Sometimes better MT singing means cutting the line

Classical singers are often taught to make a beautiful continuous sound – no cutting the line here!

Quite right too. In a lot of repertoire, that is exactly what the music needs.

Then they walk into a contemporary musical theatre song and carry the same idea with them. Every word beautifully connected. Every vowel flowing into the next. Every note supported by the same sense of continuity.

And somehow the song stops sounding like a person talking.

I was working with a singer recently who had exactly this problem.

She was singing very well. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that the style wanted something more conversational. So we started breaking things.

Cutting the line

We identified the important words and allowed those to carry more weight. Some of the less important words became quieter.

Then we deliberately introduced little interruptions into the line. Not because glottal starts or broken phrasing are automatically “correct” for musical theatre. They aren’t.

It was an exercise designed to stop her doing the thing she did automatically. And sometimes an exercise needs to be exaggerated in order to reveal another possibility.

The result was immediate.

Cutting the line meant the text made more sense. The character became clearer. The performance felt less like beautifully sung words and more like a person having a thought.

That’s one of the reasons I dislike teaching style as though it is something we add after the technique is finished.

Style changes the technical task

If you want a phrase to behave like speech, you may need different choices about airflow, onset, volume, articulation and continuity. The “technically correct” version may actually make the stylistic job harder.

So if a contemporary song feels oddly stiff or over-sung, I wouldn’t automatically ask for more acting. I’d listen to the vocal behaviour first.

Is everything too smooth?
Too even?
Too connected?

Sometimes the way into the character isn’t to add more emotion.

Sometimes it’s to stop polishing and start cutting the line

 

If this blog makes you want to cut the line, book a genre and style session right away here