Tag Archives: passion

Singing with Passion

18 Thursday Jul 2024

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Music is an emotion that you can hear. Many people think that a good singer simply memorizes lyrics to a song and sings notes without going off key. It’s not that simple. People can sing the same song with the same musical arrangement and the results will be completely different.

There are many factors to singing and one very important one is singing with passion. When you sing with passion, feeling and emotion, you reach a level of connection with your audience. Songs are not only made up of words. They are also made up of sounds and power and people relate to each one when they listen to music. Singing with emotion is important for the success of any performance. It will stir up feelings and allow your audience to have an emotional response to each song you sing.

Singing is communication. When you sing a song, you are telling a story. You are delivering a message to your audience. How you deliver that message will determine how they identify with the lyrics, feel your emotion and have a reaction to your singing. A vocalist who can intermingle with the emotions of a song will sound much more intense and passionate than one who makes no attempt to emotionally connect with a song. You need to connect to the song in order to connect with the audience.

All songs you sing will have transitionary moments of silence. These pauses add depth to your performance. Emphasize these moments with feeling. Capture the emotions and express them. Facial expressions will also enhance a particular mood of a song and add dynamics as well as connecting the audience to the song.

Always read your audience and engage with them. Stage presence is important. Look at your audience and make eye contact. This is essential in order to sing with emotion. Simply smile when you make eye contact. It lets your audience know that you are having a great time. Energy is contagious. When you have a great time, they will too.

Energy is a must. Your body language is just as important as your vocals in order to convey the energy and emotion of a song to your audience. If you are singing in a venue where there really isn’t much room to move around, always use hand gestures and facial expressions to enhance your performance and show emotion. A good stage presence is important as your presence on stage allows the audience to see your confidence in your ability. Energetic performances are memorable in the greatest way whereas watching a vocalist on stage with planted feet and not moving, would be memorable as a horrific performance. Move the best you can in the space you can, just be sure to move!

Vibrato is not only incredibly effective but also soulful and allows more emotion and expression to your vocals. When you slightly alter or vibrate the pitch of a note that you are sustaining, it is powerful! It actually happens naturally in order to ease the tension on your vocal cords but you can also train yourself to have even more control when you learn to sing from your diaphragm. It is important to use vibrato sparingly to stir up emotion. If you use it too often, it will lose the ability to stir up feelings in your audience.

Dynamic balance is very effective to express the emotion of a song. When you go from loud to quiet and quiet to loud, it is is much more effective than singing loudly for the entire song. Controlling dynamics allows you to sing with emotion and have that connection with your audience. When you implement varying the tone and volume of your vocals, you capture attention and draw people in to your performance. Remember different feelings have different tones and sounds. Reflect and convey the message of the song using the appropriate dynamics.

It is important to capture the feel, passion and emotion of each song you sing, whether it be a love song or a pop/rock song. Always tell a story and give emotion to each and every word. This will put you way above the singers who simply belt out lyrics.

When you are authentic and you allow yourself to be vulnerable you will always leave your audience with a memorable performance.

Social Media Sanity

29 Saturday Jun 2024

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People are social creatures and social media has become all too present and consuming in our daily lives. It is important to remember that social media can never be a replacement for real-life human connection. Spending too much time on social media can make you feel more lonely and isolated and increase mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.

Research has proven that if you take social media too seriously, it can have a negative impact on your well-being. By reevaluating the connection you have with social media, you can improve your overall mental and emotional health.

Pick your poison: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and others all have the ability to allow us to feel connected, supported and even loved by others. On the flip side, they also have the ability to make us feel envious, excluded and rejected. We need to teach ourselves not to conform to nor completely abandon from them. We need to establish a healthy middle ground.

You can easily remain sane on social media by compartmentalizing your life from the lives of others that you see on the internet.

The reality is that people who post on social media have control over how others see them. Whether it be their accomplishments, vacations or promotions, what they choose to show the world is mostly the good. Rarely do people post the negative aspects of what is happening in their lives and when we are exposed to the ones that constantly post negatively, this can be mentally draining and just as bad for our own mental health.

Sometimes people choose to post for their own self-esteem and popularity. Even photographs have been covered by filters. Did you know that TikTok has a range of filters that one can use while making a video before posting? What you see isn’t always reality. When you compare yourself to this truly unattainable and unrealistic standard, you set yourself up to feel unsatisfied with your own life and your personal self and it can actually cause you to feel depressed.

One important thing to remember is that if and when you are having a bad day, the place to go to feel better is NOT the internet. Call a family member or a close friend, someone you can feel vulnerable with. Allow them to listen to you and offer any support they can. A human connection is so much more gratifying and helpful than a virtual experience online. No matter how much scrolling you do on social media, the problem you are facing will still be there when you stop. It may be an escape for a while but the reality is that it can actually do more harm.

I certainly am not recommending that you completely quit social media by closing your accounts. Doing that can only deepen any feelings of social isolation. There are things you can do to stop comparing yourself and your life to others.

Never read into anything. Your inner peace is so vital for survival. When on social media, always take any posts or comments you read at face value. Remember you cannot see body language nor can you hear the tone or nuance of any written words. Also never read into the number of friends or followers that you have. Don’t compare your numbers to those of others.

Keep things in perspective and take everything you read with a grain of salt. When your friends are happy and successful, be happy for them. However, if you see an album with their photos covered with numerous filters, remember it’s not reality.

If you find yourself a slave to social media, try to trade that time you spend scrolling endlessly with doing something more constructive with your time. You can use that time to learn a new skill, get back into an old hobby, exercise, learn a musical instrument, get out in nature and so much more.

Life your life with fueled passion and live your best life. Instead of lying there scrolling away and living life through someone else, find your passion and live YOUR best life!

My Passion for Singing

21 Friday Jun 2024

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Everyone has that outlet in their life, something they do to replenish the energy of their soul. For some it can be gardening, biking, painting, etc…. for me, it’s singing.

At every single point in my chaotic and sometimes crazy path, music has always found its way into my world. I have listened to music from a very young age. I had a vast collection of 45’s and a decent collection of LP’s. I also always walked around with a radio. Two of my favorite artists to listen to when I was younger were Olivia Newton John and The Partridge Family but I loved pretty much everything on the radio back then. 70’s music was fabulous! Music was always there for me and has always been a factor in my life.

A passion for singing usually takes root in early childhood. For me that spark was ignited on the evening of November 4, 2022 at 9:43 p.m.

Weeks prior to that evening, my husband and I were in our kitchen having wine and playing cards, with the music blasting. I was singing along quietly to the music and my husband looked me in the eyes and said “One of these days, I’m going to get you a microphone.” I replied with something like “Yeah right! You’ll never hear me sing!”

Fast forward a couple of weeks ahead. It was a Friday night and my husband, my friend and I were having some wine at my home, again with the music blasting. A few drinks later, my husband brings out a karaoke machine and he was the first one to use it. He sang “Runaways” by The Killers. Now my husband is a drummer, not a singer and it wasn’t his best but he had a blast. We all did. I thought to myself “Wow, if he can do that sounding like he does, I can too!” Remember, I was a few drinks in. I got up and sang “Top of the World” by The Carpenters.

The rest of the evening we sang, laughed and had a great time and when I woke up the next morning, I watched the videos and the reel I posted on Facebook. I received so many nice comments on the reel that I immediately knew that I wanted to do it again the following weekend. So we did. Weekend after weekend we’d have wine, blast music and sing karaoke. I was absolutely loving it and decided to take this newfound passion to the next level.

On December 27, 2022, I had my first singing lesson. I was very nervous going and my son Joshua came with me for moral support. It was time. It was 4:00 and my vocal coach, Mike, came out to get me. It was all or nothing at this point. I could flee or I could face my fear and conquer it.

I followed him into this little room with a piano. I remember quite vividly asking him if the walls were soundproof and he told me they weren’t. My thoughts were racing. “How am I going to do this?” “I should just forget it.” “Should I run out of this room?” After talking for a few minutes and making me feel a little more relaxed, Mike played a single note on the piano and said “Ok, sing that.” Excuse me? What? Sing that? I looked at him like he had a unicorn horn sticking out of his forehead. You mean there’s no loud music to sing to? (And there is no wine involved?) How on earth will I do this?

With every ounce of passion deep within me and with every drop of courage I could find, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and sang that single, ever-so-important note. I did it! Next we worked on scales to find my range, which I must say was quite impressive. I thought to myself “This isn’t bad at all” and I left there feeling so damn proud of myself and I couldn’t wait for the following week’s lesson to do it again!

Well I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person. I bought all kinds of music equipment: speakers, a microphone, a mixer. I purchased an app to practice vocals with, where you remove the vocals from tracks. I recorded myself daily and practiced every single day. I purchased and surrounded myself with music decor. I even had things custom made. I made a beautiful music room for myself.

In May of 2023, I decided I wanted to start a cover band to play live music out in bars, clubs, festivals… wherever I could. After auditioning many musicians and dealing with so many disappointments, the vision and dream has become an amazing reality.

I am now a lead singer and my band’s name is Daze of Dari. I have the absolute greatest bandmates. We have become family and great friends. We rehearse at a rehearsal studio every week. Our setlist is full, unique and fun and we have played out a few times and have more gigs scheduled. We play mostly in Morris County, New Jersey but we don’t limit ourselves to any single area.

If you want to take anything away from this, it is this. Never, ever, ever give up on your dreams. I am living proof that perseverance and passion will take you wherever it is that you want to go!