Vocal Terminology: “Messa di Voce”

Of all the dynamic effects used in singing, one of the most challenging to do elegantly is the "messa di voce" (pronounced by English speakers more-or-less like 'mess ah dee voh chay'. It is the combination of a smooth crescendo (getting louder) for some amount of time, followed by a smooth decrescendo (getting softer) for the same amount of time, on a single vowel, on a single note. Using musical symbols, it can be represented this way: Why is This Challenging? The exercise requires that the singer be able to: Start a note cleanly and vibrantly, but softly. Crescendo a ...

Amateur to Pro in One Step: A Quick Lesson in Acting a Song

Take your acting to the next level by following this one simple directive: Move, then sing. That's it. Amateurs move on their phrases. Pros move before them. I teach Movement for Actors at the Stella Adler Studio, Los Angeles. There, we spend countless hours laboring over truth in performance. Truth is what your audience connects with--more than great vocal technique, more than powerful lyrics, more than personality. And the truth of human behavior is that we express ideas with our bodies before we express them with our words. To act the heck out of a song, your performance behavior must reflect the ...

Phiguring Out Phrasing

When listeners say that they absolutely love the way so-and-so phrases a song: What exactly do they mean? In order to tackle the subject, let’s first define what a phrase is, and then we can figure out what we can do with it. Think of a phrase as a grouping of lyrics and notes. The grouping might be as long as a sentence, or a partial sentence. Phrases are often separated by rests, or moments of silence, but sometimes shorter phrases can be connected together into a longer section, like Lego blocks.There are a number of ways you can manipulate ...

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