Enhancing Vocal Performance

Fine singers seldom analyze the things they do in performance. Instead, . . . the imagination is freed for artistic expression by motor actions that are consistently repeatable. This constitutes the psychological and physical control of performance (3).

In other words, once a singer achieves technical mastery, he or she can begin to focus on what is being sung and why. Once a singer learns how to sing, he or she can then begin to learn how to act through the music.

Hagen argues that acting begins with talent. She defines talent as "an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting - intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's point heard and seen" (13). All these qualities, if initiall

. . .
the singer conjures up the memory and then tries to overcome it. As Hagen contends, "The sensation occurs most fully at the moment when we are occupied with the attempt to overcome it, not when we wait for it while trying only to imagine and remember it" (56). Sense memory, therefore, is not only the ability to fully recall a particular sensation but is then the additional skill at trying to surmount the sensation and move on to the task at hand. Hagen differentiates the terms sense memory and emotional memory, calling the first a primarily physiological recall and the second a primarily psychological process. She argues, "In life, an emotion occurs when something happens to us which momentarily suspends our reasoning control and we are unable to cope with this event logically" (47). Emotional memory requires recalling the psychological and physical expressions of this loss of control without giving in to it by finding a substitution that provokes the same emotional release. She notes that recalled emotional experience often can be triggered by some small detail that has become associated in the individual's mind with that psychological state. She suggests telling a friend about a strong emotional memory and attempting t
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
La Boheme, Edward Miller, Constantin Stanislavski's, Nature Art, , sense memory, Respect Acting, emotional memory, memory emotional memory, sense memory emotional, memory emotional, Hill Wang, vocal performance, NY Oxford, Uta Hagen, NY Macmillan, sense memory help, hagen cautions, hagen outlines, acting ny, memory help, respect acting, acting techniques useful, psychological physical,
Approximate Word count = 1336
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Enhancing Vocal Performance