Sing from Your Core: The Vocal Body

By Jole Berlage-Buccellati

This book addresses singers of all kinds, from professionals to amateurs. It is about empowerment.

The voice is different from any other instrument because it is a part of your body - emanating from your core. You are the instrument.

The core principle of this book is that joyful and successful singing has a lot more to do with body coherence, vital energy connection and embodied communication than with viewing the voice mostly from a functional perspective. Your creativity and the desire to communicate deeply are grounded in your emotions, your joy, in stillness and in the truths of your vocal body. Attempting to manipulate or force your instrument into a preconceived interpretation or preconceived vocal format often fails to produce the desired results.

This book encourages you to experiment with surrender, involvement and body awareness. One of the many benefits of this approach is that it can help to reduce performance anxiety and stage fright.

If you want to express with your own unique vocal quality, then this book is for you. If you are curious about your expressive potential, if you are curious about what your next inspirational step might be, this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCHOTT MUSIC GmbH & Co. KG / Schott Campus
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9783959836210

Book preview

PART I – THE VOCAL BODY!

In essence, singing is a gesture in sound, expressing emotional movement through the body

Franziska Martienssen-Lohmann

1.0 The Vocal Body

Your creativity and desire to express are to be found in joy, in stillness and in the truths of your vocal body, not in attempts to manipulate or force your instrument or yourself into a preconceived interpretation. Body contemplation is about getting to know your vocal body.

Voice and speech training is body training.⁵ Music is never static – music is pure dynamics. In many respects, singing could be seen as a form of dancing with words.

When we treat the body as an assembly of parts rather than as a coherent, expressive whole, the dislocation we experience from our bodies – actually ourselves – is profound. Fragmentation and dislocation from our emotional and physical core make powerful embodied communication impossible. Sandra Reeve describes musical interpretation as expressing interconnectivity through "an embodied process in which musical communication comes through ‘felt coordinated movement’ " .⁶

In this sense, singing on stage can be defined as communicating through a form of embodied interconnectivity.

When we feel interconnected, we also feel safe!

Jole Berlage-Buccellati

Your brain actually perceives and stores information in a way that intertwines a sense of emotional and physical experience. A singer can use this mechanism to anchor the voice, retrieve music from memory and rely on the body when performing.

Practicing awareness of this felt sense of doing something allows you to use joyful and safety-oriented body memory as a secure platform for singing.

Alas, as long as knowledge remains just a head game, your body cannot apply the new insights (thought material) for your benefit. Thinking of change accomplishes little.

Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in your body

Asaro tribe (New Guinea)

Again, the exercises presented in this book are meant to be starting points. Be creative, experiment! Change happens when you start to explore and apply new ways of being.

Questions for contemplation:

– Is this approach a challenge to the teachings of your vocal training so far?

– Have you predominantly been taught to put your body, and especially your tongue, jaw, cheeks etc. and breathing apparatus, in a certain position to enable you to sing those small black dots?

– What did these directions do to your ability to express the emotional content of the music?

– What does vocal freedom mean? As a platitude and for you personally. To me freedom is about having options.

1.1 Self-Confidence

DARE TO INTEND IT

Dare to feel IT. Dare to be connected. Embody IT

Jole Berlage-Buccellati

Self-confidence has to move away from self in order to be of any real value. If it is all about me then all that’s left on stage is me.⁷

Self-confidence is radiated and perceived through the body.

In their day-to-day business, many singers feel disconnected from their body, their breath and their ability to express deep feelings and emotions – with no sense of how to restore this loss of confidence (trust) and communicative energy.

To restore your confidence as a singer, you need to look at your body, since it is your body that carries the felt sense⁸ – a physical and energetic resonance, an inner knowingness, associated with the emotional essence – of an aria or a song into the world.

The disconnection from your own authentic expression and body is often so profound that it takes time and commitment to the joys of exploration to reconnect to the natural flow that comes with allowing your body to be expansive, trusting your senses and unique qualities.

This guide is meant to encourage you to trust your instincts and intrinsic power as an artist. Your biggest challenges will be fixed ideas about what technique alone can do for you, and old emotional baggage that leads to disconnection or disassociation from your body. These shadow patterns hold you back from being able to fully claim your power of fully expressing as a confident human being and artist.

1.2 Basic Concepts

Core

A supple dynamic core "is the combination of somatic awareness, emotive expression, and conscious intention that brings meaning and coherence to human movement."⁹

What do I mean by core? Is there a difference between the physical and the mental or emotional core? Actually, true core strength is fundamentally a combination of the two. It is your ability to stay present while you communicate with integrity. It is not about control and not about fragmentation – it is about stepping away from