I have a passion for singing but a perfectionist personality type, which has held me back from being the singer I have always wanted to be. I feel that anyone can sing but that people fall into 2 categories: 1) Those who just “get it” and 2) Those who have talent but can’t quite get the techniques their teachers are giving them to work (The Frustrated Singer). I am the Frustrated Singer. After years of different teachers and experimenting on my own I am finally seeing things a bit more clearly but still have many blocks and frustrations with the art form. I want to cover techniques, inspiration, and the performance aspects of singing and hope this blog will help other singers break through their blocks and help them become the singers they have always wanted to be.


This is a work in progress and meant to evolve over time. I hope you use the information that will be presented here and keep in mind that what works for some won't work for others but the most important thing is to just keep at it.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

New and Challenging Material


Recently I have been working on my “regular” songs and trying to find 2 for a performance I have at the end of this month. It has been an interesting journey. I found many songs that I love and of course most of them are ballads and have a theme: they are a little depressing. I ran into this same issue when I was working on my first cabaret show. The first few incarnations of the show were very depressing and I realized that if one or two audience members were to leave the show and slit their wrists I couldn’t blame them. I loved the show though but realized that if I were to do that type of a show I would turn off most of my audience. So I went back to looking for more material.

  • I spend hours looking for the up-tempo, comic and non-ballad songs but then once I decide on the “new” songs and I begin to learn them I get extremely frustrated. I still haven’t pinpointed the reasons for this but let me list a couple that I know of:
  • My mouth/jaw gets in the way because I am known to enunciate quite a bit and with an up-tempo song too much extra work makes the song an unnecessary and tiring workout.
  • Unlike with ballads I find that I sometimes don’t have the time that I need to readjust and relax my mouth, jaw, and diaphragm ceasing to breath because of my tension; running out of breath and energy for the remainder of the song.
  • I get excited about the song and have ideas on how it should be performed but that creates stress and tension that gets in the way of learning the song.

I finally put the song aside, resigned to the fact that I just am not cut out for these types of songs.

Recently I have realized that I have been lifting my soft pallet but not high enough, and on top of that I wasn’t really singing all words and notes in a forward placement. Once I focused on both of these issues one at a time and then slowly began to work on them together did I finally make a break through. I still revert to old muscle memory and bad habits but I finally have some hope for performing songs other than ballads.

What are some issues you are confronted with when learning new and challenging material? How do you tackle these issues?
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