Are You in the Room Where It Happens?

I know it's going to get warmer again,  but I am enjoying this fall-like, cool, quiet Sunday morning! I won't lie:  fall is my favorite season and it could last for months if I had my way!

But I digress...

Are in the room where it happens?

What room?

Where?

What happens?

We are often told "sing for the room".  What room, exactly?

I have a little secret for you:  it's not the room you think.  

Are you "under-singing", or "over-singing",  or "screaming",  or what exactly, while auditioning?

Are you rolling your eyes when you realize the auditions are being held at XYZ studios because you "hate those audition rooms".  

The secret:  it's not really that room.  You aren't singing for THAT room.

You actually bring your room with you.  Sssh, don't tell anybody, maybe they won't notice.

Let that resonate for a minute (full pun intended).

I often tell singers that they are their own cathedral.  The initial intensity, use of breath, development of resonance - happens in YOUR body.  If the vibration does not intensify in your resonators, in your rooms,  it will never make it into the larger space you are singing in.

You can't trust that room.  You can acknowledge it,  recognize it,  understand what happens in it, but you can't trust it.

So, what do you trust?  Where do you go?

Into YOUR rooms.  Your cathedral; your amphitheater, your space.

You move into those rooms with breath and vibration and begin to explore the balance of resonance that lives there.

We, as singers, work in so many intangibles.  This is what makes us lean toward the neurotic (!), and also what gives those who are truly not developed singers, a sense that what we do is "easy". 

We deal in breath, vibration, and musculature that is not seen.  We then need to bring those intangibles into a physicality and athleticism that is integrated, subtle, active, and ever-changing and adapting.  We never "got this".  We begin to realize and discover and hone the athletic craft of singing, but it is a constant and ongoing pursuit.  Technical behavior, technical development, technical finesse, is never finished.  It is never linear. It always allows for movement, re-working, re-grouping, re-discovery.  As the XYZ of one component develops, the necessity to figure 8 back through the ABC to balance that again to support the XYZ is always necessary.

All of this happens in the body.  

THIS is the room where it happens.

You just happen to bring those rooms into the space we call an audition room,  a rehearsal room,  a concert hall,  a theatre. 

Sing for the room, yes.  But sing into the rooms that shape it all first.  This you can learn to trust:  how does it feel?  how does it inhabit?  what does it take to DO that?

Those sensations you bring with you wherever you sing.  You can then trust your rooms, and intensify, or not, as needed. 

I invite you to explore those rooms.  Get to know how it can enhance what you already do.  Get to know what gets in your way and how release those behaviors.  

Your cathedral awaits.  You actually wake up in it every day.  You are already there!  Start inhabiting it fully and see what happens!!