This guide is a follow on from an earlier article I wrote about how to start a career as a professional singer. It helped on a broad level from obtaining the right equipment for you to use at a gig to how to get yourself on the books of an entertainment agency.
In this piece I’m going to tell you about the preparation on the day of a singing performance, it will be you be energised, confident and light on your feet so you can shine like a star. First off, you need to consider your food intake on the day. When it comes to showtime you don’t want to feel sluggish with a stomach full of heavy, starchy food so avoid pizzas, chips, pies and most other types of junk food. You need to eat with a see-saw effect, starting the day with the heaviest of foods then getting lighter with food that is easier to digest. A great example diet on the day could be, toast and a bowl of cereal with a banana for breakfast, for lunch, tuna and pitta bread with mayo and salad, for early evening a healthy thick vegetable soup. This will give your body a chance to digest the heavy carbohydrates early on but the later meals give you sustained energy through the evening time.
The next step is voice preparation, around an hour before you set off to your gig you should do a warm up session. First you should do a full body stretch for every muscle group. This is a time where you can regulate some steady breathing, counting to three slowly whilst you breathe in and again to breathe out. Next you can warm your voice up by running through some scales of notes, a guitar or a piano may help you stay in tune. Quarter of a hour of vocal warm ups should get you ready to try a run through of some of the songs you will be performing in the evening. Once you have completed this you can try some scales just before you go on stage but this is your preference, personally I think the warm up at home is enough to last the rest of the day.
So here we are, 5 minutes to show time but wait a second. You’re not just a singer, you’re an entertainer. In my opinion the gig starts when you enter the venue. So after you have rigged up your equipment, rather than hanging around the dressing room area you could go out to meet and greet the members of your audience. Unless you are Mick Jagger, this is a very simple concept which will make a crowd warm to you as it shows you are down to earth, so even though you will soon morph into a rock god you are showing appreciation to the people who came to see you.
Now you are on the stage and the first song is starting, you are warmed up, energised from healthy nutrition and have the crowd on your side. Now sing…. but when you sing, look up and outwards. There is nothing on the floor that is so interesting you can neglect a room full of people all looking in one direction, at you. Many singers look at the floor for many reasons, they are shy, they are concentrating too hard on staying in pitch but the drawback is you are not connecting with the crowd and unless it is an amazing captivating performance their interest will wane. This brings on another key point and that is smile. When you smile, the world smiles with you. Try it next time you go out to the shops, it works. When I first starting smiling on stage people would react with a great interest and positive feedback which in turn inspired me into more flamboyant performances. At first it felt rather strange smiling when no-one was actually saying or doing something funny. It felt like I was a fake and people would tell. I tried it in front of a mirror and it looked like a minimal, content smile that looked like I was pleased to be there.
The final pointer as hopefully your gig is going well, you are singing good and the crowd are happy. You should talk to them between songs. There is an art to this, as sometimes the crowd will shout something straight back when you say something creating a nice two-way communication. Providing it isn’t heckling you should have a nice time. The other scenario is when it falls on deaf ears and they look back blankly. This probably isn’t a rejection on your part more simply they are the ones afraid of public speaking. To counteract this you could write and rehearse a full interesting monologue you can use that requires no response whatsoever so if you are holding a one way conversation you look like the most confident interesting person in the room. Compile these new thoughts and ideas into your repertoire as an entertainer and you are one step closer to being a professional. Good luck.