Part I

Acting 101 for Singers: Day 1, Topic 5

Have you ever gotten up to perform only to realize you don’t know what you are supposed to do with your body? You try to do what you think you have seen other people do, but it just feels like an awkward first day where you are trying to act calm, cool, and collected, but you are anything but that. This type of performance isn’t pleasant for anyone. After these instances, the first three questions most acting coaches will ask are “Who are you?”, “Where are you?” and “who are you talking to?” Inevitably the performer then looks stunned and confused as if they are waking up from a coma and don’t know who or where they are.

Who are you? Where are you? Who are you talking to?

These may seem like rudimental questions. And at the start, basic answers to these questions will serve as a beginning. In the long run, though, we need better answers to these questions. If I ask, “Who are you?” how would you answer? Then if I wasn’t satisfied with the driver’s license type of information and wanted you to tell me who you truly are, what would you say? What is it that makes you the unique person you are?

The better you are at identifying who you are as an individual, the better you will find your character and how they are unique. Keep asking “Why?” and “What does that mean?”. Try to dig to the center of who you are and what makes you tick. Then, do the same thing for your character. To identify a person also requires that you note who they are at a specific moment. Are you constantly the same person moment to moment? Of course not. We are creatures of change and evolution. You can talk about yourself in terms of things that are true all the time, most of the time, some of the time, or none of the time. Be careful not to get sucked into labeling someone (including yourself) with a trait that is not so much a constant as a continuum you slide along.

Where are you? It does mean physical location, but it can also mean so many other things. How does this character view themselves concerning their city, state, country, world, or universe?

Who are you talking to? Break down how your character views this other person they are talking to. If they are talking to themselves, break down how the person is viewing themselves at that moment. Which version of themselves are they seeing? Whether you are talking to yourself, another person on stage, or an imaginary character, you have to have a clear idea of who that other person is and where they are in physical relation to you. If they are imaginary and supposed to be in your head, I would suggest taking them out of your head and placing them in front of you in your imagination. When you are practicing, use a real person or an object to act as a placeholder so that you can learn where their eyes would be, what it feels like to communicate with someone at that distance, and what their reactions would be to what you are saying.

The process of exploration and discovery

Though we often teach in education as if there is one correct answer, that usually isn’t the case in the arts. The goal is to find the right fit for you. The key to making actual progress is making decisions and amending those decisions until you arrive at something that feels true and genuine. Invest in a good pencil and an even better eraser.

The biggest pitfalls for a performer is that they either have too many options and not enough decisions made, are waiting for someone to tell them what to do, or are just running on natural charisma and talent. None of which are good enough to produce quality work consistently.

“What is the right answer” vs. “What are the best questions”

Stop looking for the “right” answer and instead focus on asking the best questions and exploring the possibilities. Explore what could be and not worry about what should be. What is the performance you would want to watch? That is the performance you should be trying to create!

Do the “Who am I paper” 1.0!

This is a paper that could and should get amended regularly. It’s a living document that is a worksheet for you to discover how you identify yourself and what you think makes you who you are. Try it out!

Assignments:

Writing Assignment 0: Choose your performance projects

Writing Assignment 1: Marked Up Score 1.0

Writing Assignment 3: The “Who am I” Paper 1.0

Links to other articles in Acting 101 for Singers Day 1

Topic 6: Boxes – What does the Music Have to Say About Dramatic Change?

Topic 7: Lines – It’s about stress!

Topic 8: Arrows – Pinning Down Where Ideas Shift

Topic 9: Circles – Finding the music that we have to move to

Topic 10: Where does imagination come from?

If you are one of my university students mark up the song you chose for your first performance project and bring it to class to hand in when this is due.

If you are not one of my university students I highly recommend this as a great way to take your performance from amateur to professional.

Assignment

Mark up a copy of the sheet music for the song you are working on with the following elements talked about in this section:

Translation – If it is in a foreign language or if there are unusual or unknown words you must translate the text word for word and understand what it means. We didn’t talk about translation as its own topic in this section. It is a much larger topic that to cover well would take us beyond the scope of this course.

Lines & Xs

Circles

Arrows

Boxes

Here is an example of what this might look like:

Common Mistakes

1. Writing in pen. Don’t do it! Find a pencil and a good eraser.
2. Writing in the original music. Don’t do it! Get a good clean copy to use as a worksheet. This piece of music will have writing all over it by the time we are done. Keep your original copy nice and clean so you can use it to copy other worksheet versions in the future.

Reminder

You will be doing this for each of the songs we work on this semester and adding even more to these scores after future lessons. Make sure you are doing this work on a clean copy that is separate from the clean copy you will hand your accompanist and the clean copy you will want to keep for voice lessons. So, 3 copies of the same piece (1 clean copy for the pianist, 1 that you are using as a worksheet and will mark up, 1 clean copy for your future reference and use).

Acting 101 for Singers: Day 1, Topic 7

What is it that makes someone sound so expressive when they talk? What is it that makes someone sound so musical when they sing? It all comes down to natural accents and word stress. Here is how to make your vocal expression more dynamic and captivating.

What are natural accents?

The easiest way to identify which syllables and words should be stressed is to speak the text until it sounds like everyday conversation. If you are singing in a language that isn’t your native language, or even if it is, and you aren’t clear, then either consult a native speaker or more language savvy person if it is a sentence or a dictionary if it’s just a word. 

Identifying word stress?

If a word or syllable gets spoken louder, longer, or higher pitched, it is a sign that you probably have a stressed word or syllable on your hands.

Lines – write down your accent and stress decisions.

Underline the stressed syllable(s) in multi-syllabic words. The key to singing these as stressed syllabi isn’t so much about making these syllables louder, as much as it is making the syllables around them softer. It is also about stealing a bit of time from words that are not underlined and giving it to the stressed syllables and important words.

X Marks the spot

Next, we will mark an “X” above the most important words in the phrase. These are words we would highlight in a sentence if we were only speaking the text as well. Often a good composer will make these words longer, louder, higher, or in some other way make them stand out from the words around them. If we choose the right words, then we should be able to read them in sequence and get the basic meaning of the song. When we mark the X, we are going to organize them in relative importance. The higher we place the X in the blank space above the work then the more important that word is. The word or syllable at the climax will get an X with a box around it. Doing this, we diagram the basic shape of each phrase and the overall flow and shape of the song. If you are confused, then check out the example and it should make more sense.

Here is an example of how it could look.

Practice it

1. Take the time to speak through the text until you get each phrase so it feels and sounds natural. Be deliberate about what words you are wanting to accent.
2. It might be confusing and frustrating at the start. Be patient and get help. It gets easier the more you spend time doing it.
3. Don’t skip this. You will be amazed at how much more expressive and clear you will be after taking the time to identify natural accents and word stress.

Common Mistakes

1. Thinking there is only one right choice of which word is most important. One of the choices left to the performer that shows their artistry is which words they choose to stress and how they do it.
2. Not taking the time to think it through. Think about it. Try each sentence by speaking it out loud until it feels right.
3. Thinking of word stress like an on-off switch. Word stress isn’t a matter of a syllable or word being loud or soft. It is the rollercoaster type shape each sentence makes where no two syllables within a phrase are the same in duration or dynamic level.
4. Disconnecting speech patterns from singing. If you want your singing to sound musical and expressive, then inform your singing with expressive speech.

Assignments:

Writing Assignment 0: Choose your performance projects

Writing Assignment 1: Marked Up Score 1.0

Writing Assignment 3: The “Who am I” Paper 1.0

Links to other articles in Acting 101 for Singers Day 1

Topic 8: Arrows – Pinning Down Where Ideas Shift

Topic 9: Circles – Finding the music that we have to move to

Topic 10: Where does imagination come from?

Certain kinds of music prompt us to imagine actions in connection with those sounds. Disney movies and cartoons have some of the simplest examples of “action music.” Imagine what kind of music would go with someone sitting down, windows opening, someone frowning, or a host of other actions. There is just some music that calls for action to go with it. These action music moments are the information we need to gather next as we find fuel for the imagination.

Types of Music

The kind of music that sounds like a sound effect or musical description of action we will call “action music.” There are other kinds of music too. Mood music is music that sets a general mood but nothing that refers to anything specific. There is the leitmotif that suggests a type of person, object, place, or theme. There are other types of music you could identify beyond this, but for the sake of this topic, we want to focus on action music.

What am I supposed to circle?

You are supposed to circle what you think is action music. Look or listen for unique musical moments. Pay attention when there is music that pops out of the texture. Is there music that is particularly interesting or that makes you think of a specific action? If you were to watch a movie, would you expect to see a specific action with this music? If so, that is the music you will want to circle. Again, we are just gathering information at this point. We will talk about what to do with this circle later. For now, it is enough to identify it and let your imagination start to work on what action might go with that music.

Here is an example of what it might look like

Common Mistakes

1. Overthinking it. If all of a sudden you find that everything or nothing on the page is action music, you are probably overthinking.
2. Stress about whether or not you are right or wrong. This isn’t an exact science. There is room for artistic decision-making here. What one person hears as action music might not be heard that way by someone else. One person might hear particular action music and imagine that it belongs to someone sitting down when someone else imagines it is a bird flying. This difference in interpretation is what will ultimately lead to your performance being unique and valuable.
3. They don’t actually write in the circle. This usually means it gets ignored later and a great opportunity for excellent action gets left behind.
4. Settle for the most obvious easy answer. Be curious! Explore what the music could be called for and don’t be so worried about what the music should be calling for.
5. Impose your own scheming on the music. Trust the composer. Great composers, especially those writing for cinema or the stage, think in terms of action. At this point, we are searching for clues to what the composer thought. We are not trying to force the music into what we think it should be or want it to be. Working against or ignoring the music is usually a very bad idea.

Assignments:

Writing Assignment 0: Choose your performance projects

Writing Assignment 1: Marked Up Score 1.0

Writing Assignment 3: The “Who am I” Paper 1.0

Links to other articles in Acting 101 for Singers Day 1

Topic 10: Where does imagination come from?

Acting 101 for Singers: Day 1, Topic 8

One of the sets of information we need to identify to build our context and stimulate our imagination is where musical and textual ideas begin and end. We will build on this idea throughout this course. For now, our goal is to identify where phrases start and end. We will focus on musical phrases because if you are working on a song by a good composer, the text phrase will be within the musical phrase. This is another key element of musical information you have to gather to feed your imagination what it needs to garner the truth the music is trying to tell

Where do I put arrows?

You will put an arrow pointing down to the beginning of the last note or syllable of every phrase. If it is the end of the phrase there should be an arrow pointing down to that note or sung syllable.

The first arrow of any piece will actually be before the music starts. Here is an example of how it could look:

Example of how to mark arrows in the score.

So what? What does musical structure have to do with acting?

Be patient. We are laying the groundwork for future lessons here. But to answer this question, the musical structure has everything to do with acting. Another way to think of musical structure is in the way we identify musical change. The musical change reflects an implied change in the performer’s emotion and action. If we don’t know what the basic musical structure is, then we will be missing a key source of information. Musical information is information that the audience will hear. Therefore, if we don’t take that musical information into account and our audience still hears that there will be a mismatch of what the audience hears versus what they see. This will not read as a cohesive performance. It will lack artistic integrity and ultimately be a weaker performance. In short, it won’t look right and won’t engage the audience as it could. So hang in there with the initial footwork.

Common Mistakes

1. Putting the arrow after the note or at the end of the last note or syllable. That arrow should point to the beginning of the last note or syllable. Trust me, it matters and will make more sense later in this course.
2. Ignoring music that doesn’t have words attached to it. The performer on stage should be engaged in the storytelling from right before the music starts until after the music ends.
3. Forgetting that the first arrow is always before the music starts and the last arrow is after the music ends. Why? Because the dramatic moment of the song starts before the music and ends after the last note stops sounding.

For more on the connection between musical expression

The terms to research are “Musical Prosody” & “Musical Syntax”.

It may sound completely boring, but it is actually really cool! Here are some articles that I thought were fascinating to read.

Articles on Musical Prosody

Prosody in Songwriting 101

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228641841_What_Is_Musical_Prosody

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-16279-007

https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/peeps/issue-29

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079742106460072

Articles on Musical Syntax

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284066849_Musical_Syntax_and_Its_Relation_to_Linguistic_Syntax

http://www.sfu.ca/~hedberg/Syntax_of_music

https://mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262018104.001.0001/upso-9780262018104-chapter-10

https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/79/2/281/1148510?redirectedFrom=PDF

Assignments:

Writing Assignment 0: Choose your performance projects

Writing Assignment 1: Marked Up Score 1.0

Writing Assignment 3: The “Who am I” Paper 1.0

Links to other articles in Acting 101 for Singers Day 1

Topic 9: Circles – Finding the music that we have to move to

Topic 10: Where does imagination come from?