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Remember the last big concert you attended? Who was the star; Kenny Chesney? Miley Cirus? Michael Buble? Mariah Carey? Remember how, as you watched them on stage, their moves, big and small, seemed so natural-and you knew they were spontaneous and original? Well, I know a secret because I've been on tour with many well known performers: Almost all of their moves, gestures, facial expressions, etc were practiced and perfected during rehearsals. Probably very little of what you saw was spontaneous.
The trick was for them to have practiced so as to have SEEMED to be making up their moves at the time you see them on stage. Watch a good actor on stage, and you know that their moves, etc have been perfected during rehearsals. The genius of the actor is to make you believe that it's all happening for the first time. The same is true for singer-performers. I'm going to share a professional secret with you concerning some basic stage moves used by many performers. Stages come in many different sizes, some with lots of room to move around, and some with cramped space. However, almost all stages are box-shaped in some way. Let's say you have a stage that is 15 feet wide and 6 feet from the back to the front (the audience). Now mentally draw a triangle from the back (upstage) center to the front (downstage) right area, across the stage to the downstage left area, finishing the triangle by connecting that to the spot where you started. That triangle should form the basic performance area, with a very strong area located downstage center, directly in front and closest to the whole audience. So you have 4 places on your stage where you should move to, stop and sing for a while: Upstage center, downstage left, downstage center and downstage right. An example of using this information might be to start your song upstage center. Then after singing there for a while, casually walk to the downstage left position and sing there for a while. Then move all the way across the downstage area to the right position, and finally end up singing downstage center. (Save this position for more powerful or more emotional parts of the song, when you want the whole audience to feel very close and personal with you.) Of course you should change the order of moves for different songs, but you can't go wrong if you use the same basic triangle to work within. A final piece of advice: Examine the lyrics of each song to see how much movement it needs. There are certain slow songs which work better with you just standing at the mic without much movement. Just remember to practice your expression and gestures before performing this type of song.
Al Koehn has spent over 30 years working with top professionals in all aspects of their careers; voice development, performance, recording, producing and managing. His powerful new FREE ebook called "SINGING IS SERIOUSLY SIMPLE: Important Tips, Tools and Techniques for All Singers" is now available for downloading.
Access the Ebook FREE here http://vocalvision.com/ad1.html
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