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One of the hardest fears to overcome is stage fright. It plagues singers and actors of all ages, experience levels, and abilities. And while there are lots of mental tricks to help you (picture the audience in their underwear...), there really is no better way to confront your fear in singing in public than by....wait for it...singing in public!
However, there are ways to tilt the odds in your favor. Choosing WHERE you sing in public can help boost your confidence by giving you a friendly audience to perform in front of. As a voice teacher, I create vocal recitals for all my voice students, so they can perform in front of their fellow students and peers who want them to succeed. Another venue to sing at are as a soloist or chorister in church. Church audiences are probably the most friendly audience you could have as a musician. Since you are volunteering and most churches cannot afford professional musicians except on special occasions, the vast majority of the church will LOVE you, regardless of how well you sing. Trust me - I've sung many solos in front of my churches and always get wonderful compliments even when I know I did not sing to the best of my ability! Another factor in reducing stage fright is picking the right music. In singing lessons, your voice teacher tries to stretch your abilities and improve your vocal range, resonance and tone quality. But when you perform in public, you should always go with the music that you could sing the minute you wake up and get out of bed. That doesn't necessarily mean easy; rather, you should sing music that you know backwards and forwards and have no concerns about your ability to sing the song well under pressure. I can think of no worse feeling than going to a concert not being ABSOLUTELY SURE of my music...that is scary for anyone! DWS Belting is a vocal technique that women use for musical theater. Anatomically, it involves women using primarily the thyroarteynoid muscle to create higher pitches, as opposed to the cricothyroid (in voice lesson speak - TA dominance). In layman’s terms, belting extends women’s chest voice higher than traditional vocal technique.
I always joke with my choir students that belting throws out all the rules they learned in choir. In singing lessons, we traditionally teach women to extend their head voices (cricothyroid dominant) throughout their range. Voice teachers ask for taller vowels to create more resonance. And we encourage a rich, deep tone quality in singing lessons. All those rules go out the window when you belt. Instead of primarily using the head voice, belting asks women to stay in their chest voice as long as possible. Belting also encourages “spread” vowels and a brighter, more forward vocal placement than in normal voice lesson instruction. For past generations of voice teachers, belting was typically discouraged. Older voice teachers tend to believe that belting was somehow harmful or dangerous, when the facts are that belting is only harmful if you are using bad vocal technique. The reality is any singing can be harmful if you don’t sing with proper technique! As a singing instructor, I don’t have those biases and enjoy working with women on their belting technique. It’s a fun and exciting way to sing and gives singers a more versatile palette to create a character. Belting, in the end, becomes as much as an acting choice as it is a vocal choice. It works for some characters and not for others in musical theater. The job of the voice teacher is to understand when belting is appropriate and when it is not. DWS |
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