – and an audience (even when telling someone else’s story or playing a character).
Though our hearts may be dying to release emotions and sing, the mind (and ego) often disagrees. Our mind will decree that some emotions are best unexpressed (anger, jealousy) and will accordingly sabotage our expression with body tension. Examples being: choked with emotion, holding your tongue, tight-chested, knots in the stomach, tight-lipped, poker-faced and taking it on the chin.
Songs that deal with emotions judged ‘bad’, and especially our originals, tend to be sung with more throat constriction, frozen facial expressions, mumbling the words, excess push or breathiness to denote, exaggerate or superimpose emotional responses instead of actually feeling them.
Inversely, singing isn’t simply a matter of confidence and intent. Being good at something through diligent practice grows confidence. Having a well-tuned and optimally functioning instrument (with aligned posture, open cavities for resonance, focus and flexibility) gives us the mechanism with which to freely and articulately express ourselves, without putting people off with vocal difficulties and affectation. I’ve never had to fake an emotion in my life. Why would singing be any different?
As singers, the ‘stuff’ we work with/and in, to do our job is emotion, much the same way as a builder’s ‘stuff’ is: wood, concrete or bricks. Historically, we sang to express how we felt: sadness with the blues, ecstasy with songs of worship, anger with workers’ struggle/union songs. These days, singing has lost some of its traditional function as an expressive outlet, and can become an emotionally disconnected and purely ‘technical’ activity (or commodity). We should feel as fluent and free singing our truth as speaking it.
We may consider emotions ‘overwhelming’, a black hole or a dark well into which we could fall down and may never re-emerge from. Because of this, and other deep-seated fears, we repress feelings (especially big bad ones!) as they’re deemed too honest, too raw and make us feel ‘out of control’. We may distrust feelings of uncertainty. But that is where improvisation comes from – learning to feel safe in the unknown.
Singing, thankfully, is cathartic – a safe place to release and express emotions. There is nothing to fear. Emotions are the colour in life (even though this ‘Prozac nation’ contains, sanitizes and dulls down emotional extremes). We can, and must draw from ‘The Well’ (the stomach – the seat of emotions and our stored emotional history) to successfully ‘emote’. When we sing with heart, we use open-ness so that tension doesn’t prevent access to ‘the well’s wonderful source of connection, reference and inspiration.
I conceptualize ‘The Well’ as pure, accessible and limitless. Coincidentally, the belly is where we breathe, stabilize and support our sound from. Both ‘breathing’ and ‘emotions’ are controlled by the same part of the brain. Breath control allows us to gain greater emotional control the same way that calmness slows and steadies our breathing.
Imagine that your entire body is your ‘heart’. The body is a very accurate emotional compass (e.g. someone making our skin crawl, getting goose-bumps). We sing with our whole body, so why not make it your whole heart/body as well?
Music, like other art-forms, follows trends. A crooners’ laconic, laid back delivery gives way to the tonal fashion of ‘fraught and overblown’. Would you sing a tender love song as if you were constipated or dying? Does anger always raise the voice? Or can it become a seething, intense quietness? Allow the ‘little’ or more complex emotional responses as you go. Don’t be judgmental or consider emotions ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
There is a hugely diverse spectrum of emotional colour: 117 different core emotions (according to Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence) and so many subtleties and variants therein. We don’t pre-empt or fix emotions in speech, so don’t limit yourself this way when singing. Respond to what you are singing – in the moment – it will carry you. Take yourself through the process in ‘real time’ by relating to the words – sing it as you would speak it (communication is 7% words, 38% intonation and 55% body language!)
We instinctively hear if someone is emotionally honest – emotional states are contagious. Make sure you know how you feel about a song. No one can tell you how you ‘should’ feel about something. We must learn to sing, think, and feel for ourselves. No one can sing, think or feel for us.
If you’re singing an emotional rollercoaster of a song, or at a funeral or in an emotionally charged context – ride and allow your feelings – don’t hold them in or fight them. I find it useful to sing through these songs repeatedly in order that you gain a handle on the narrative. The skill is to work with, or ‘surf’ how you’re feeling rather than shutting down or masking. Let your entire body feel it.