Singing #5 - Musical Theatre Notes Don't Always Have to Be Pretty
- Emily Jade
- Nov 2, 2020
- 4 min read
This session was mainly focussed on preparation for our solo, where we discussed how to make it look and feel more realistic. Our given circumstances and backstory of the song are so important into how we play into the emotion of the song, especially in musical theatre. For example, the given circumstances and backstory to Once Upon a December are as follows:
Anya reunites with Dmitry after being let off on a warning by the general, and he opens up to her about his childhood. He tells her about a music box he has failed to open and offers it to her, and she winds it open and past memories begin to vaguely seep back into her memory, including a ball from when she was a child.
Throughout the song, it’s important to look at where the character's emotion changes as that can differentiate how the song is sung. Anya’s emotion doesn’t change too much, I think she’s more sad than anything else at the life she once had. You need to notice where the characters emotion builds to a climax as well, as that too is very important to the storyline of the piece, as it is very much like a monologue. The emotion creates a character arc very similar to character arcs that can be created when you’re reading a monologue as a specific character, you know the pace and the emotion that the character has.
One thing I found really important to note was that if there’s repetition in the song, you need to be aware of the complexities that follow them. Once Upon a December has a repeated verse after the long interlude of music, and although the difference isn’t that big in the vocals, the music changes and becomes far more dramatic, as that leads into the dramatic ending of the song. I had never really noticed this before, so I was glad to have picked up on it.
Another really good point was that actioning the text, as we’ve done in previous acting classes before, really helps with the understanding of what the character is singing about. It can be useful for you as an actor and a singer if you’re not completely sure on the meaning of a specific line or phrase, and so by doing the actioning exercise you’re able to understand the meaning of the song better. One thing I am glad that came up was breathing, as I found it really hard when I first started rehearsing the song as to where I should breathe, especially at the end as there's a six bar beat between the line ‘things it yearns to remember’, and ‘and a song’. I was doing a dramatic breath to begin with, but I found I kept missing the first note of the line, and so when I asked what breathing technique I should use, I was told to use a snatch breath.
A snatch breath is a small breath of air to take between notes, and so I hold the note for five and a half beats before taking a short and snappy snatch breath to then start the next line. I found this incredibly helpful, as it meant I didn’t miss the opening of the next line which is a really important moment of heightened emotion in the song. I had to train myself to then do this after this session, as whatever we do in rehearsal we’re more likely to do for the final performance and it’s really important to me that I use the snatch breath in the right way.
The emotional intention of my song is far louder than anything else in the solo. Anya is yearning for a life she once had, with the little snippets of it that she remembers and so it really speaks, especially at the end of the piece when the heightened dynamics and emotion comes into play. Alongside this, the sound we’re making when creating the heightened emotion, or the emotional intention of the song doesn’t always have to be ‘pretty’ if we’re acting through it. Especially in musical theatre, the sound isn’t made to be pretty for certain characters as that’s not their style. I think Hamilton is a great example of ‘pretty’ and ‘ugly’ sounds in musical theatre. I think the song ‘Guns and Ships’
is a very ‘ugly’ sounding song, but I think it’s due to Lafayette’s extremely fast rapping, yet on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I think the song ‘Burn’ is very pretty sounding,
as Eliza’s voice is very soft, even at the powerful moments.
One thing that has really helped me during these sessions is the warm up exercises, in particular the pinching of the nose and temples to clear out the sinuses. I find them really useful, and I didn’t realise how much of a difference the pinching makes in terms of having a clearer voice. I find it really interesting and it’s definitely a part of the warm up that I will use in both singing and acting sessions from now on.
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