How Musicals Can Help Your Singing Voice
- Musicals Vs Everyday Music
- Stage Presence
- Emphasis & Tone
The purpose of expanding your music genres and listening to new music is to learn something you maybe weren’t doing before.
Musicals specifically are valuable because they teach you how to do multiple things at once. There is a difference between everyday music and musicals.
Stage presence is approached differently and acting is normally required. Your emphasis and tone are often some of the things people pay the most attention to.
Understanding how to apply a musical technicalities to other songs can benefit you in the longevity of building your voice
Musicals Vs Everyday Music
Musicals are often playful and stick to a script.
The character, scene, words, and feeling are all given to you. In normal music, it’s generally vague.
This allows the music to be applied to everyone. Meaning you are to gather a feeling or emotion behind the song in your own way.
For example, if the song is about being cheated on and you’ve never been cheated on. It requires you to imagine what that feels like in your own shoes.
Within a musical if the main character is about being cheated on, you are no longer yourself, but the character who has been cheated on.
Musicals are mostly known for extreme exaggeration, vibrato, and belting. They are also known for their specific word choice and storytelling.
It is a state of mind and approach that is different from just interpreting a song in your own words.
Stage Presence
A great way to improve stage presence is through acting. Learning how to improv or MC can make it easier to adjust yourself on stage.
Actors are often in front of the camera, so you have to be and feel confident while acting.
Singing is very similar, but when it comes to movement and blocking, it is limited.
Planning what your movements are before you perform can help you to understand the right blocking to use when holding a note or singing softly.
Emphasis & Tone
In Musicals, on stage actors are required to exaggerate facial muscles so they can be seen better in the audience at a distance.
This gives the audience an overall better experience for those who have seats far in the back.
Not only that, but exaggerating your face muscles also help with tone quality, and emphasis.
For example, let’s say the lyric is “rainy days and mondays always get me down”. This is a melancholy line, so looking sad is bound to effect the way others interpret your performance.
When you get into that feeling, your diaphragm adjusts. This is what can give the voice a more sad tone.