#letsmakesomenoise

The internet is full of stories of famous actors, singers and personalities who suffer from stage fright. I wanted to know how they deal with those nerves and how they manage to get themselves to give the performances that have made their careers successful.

Stage fright can result in sufferers sweating and trembling and experiencing palpitations, a dry mouth, short, shallow breathing and blurred vision, and in extreme cases vomiting and diarrhoea.

On the eve of our annual choir showcase I’m sure there will be some singers feeling a little anxious; for some it will be the first choir performance they have given. So here are a few tips from experienced performers which I hope will help.

Mark Twain was once struck by stage fright before giving a lecture. His solution was to have lots of enthusiastic close friends in the audience who had been told to laugh at all of his jokes. All those friendly faces and laughter was a great help! At our choir performance the audience is made up only of friends and family so with everyone routing for us and cheering us on we’ve nothing to worry about. Rod Stewart found that once he realised that his audience loved him it was much easier to go out on stage.  

The actor Laurence Olivier had an experience of acute stage fright during a performance of Othello. After that he was so afraid to go on stage he had to be physically pushed onto the stage for each scene. Opera singer Renee Fleming also had to be pushed on stage by her vocal coach. Another top tip from Olivier is to never make eye contact with scene partners. Having friends to help encourage you before a performance is always helpful and avoiding eye contact is also sensible. Look to the back of the room or just above your audience’s heads. They’ll never realise you’re not actually looking into their eyes.

The singer Lorde gets very sick before going on stage so she gives herself a pep talk - out loud - before starting. This is a good way to increase her confidence as well as warming up her voice before the performance.

Adele also gets sick and once ran away from a performance out of the fire escape! She uses her sense of humour to get her through performances and keeps reassuring herself that nothing has ever gone disastrously wrong. Remember Local Vocals, nothing has ever gone disastrously wrong - it’ll be fine.

Barbra Streisand is said to have got stage fright after forgetting some lyrics and wouldn’t perform live again for almost thirty years. She now only performs with a teleprompter. Sorry Local Vocals, we don’t have the budget for a teleprompter, but singing in a choir is different to being a soloist. Between all you singers, you will remember the lyrics.

Rhianna is said to drink a shot before performing but I wouldn’t recommend this before a choir performance Local Vocals! Instead, go for a run, do some yoga, meditate. Exercise will make you feel good, relax you and get you in the right frame of mind for a show.

Andrea Bocelli suffers from stage fright but won’t use drugs or medicine to help. Instead he says, “The only way is to go on stage and to hope.”

Today my friend Kirsty and I launched a new monthly music workshop for children with SEND (special education needs and disabilities). We had noticed that there was nothing else like this in our area, so we decided to take our experiences working in music and with children with SEND to create sessions which were aimed specifically at children with SEND. Today’s launching session was a great success - all the children and parents enjoyed themselves. Reflecting on the session we have come up with some ideas to improve the structure of the session next month.

Here is what I’ve learnt today:

Parents of children with SEND want these kinds of sessions to be held. It’s somewhere to take their child to have experiences without the fear of their child not joining in. We don’t mind if children don’t join in with every activity!

Music is beneficial to everyone (I didn’t just learn this today!). Every child should have access to musical groups - piano lessons, choirs, music workshops. It doesn’t matter what the group is, so long as they have some kind of musical education.

We taught the concepts of rhythm, tempo, pulse and dynamics to children who are non-verbal (or with limited speech) through movement, actions, listening to music and games. If children can’t communicate with you with speech, that does not mean they don’t understand.

Parents are an amazing tool to help facilitate sessions. I always encourage parental involvement (parents are asked to watch the piano lessons I give and children can sing in my choir if the parent also sings) and the power of that has been proven this morning. The parents were able to help children do actions, move instruments or props, encourage participation, reassure and sing along. This made a huge difference to the children’s experience.

A smile is worth a thousand words. The look on the children’s faces this morning, when they found the activity they liked best, made my day.

A hug is worth a million thank yous.

Piano lessons aren’t what they used to be. And by ‘what they used to be’, I mean traditional one to one piano lessons working on repertoire, learning scales and technical exercises and then going through the motions by entering exam after exam.

I don’t mean to say that those elements don’t still happen, because they do, and they must, because they are very important. But things are changing, for the better, and this is a good thing for music because it allows more people to get involved and it is training students in ways which will help them achieve their goals in the 21st century.

Piano lessons aren’t just for those of us who want to be a professional pianist, or a piano teacher! Piano lessons are for anyone who enjoys music, kids who need some help finding a passion, people who want something to focus their energy on, those who want a new hobby. Kids might want to play in a band, they might want to write a song, they might want to jam with their friends, they might just want to learn that song that they love.

For children, especially young children (and I’m a real believer in starting children at the piano and music young i.e. age 4+) an entire piano lessons 30, 45, 60 minutes cannot be spent sat at the piano playing pieces or scales. It just won’t work.

Piano lessons for children, both young and a little older, and adults in some cases, need to be spent playing games, singing, clapping, composing, improvising and playing a real mixture of repertoire pieces from pop to classical and everything in between. With the little ones I get out other instruments like bells, drums or shakers to help us learn about rhythm, hand coordination and even duets.

I have been doing all these things since I started my teaching studio 18 months ago, but now I’ve decided to take things a step further. For new students, my lessons will no longer just be 30 minute private lessons, I’ve taken the step to offer buddy lessons where students have part of a lesson alone and part of the lesson with their ‘buddy’. In the buddy section the students will play together, improvise together, play games together, sing together and even help one another learn scales. I am also now offering rotating lessons where three students share a lesson and each rotate through three different 20 minute activities, one of which is time at the piano with me. I’ll be using technology - apps on the tablet to help students learn their (vitally important) music theory and my digital piano to give students a chance to have some extra time playing to tracks or sightreading.  

By offering these modern piano lesson formats I’m convinced, after having seen other teachers have success at these formats at their own studios, that students will gain so much more from their lessons.

Students will motivate one another. They’ll have chance to play with their peer and work on repertoire chosen specifically for their duo. They will be able to grow in confidence as they get used to singing or playing in front of each other. But most importantly they will have more fun!

Let’s face it, it’s difficult sometimes getting students excited about scales, or the piece they ‘just can’t get’. But with their ‘piano friends’ there in the room I think that all of these things will become much more enjoyable, and I am excited to see the results. I am expecting vastly accelerated learning and extremely happy students!

To celebrate my littlest little one’s birthday this week I thought I’d read up on the song ‘Happy Birthday’ and share some of the facts and videos I found. I hope you find them interesting!

1. The traditional melody for ‘Happy Birthday’ is believed to have been taken from the song ‘Good Morning To All’ which was published in 1893 by sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill. Some say that the melody was probably taken from, or at least inspired by, other traditional tunes of the time.

2. In 1935 the publisher Summy Company registered the copyright for various piano arrangements of ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

3. After acquiring the company which owned the copyright for ‘Happy Birthday to You’ Warner/Chappell Music earned around US$5000 per day in royalties as they claimed copyright for every performance of the song in film, TV, in public and where there was a large audience of mostly non-friends of the performer. It could cost up to US$10000 for the song to appear in full in a film!

4. Marilyn Monroe performed ‘Happy Birthday’ for U.S. President John F. Kennedy in May 1962. Her breathy performance is probably one of the best known performances of the song. https://youtu.be/EqolSvoWNck

5. The earliest known publication of the song ‘Happy Birthday’ uses the name John in the lyrics.

6. The traditional lyrics to ‘Happy Birthday’ has been translated into at least 18 different languages.

7. NASA programmed the Sample Analysis on Mars machine on the Curiosity rover to play ‘Happy Birthday’ on 5th August 2013, one year after it began its mission on Mars. They used the different vibration frequencies of the instrument to hit the different notes. https://youtu.be/uxVVgBAosqg

8. There are lots of other Happy Birthday songs, in lots of different languages. This catchy, foot-tapping song in Hindi is one of my favourites! https://youtu.be/Vyzg_Ws3aqQ

9. Cody Martin passed his American Idol audition with a soulful rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ which he sang to Katy Perry on her birthday. https://youtu.be/ViYdhgny2_A

10. ‘Happy Birthday’ doesn’t need to be translated into different languages to be translated into different cultures. I absolutely adore this group of people from Botswana singing their version of ‘Happy Birthday’. https://youtu.be/51r9uJgZhxI

“It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none.” Snoop Dogg

It’s simple. Things are better when we share them. I love sharing music with people. From sharing music with the community for charity, to sharing my choir with the community for local events, to sharing my choir with other choir leaders for their events.

Yesterday the Local Vocals had a recording session (thank you students from Leeds College of Music) with the legend Sammy King. We’ve sung with him a couple of times before and really enjoyed the experience so it made sense that when the opportunity arose to take it further and record something with him that we would go for it.

“For pleasure has no relish unless we share it.” Virginia Woolf

The experience of recording with an artist like Sammy King (a local songwriter and musician/singer who has performed with many well known bands including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and written for legends like Roy Orbison) got me to thinking about collaboration and sharing in the music industry. But I’m talking specifically at the community level, so community choirs, orchestras, schools and so on.

Here are some simple ideas for how we can share more music in our communities:

1. Have our choirs perform at community events, like galas or markets, or for care homes or schools.

2. Give local music students a chance to perform at local events like choir concerts, or community events.

3. Have choirs support local artists in local performances.

4. Give collaborative choir concerts with neighbouring choirs.

5. Have community choirs working with local schools giving opportunities to students to conduct, accompany or sing.

6. Have local choir leaders give singing workshops at community or charity events.

7. Have choirs busking or flash-mobbing at markets, shopping centres or events.

“I understand that we're smarter than me. That's one reason I like the idea of sharing.” Toba Beta