Top 10 Tips For a Better Performance

There is a lot of prep and work to nailing a performance but there are some simple things you can do. Thanks to award winning singer/songwriter and veteran voice teacher Mark Bosnian, we have 10 tips for a better performance that can take you to the next level.

Top 10 Tips For a Better Performance

1. Know Your Song – have the words memorized and have 2 or 3 emotions that you want to evoke when you sing. Trying to sing with emotion is hard when you don’t know which emotion(s) to use. “Knowing your motivation” will help you connect to the audience.
2. Use Dynamics – nothing says boring like a song that sounds the same from beginning to end. You have to change up the volume, the intensity, the tone and all other vocal elements to keep people engaged. Accent key words in each line by make them different—louder/softer, brighter/darker vowel color, staccato/legato, etc.
3. Sing To Your Audience, Not At Them – split the audience into quadrants and sing to each quadrant for a few seconds. Even if you’re not making eye contact with every single person it will look and feel as if you’re singing to each audience member. Your voice goes where your eyes go—don’t close your eyes a lot or look over people’s heads. Look us in the eye for a few seconds and you’ll win our hearts.
4. Make Friends With Your Belly – learn how to use Bosnian Belly Breathing™ and “sing from the diaphragm”. It is difficult to create a flow when you sing or speak if we can see your shoulders lifting up and down and hear you sucking in air. Knowing how Nature intends for us to breathe and make sound will make a huge impact on your control and confidence.
5. Be an Intentional Singer Not a Hopeful One – by learning to choose numbers on a scale of 1 to 10 you’ll be able to give your body specific directions about volume, tone, etc. You can move from saying to yourself, “I hope this comes out sounding good”, to “I need a 6 power to sing the high note the way I want”.
6. Turn Off Your Vocal Defense Mechanism – you have a mechanism in your subconscious that tries to protect you from embarrassing yourself when you perform. By learning what triggers it, you can stop it from sabotaging your performance.
7. Make It Your Own – borrow from the best singers but don’t imitate. Take elements of what great singers do and combine them in your singing—you’ll create your own recognizable style.
8. Tell The Story of Your Song – almost all singers obsess about being in tune or forgetting the words. If you put your intention on telling the story of the song instead of trying to “sound good”, the audience won’t pay attention to the imperfections.
9. If You Don’t Show It, They Won’t Know It –if you don’t react to a mistake no one will notice it. Practice making a mistake and continuing as if nothing happened and this will become second nature.
10. Make A Move, Make a Connection – shift your weight from foot to foot, take a step forward or to the side, change the position of your hands or your body—movement is the key to looking confident on stage.

Have any tips or advice you’d like to add? Leave them in the comments below and stay tuned for more articles by Mark soon.

Mark Bosnian is an award winning singer/songwriter and was voted into The Oregon Music Hall Of Fame in 2001. As a member of national acts Nu Shooz and Body & Soul, he toured the U.S. and sang on The NBC Today Show and The Pat Sajak Show. Mark Bosnian is a veteran voice teacher and is a widely recognized expert in the field of vocal performance.  Mark has taught many notable singers including Courtney Love, Meredith Brooks, Linda Hornbuckle, Dan Reed, and 2012 American Idol semi-finalist Haley Johnsen.

He regularly teaches at the prestigious Puget Sound Guitar Workshop music camp and gives workshops, classes, and one-on-one sessions in Portland, Or and online via FaceTime and Skype. Mark’s the author of the book Sing Free Now! 3 Steps To Power, Passion and Confidence and is the creator of the Sing Free Now! method of voice transformation.