This week we started working on a different variation of our baseline placement! Because our new song "When will my life begin", is a musical theater song, we started working on our musical theater character placement! This placement allows us to add a certain amount of acting and performance into our song to help take it from a karaoke-like sound (sounding the same singing every song - no matter the genre, speed, range, or style), to a very specific, stage ready sound and performance that matches this particular genre and character.
We do this by making the transition between singing and talking even more seamless - taking it from a "hit the wall place" (the first placement we did our first lesson that sounds and feels strange), to a more conversational place as far as tone, but a distinct character like voice - with our "when will my life begin" song, we called this our "princess voice". We alter our talking voice into a brighter (taking most of the bass out of our voice), more forward (singing it even more through our teeth and extending our words forward), almost squeaky sound - and then use that talking voice, instead of our own, to "talk our song" out.
This process involves shortening our words, adding different voice inflections, changing some of the melodic lines into more rhythmic/ chant-like likes, and adding acting like, and almost comically large movements to enhance the character of the song (a lot more action than we would add to a pop or contemporary song).
Adding energy and movement to our song
By moving into this more character driven placement, we use our talked placement and large movements to add energy to our song to make it more exciting for our audience! The more energy we add - the more it adds to the overall character of the song!