How to sing with more emotion?

Great question! In today’s episode, let’s talk about adding emotion while singing, because ultimately people listen to YOUR singing and YOUR VOICE because they want to feel something.

i’m going to share with you 2 ways to do so and break it down in a way for you that you’ll actually understand.

Real quick! For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

Now before we talk about adding emotions. A big caveat.

Get the technical side down.

There’s no point adding emotion to something that’s not on pitch OR on time. It will just sound like a mess. Things like understanding the fundamentals of how the voice actually works will take you a long way. If anything, when your technique is on point. You’ll notice that it’s much easier to express the emotions the way you want it.

Now I’ve covered this in previous episodes so I won’t go into detail on the fundamentals. But go back and check out episodes on isolating the stretch, the connection. Keeping a relaxed throat.

The first thing, let’s consider what we even mean by a more “emotional” performance?

(Share example: 修炼爱情 with and without emotion?)

What’s the difference?

A big reason why the 2nd performance felt more emotional, is there was more vocal colours. Especially in a way that really conveyed the emotion I was going for.

Maybe it was where I went breathy. Where I went stronger. Where I held the note a bit longer.

Ultimately by adding the right vocal colours, this allows us to add emotions.

Now how do we do this?

There’s 2 ways really

1) Top down approach

Think of singing as an extension of speech. Often when we feel sad and we vent out to our friends. There’s a certain way we’d sound. What happens is just feeling the emotion itself tends to change the way we make sounds.

And so try this:

Pick a song, and just ask yourself. What emotion do I want to express?

Then actively try to feel that emotion. What can really help here is making sure your facial expression is on point. If you’re feeling sad, make a sad face!

Now try to sing through the phrase and your only focus is keeping that facial expression and underlying emotion and record yourself.

Notice how the vocal colours will naturally flow out. This is your emotions.

Bonus points: As you’re going through a song, there will be changes in the energy and emotion of a song. It might start from

NOW here’s the thing.

Some of you have already tried this. In fact, maybe you’ve even had teachers who have told you to just FEEL It.

But when we try to feel it and sing.

We listen back to & we still sound bland as heck.

This is where the 2nd APPROACH comes in.

Adding emotions can also happen bottom up. This means REVERSE engineering the vocal colours. This is something I cover in more details with my Fundamentals course.

How?

Choose a song that you want to sing. And just listen to original singer perform this.

As they are singing, asking yourself beyond singing on pitch and on time. What else can I hear them doing?

Are they going breathy in a specific way? Are they emphasising certain words? How do they start/end the words? Really get specific here. What we’re focusing on here is capturing little details that we might miss when we just listen to it for enjoyment.

Then try to do the exact same thing. And just listen back to yourself and see if you were able to do this. As you try to nail these details down and come back to our top down approach.

You’ll notice your emotions start to come through.

Anyway that’s a wrap team! Hope you’ve found value out of this episode. If you did, please share this with a friend or on your social media. It really helps this channel grow and would mean the world to me.

Also if you’re looking for some tailored/specific help. I’ve got ways to study with me down in the description. Apart from that, my name is Ivan - I’m your voice teacher and I’ll see you next Thursday/Friday for our weekly episodes.

Take care!

Extra Links/Resources

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🌍 Step By Step Singing Course: https://www.singingsimply.com/courses/singing-fundamentals 

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