Tips for Powerful Performance, Part 1

Prepare before you sing

Preparation - Do Your Homework!

 
Know your music - inside and out. Know the arc of the song.

Work on the technical aspects. Get all of the rough edges handled technically so that you are comfortable singing the song and can make it yours.

Know your text. Understand the meaning and significance of every word, even if it’s in English!

Know your character and plot. You must know who your character is and know the story line. What is the purpose of your song? Know the who, what, where, when and why.

Say the text as a monologue in the mirror. If in a foreign language, paraphrase in your own words first, then say the text as written. Make sure your facial expression and body movement are natural.

Excerpted from http://www.healthyvocaltechnique.com/index.php?function=viewarticle&categoryid=6&articleid=4



 

Singing Therapy Helps Speech-Impaired Stroke Patients

If you can’t say it, then sing it! Experts researching patients who have lost their ability to speak after a stroke are now suggesting that they could be able to communicate with music using Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT). Using MIT, the scientists showed that patients who were earlier communicating only in mumbles and grunts could now learn to sing out basic phrases like “I am thirsty.”

The study was conducted by Harvard Medical School neurologist Gottfried Schlaug on 12 patients whose speech was impaired by strokes, and showed that patients who were taught to essentially sing their words imrpoved their verbal abilities and maintained the improvement for up to a month after the end of the therapy. 

The researchers worked with stroke patients whose speech was incoherent, and who had damage in a region of the left side of the brain that is typically involved in speech. Schlaug’s research suggests that the brain can be essentially rewired. Stroke patients can learn to use a region on the right side of the brain, which is typically involved with music, for sing-songy speech instead.

 

Using MIT, therapists taught patients how to sing words and phrases consistent with the underlying melody of speech, while tapping a rhythm with their left hands.  After frequent repetition--1.5 hour-long daily sessions with a therapist for 15 weeks--the patients gradually learn to turn the sung words into speech.  When Schlaug compared images of the patients’ brains before and after the therapy, he found that the right side of their brains had changed both structurally and functionally.

Though it has been known that patients who can’t speak clearly often do better when they sing the words, this is the first time anyone has shown the phenomenon through a clinical trial that combines treatment with brain imaging.

Excerpted from http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/02/22/singing-therapy-can-rewire-brains-of-speech-impaired-stroke-patients/

Music Helps the Healing Process

Music helps heart patients

A study conducted in Japan might give new hope to heart transplant patients.  Masateru Uchiyama, from the Juntendo University Hopsital in Tokyo, found that mice that listened to classical music after a heart transplant lived longer.

Uchiyama tested the mice's blood after heart transplants and found that those who listened to classical music had calmer immune systems, which is what caused them to live longer after surgery.  The researchers are interested now in what effect listening to this music might have on human heart transplant patients, especially after a 2003 study found that music therapy lessened pain and nausea in patients after bone marrow transplants.

In the study, mice were given heart transplants from an unrelated donor, with the expectation that they would reject the new organ.  The mice were split into four differnt groups, each listening to a different type of musc.  The groups listened to: a Verdi opera song, Mozart concertos, Enya, and montone sounds.

The final results found that mice that listened to Verdi lived for an average of 26 days, while the group that listened to monotone sounds only lived for an average of seven days.  While we don't yet know exactly what this study means for humans, it is definitely a promising insight into the healing process for transplant patients.

Taken from Making Music, July/August 2012