Ells’ Helpful Guide To Music Things Part 4: Surviving Your First Open Mic

Ok, this post is a bit of a re-hash of a piece I did for the 4014 Radio show back in the day, but seeing as it’s nearly time for our annual 4014 Project Carnival Open Mic, I thought it would be good to go over again.

So, it’s your first Open Mic – that’s great! I hope you’re excited, but I expect that you’re pretty nervous too. Here’s my tips for making the most of your Open Mic experience:

• Preparation - Practice, practice and then practice some more. Remember that you will be nervous on the night, and that this might make your performance a little less than perfect. The better you know your songs or pieces the better you’ll feel.

  Open Mics are a great opportunity to improve your stage presence and performance skills – the best way to get more confident on stage is to get on stage. They generally have a supportive and encouraging atmosphere too.

• DO IT – If it’s your first time performing in front of a crowd, it takes guts to actually get up on the stage. Every musician out there will tell you that it’s worth it though.
• Make Yourself known – There will probably be a slightly stressed looking somebody around with a list: that’s the person you need. Let them know that you want to play. I would try to get there early(ish – you don’t want to hang around tooo long), so that you’re guaranteed a place.
• Are we sitting comfortably? – Position yourself so that you can comfortably sing into the mic. If you  need to look at the neck of your guitar or the keys of the piano (or whatever instrument you play), move the mic/mic stand so you can do so without singing ‘off mic’. Moving things about is not a crime – remember, the sound person wants you to sound your best, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
  
  As a side note, it’s a very good idea to practice with a mic if you can – it’ll help you get a good idea of the best placement for you.
• Annnd relax….- Before you start your performance, take a deep breath and a second to try to relax. Your adrenaline level will probably be quite high, so it’s easy to rush in and play too fast.
• Look at the audience… – Looking at the audience will make you seem more confident, regardless of how you’re feeling inside. If that freaks you out or puts you off, try looking over the audience. You don’t have to do it all the time, but if you don’t look up at all, you won’t make as strong a connection with your listeners.
• Ignore the Chatter – There probably will be some people in the audience who talk. If you can, just try to ignore them. There are people who are listening, and they want you to do well.
• Don’t worry if you make a mistake – It’s live music – nobody expects it to be perfect. All musicians have messed up on stage. If you can’t keep going, try to pick up from near where you left off. And if you’re bold and make a joke of it, then I bet you’ll get an even bigger cheer at the end of the song.
• And finally – enjoy!Performing music in front of people is nerve-wracking, yes. But it’s also a great feeling, and once you start it’s hard to stop!

I hope you enjoy your first Open Mic experience – but even if things don’t go quite to plan, remember that it takes time to build your confidence and the more you get up on stage and play, the easier it will become.

The nerves may never leave you completely (I certainly still get nervous, and I’ve been at this for years now), but it’s all part of the experience, and the buzz after a great performance is pretty immense.

Why not share your experiences in the comments? I love hearing from you – and maybe I’ll even see a few of you at an Open Mic near by.

Productiveness and Practice

Image from oddquartet.com – print it out and stick it on things! You know you want to…

Practising: I am well aware that I need to do it, but I have a tendency to either get distracted by other things, or lapse for weeks if I don’t have performance to prepare for.

But, as I mentioned in my post the other week I’ve recently started taking piano lessons again. It’s been going pretty well so far – in four (five?) lessons I have three pieces that are starting to come together and I’m pleasantly surprised how quickly things are coming back to me. I’m pleased that I’m remembering how to read music again (which I haven’t done seriously since I left university… in 2004). But the main thing that starting lessons has given me – something to practise for every week.

My previous experience of piano lessons has been draconian attitudes and pressure to pass exams*, so it’s been a really refreshing experience to go to a teacher who told me on my first lesson ‘yeah, if you can get 15-30 minutes in 4 or 5 time a week, you’ll see some improvement’. And I am.

What I’ve tried to do these past few weeks is to keep track of how long I have practised each day, and record it on a prettily coloured chart to keep myself accountable. I’ve included rows for guitar and vocal practise too… but to be honest, once I’ve worked through my piano practise, picking up the guitar feels like a treat and not a chore.

So, lately I’ve been playing a lot more and this is an excellent thing: time spent playing is never time wasted. However, I am starting to feel like I’ve actually been less productive. I don’t have anything physical to show for my work. Despite spending way more time in the music room, I haven’t progressed further on my never-ending album, nor have I written much new material or worked on the bits hubby asked me to do for the relaunch of the radio show.

I can’t help but think that I could do with a few more hours in the day to fit everything in.

Or maybe I just need to get more organised…

*I had several teachers growing up, but the two that I had most of my lessons with were also the two that I feared the most… The first scarred me emotionally for life and made me hate everything to do with playing (which explains why I quit several times). The second made me work really hard and actually got me through grade 5 with merit. I have a lot to thank her for, even if she did terrify the young me.

A Virtual Kick Up The Backside (Or Burn Your File of Song Ideas and Start Over (I Dare You))

I owe Nicholas Tozier a thank you for his post Burn Your File of Song Ideas and Start Over (I Dare You).

While I don’t advocate burning old song ideas (and if you read it, you’ll know that what Nicholas is suggesting isn’t as extreme as the title suggests), what this post made me do was actually look through my old song ideas.

And what I found was a scrappy collection of bits and pieces that I’d forgotten about, dumped in folders and notebooks and files on my PC.

Mostly I found lots of terrible lyrics which deserve to be binned, but – and it’s a bit of a big but – one or two were little gems that I had merely mislaid amongst the clutter. Yes, they were unfinished and rough in some cases, but with a little work they could become fully fledged songs.

Do nawt throes me out! I are good idea. (Image from Flickr by Harry R)

So, the moral of the story is this: Do keep your old notes and scraps of ideas, but make sure you actually review them from time to time so that you don’t get bogged down in too many unfinished works.

If the idea is awful and should be cast into the doomed depths of the bin, make the call and do it. If it has merit but needs more work, keep hold of it – but don’t let it linger, forgotten and unloved for months or even years.

I haven’t properly cleared out all my song scraps yet, but I’m planning on having a proper clear out and working on the worthy few this weekend. Hopefully, it will be a cleansing and productive process – and I have to say that I’m really looking forward to it, which is great. I’ve been struggling to get excited about songwriting lately and really struggling to get anything finished, so thank you again, Nicholas, for the virtual kick up the bum. I needed it.

Singer’s Brain vs Guitarist’s Brain: Are They Different?

I wish I could consider myself an excellent all-round musician, but seeing as I’m more a of a realist (Pessimist? No, definitely realist), I know that I am a singer first and foremost, while my instrument skills are essentially just about ‘good enough’ (if there is such a thing) to accompany my voice. I am always trying to get better at guitar, but there’s a bit of a stumbling block that I come across a lot when learning new songs: guitar tab.

For those of you not in the know; guitar tablature, or tab, is a way of documenting guitar music using lines to represent the strings of the guitar and numbers to represent the which note should be fretted. There are heaps of great tabs online, and they are really very useful for learning new songs.

Guitar Tab for 'These Wooden Ideas' by Idlewild (from ultimate-guitar.com*; tabbed by Greame)

The thing is, when you learn a song from a singer’s point of view, you learn the melody. You learn the shape of it and how it flows through the structure of the song. You learn the lyrics and how they fit with the chords. Essentially, you learn the song as a whole.

This isn’t usually the case with guitar tabs – they are often broken down into phrases, licks or verse and chorus sections, often without the lyrics as a reference point (or, as in our example here, just the first line). Which is fine – it makes sense when playing guitar to learn in sections, to get one riff down and then move onto the next and string them together according to the structure of the song. This seems to be how a guitarist’s brain works.

So, the problem for me is that my singer’s brain takes over – it wants to know how the song goes as a whole, how the whole thing flows together before I’ve managed to get the first bit sorted. I also find that when I listen to songs to work out guitar parts my ears get distracted and start listening to the vocal parts… but that might just be me!

So there we go:

Singer’s brain – learns words, melody and how the song flows.

Guitarist’s brain – learns sections and puts together for structure

Guitar tabs naturally tend to lean towards the ‘guitarist’s brain’ way of learning. I mean, of course they do – they are designed for guitarists.

So, how does a singer get round this? Well, to be honest I tend to learn new songs from chord sheets and not tabs. This gives you the structure of the song at a glance, and you have the lyrics to reference where the chord changes are. This helps combine my singer’s way of learning with playing the guitar, but does not give you the full picture of a guitar part, just the essentials.

A bit of a cop-out? Perhaps.

So, by trying to understand the differences between how guitarists and singers learn, I am hoping to combine both ways of thinking into my practice sessions. Let’s see how it goes!

*By the way – if you are looking for guitar tabs ultimate-guitar.com is a good place to start.

Ells’ Helpful Guides to Music Things, Part 3: Tips for Looking After Your Voice During Hayfever Season

Wohoo, yeah! It’s allergy season. *cough cough, sniff sniff*.

If you’re like me and suffer from hay fever but also enjoy singing, how do you avoid letting your allergies get in the way of your vocal prowess?

Now, for most singers hay fever isn’t too much of a problem, except when you need to sing at an outdoor event or if the pollen count is particularly high, but there are a couple of things you can do to look after your voice generally which are even more helpful when hay fever is rife.

By the way, some of these tips have been learnt from The Handbook for Working Singers by Roma Waterman – if you’re serious about singing, I highly recommend giving this a read. It’s full of helpful tips, advice and some really good warm up and breathing exercises.

Anyway, here we go:

• Drink water – Keeping your throat and body hydrated is a good thing anyway, but is especially important if you’re taking anti-histamines or decongestants as these tend to dry the throat.  I’m not saying don’t take tablets, but if you do it’s a good idea to compensate the drying effect by drinking a little more.

• Try a soothing tea – Again, keeping hydrated is good and herbal teas help you to do just that. Some teas, such as Throat Comfort Tea also have the added benefit of being soothing to the throat. I like this tea because the liquorice in it makes it naturally sweet – but that might just be me and my sweet tooth! I hear that ginger tea or sage tea are both good too.

• Avoid chocolate – alright, just before you sing anyway – I can’t see myself giving it up, so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to! But the point is that chocolate increases the production of catarrh, which, if you’re suffering from hay fever you have enough of already (yucky but true!). Not eating chocolate in the run-up to a gig or singing session should help your airways to stay clearer. Dairy products are also said to have to same effect.

• Honey, honey – honey has been used as a traditional remedy for soothing sore throats for many years, and with good reason. It’s said that eating locally produced honey is helpful to reduce hay fever symptoms -  the small amount of pollen in the honey is supposed to desensitise your immune system. Whether this is the case, I don’t know (I’ve never noticed any effect on my own symptoms, and this article certainly suggests that this isn’t the case), but taking honey in warm water or herb tea will definitely help to coat and soothe a sore or scratchy throat. You can even just swallow a teaspoon of honey for instant relief, if you’re so inclined.

• Know when to stop – if your throat feels swollen and it hurts to swallow, you definitely shouldn’t sing. My own hay fever symptoms aren’t normally this bad, but I know that some suffers get a stronger reaction than I do. A throat that’s a bit sore is normally ok as long as you don’t push it and make sure you’re singing correctly, but if it hurts when you swallow that means that your throat is swollen and singing will exacerbate the problem, possibly causing long-term damage. On a similar note, be careful about taking pain killers when you have a sore throat and need to sing – you won’t be able to judge whether you’re causing yourself more pain until the drugs wear off – not good!

• Time your medicine – Try experimenting with finding the best time to take whatever medicine you use. I find that taking my steriod nasal spray around 1/2 an hour before I sing really cuts down on congestion, which is definitely a help. When I take antihistamine tablets, rather than taking the whole dose in the morning I find it’s better to split the tablet by taking half in the morning, and the second half in the afternoon if I need it (note, I’m not overdosing here – it’s a half-dose each time! Be careful not to go overboard!). Personally, I find this helps cut down on drowsiness later in the day, and again, it helps with congestion as I usually sing in the evening. You may find that a different strategy helps you, depending on your most active periods of singing.

So there we go, some tips for looking after your voice while the pollen is rife!

Of course, the most important thing you can do to support your voice is to make sure that you are singing correctly and using a good technique. If you are worried about your technique or are having problems when you sing, make sure you consult a good singing teacher who should be able to help with your individual issues.

I’d love to hear from you – do you suffer from hay fever? Does it affect your singing, and if so, how do you deal with it? Do you have your own tips for looking after your voice? Let me know in the comments!

A Round Up of Twitter Advice For Musicians

I’ve been getting into Twitter lately – for a long time, I just didn’t get it. And I’m finding that this seems to be a fairly common experience. There’s a lot of advice out there on how best to utilize Twitter if you are a band or musician, so this post is a round up of some of the best that I’ve come across.

So, first up;

To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

This seems like an obvious question – of course you should have a Twitter account, right? Well, yes, it is advisable to use as many means of social media to connect with fans as possible, but – and this is a big but – there’s no point signing up to a Twitter account if you know you’re not going to be able to put some time into it.

If fans search for you on Twitter and find an account where the last Tweet was a year ago or more, they’re going to think that you either a. don’t care enough to keep people up to date, or b. haven’t been up to much for the last year. This is not the impression that you want to give. If you’re not prepared to update regularly, then it’s better not to have an account at all. That way fans searching for you will just think ‘oh they must not tweet’ (it’s ok – tweeps do understand that the whole world isn’t on Twitter – although a lot of them think it should be), and will hopefully look for your other accounts or official website.

So, if after reading that you do decide to Tweet, this brings us to;

Building a Community

Twitter (and other social media) is about connecting with people, it’s not just an opportunity to try and flog your stuff. As a musician, it is really important to remember that people want to get to know you as well as your music. They don’t want to be constantly bombarded with updates that scream BUY MY TRACK, COME TO MY SHOW, CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE – that will put people off and make you sound like a spam bot, not a real human being. So, the general rule of thumb is this: keep people updated, but don’t be pushy about it.

Its good to have some fun with your tweets, to be likeable as a person and to form relationships with your fans. Of course, you do need to plug stuff, but make sure that it is balanced – too much and tweeps will be turned off, too little and they’ll stop associating you with the very thing you’re trying to get out there: your music.

For more info on getting the balance right, see Kristen Lamb’s post here. It’s primarily aimed at writers, but the goal for musicians is the same; to build a platform. Actually, if you’re starting out on Twitter, Kristen’s blog is a really good place to start – and she’s met Dean Koontz (SO jealous)!

You are not a big corporation, you are a person or band with a personality, so you need to approach Twitter differently and use it as an opportunity to get yourself out there, not as free advertising.

The other thing that Kristen recommends is using TweetDeck – and I would agree that this is a great tool that allows you to see what’s going on in the Twittersphere and to more easily join in conversations. It allows you to edit before you re-tweet and you can have columns following your most useful hash-tags. If you have no idea what I meant in that last sentence, then read this getting started guide from Twitter, more info on hashtags and @messages – it’s ok, I’ll wait!

All done?

Good. So hopefully now you should be getting the idea – Twitter is a powerful platform if used in the right way, but, as with some many things in life, it’s all about balance.

I’ll leave you with some final points:

Remember that everything you tweet is public

This is a very good reason to also remember to stay positive. Ranting can be funny, if done in the right way, but too much bile can leave you looking like a lemon – bitter. If you’re not as hilariously angry as Charlie Brooker, keep the negativity to yourself!

You can always direct message people if you must moan to trusted friends on Twitter – goodness knows we all have need to occasionally – but if you clutter up your Twitter feed with negative comments, then it reflects badly on you as a professional, and you never know who is going to be looking at your profile… it could be the A&R man on the brink of getting in touch with your band, in which case, you don’t want to look ‘difficult’ to work with.

Oh, and talking of Charlie Brooker and negativity – check out his piece on Rebecca Black, it’s funny and also makes an important point (take it with you on your journey).

To conclude; there’s a wealth of information out there for musicians building a social media platform and I’d recommend checking out as much as you can, whether you’ve started trying to build your platform or are just in the planning stage. There is some conflicting info, so you have to follow the advice that you think will work for you, but the important thing to remember is that the goal is to connect.

Now it’s over to you! Is there are social media advice that you think is important? Do you have any tips? Let me know in the comments!

Ells’s Helpful Guides to Music Things, Part 2: Confidence On Stage

Rock with confidence!

If I’m honest this is less of a guide and more of a discussion, because on-stage confidence is something that, I must confess, I struggle with….

For those of you that don’t know (and why would you?), I have performed as a solo acoustic singer-songwriter for the past 6 years or so. I started out playing just occasionally at open mic nights, and now gig regularly around North Wiltshire and Bristol (although I do still play a lot of Open Mics, because a. I organise them, and b. they’re great fun!)

But anyway, despite all this lovely shiny gig experience, I still get nervous, you see.

Super-nervous.

Sometimes the nerves help – they give me the little kick of adrenaline that I need to do well and to give the audience everything I’ve got. Sometimes they overcome me – and I get up on stage thinking ‘ok, why do I do this to myself?’, my hands are shaking all over the place, my throat is dry and I’m verging on the edge of panic.

So, it’s pretty obvious that I’m not the best person to definitively tell anyone ‘this is what you need to do to be confident’. But actually, that’s a good thing (no, it is – promise!), because everyone has to find their own way to channel nerves into energy and confident performance.

I will however, share a few things that have helped me in the past, and am really interesting in hearing any ideas from fellow musicians/performers – think of this as a starting point, and add your own spin to it. Because you’re the only one who can find out what works best for you.

Right, on to the tips:

• Think positively: – approach every performance with a ‘bring it on’ attitude. It doesn’t matter whether you are nervous or not, telling yourself that this will be a positive experience will help it become one. Visualisation is a common technique in sport and performance – try imagining yourself doing well, feeling great after a good set and easily getting over any little mistakes. For me, this helps to counter-act the negative thoughts that creep in and make nervousness worse. It can be battle, but one you can win – I like to think of hitting the evil paranoia fairy with my big stick of positivity. Maybe that’s just me….

• Make sure you’ve practised: – Yeah, you’ve heard this one before. But think back – the performances you dreaded are the ones that you didn’t feel ready for… am I right? The more you can play/sing your songs automatically, the easier it will be to concentrate on other performance aspects when you’re on stage, and be confident in what you’re doing.

• Talk loudly: - Ok, I  admit that this is one my husband always tells me off for… mumbling between songs. When you introduce a song, do it loudly. Your mic will be set for the volume of your voice when you sing, which is, of course, louder than your normal speaking voice. You will appear more confident if you raise your voice between songs and people can hear your introductions. Try to talk as if you were still singing. Now, if only I could practice what I preach on this one…. (I’m trying!)

• Fake it, baby!: – You’ve heard the phrase ‘fake it to make it’… well it’s kind of true. If you pretend to be a confident, interesting performer when you walk up on to stage, the audience will see… a confident interesting performer! Not that you don’t have to be yourself on stage, just a bigger, braver version of yourself.

• Don’t let one bad gig get you down: - Something else that I’ve been guilty of (naughty, naughty Ells). It’s really easy to let a gig that didn’t go to plan affect subsequent performances. You start telling yourself that you sucked then, so you’re going to suck now… but no – it’s the paranoia fairy again! Time to get the big stick of positivity out… Tell the silly fairy that ok, the previous gig may not have been great, but you’ve learnt from it and got better. This one will be good – you’ll make sure of it.

Ok then my lovely peeps, it’s over to you – do you have any tips of your own? Have you successfully combatted your natural nervousness, or are you like me – fighting the evil fairies at every show? Leave a comment – I’d love to know!

And finally: A mini mash-up of useful links:

Building Stage Presence and Confidence – an interesting article with some good practice/performance ideas

How to Manage Stage Fright: Not Just For Musicians from HappenChance – confidence tips to apply to all sorts of situations

Top Ten On Stage Music Tips: A count down of ten top tips!

Ells’s Helpful Guides to Music Things, Part 1: Microphone Technique when Singing

This is a slightly edited repeat of the post I wrote for The 4014 Project and posted the other day, and I thought it might be appropriate to add it to this, my personal blog, too. It is the start of a series of posts looking at a few basic techniques and tricks of the trade for live singers and musicians, starting this week with microphone technique.

Microphone technique  seems to be neglected by a lot of singers when they’re starting out, in fact a lot of singers seem very reluctant to embrace it at all (especially those used to singing acoustically in folk clubs etc.).

“But why should we listen to Ells?” I hear you cry… well, because I said so. And also because I’ve experienced both being on stage and at the sound desk, and I’ve also learnt a lot from fellow musicians and sound techs over the years.

The Importance of Microphone Technique:

Mic technique is certainly something I didn’t really think about until I started learning more about the technical side of music, but it can make a real difference when you’re on-stage… You will feel more confident, and come across better if you have practiced and developed you microphone technique. It’s no good singing your heart out if no-one can hear you because you’re miles from the pickup area of your microphone!

And that brings me on the first point:-

Correct Positioning:

Most microphones will pick up best from the grill to around 6 inches away from the diaphragm (the moving part that converts the sound energy into movement, which is then converted into the electrical signal). If you move further away from the mic than this, chances are that your voice will get lost, or, your friendly sound person will have to turn up the gain so much that feedback is a real possibility. I would recommend staying fairly close to the mic, around 1-3″ away.

Position the mic so that you’re singing into it… some people recommend singing over the top of, or from the side of the mic to reduce ‘pop’. (‘Pop’ is when plosive sounds such as p’s at the beginning of words, cause the mic to make a boomy popping noise as the outrush of air hits the sensitive diaphragm).

Personally, I think that if you’re the correct distance from the mic (6″ away max.) and it is at a slight angle, that should be fine. If the mic is pointing too much at your chest or chin, the general pick-up is not as good, and I always think a tiny bit of ‘pop’ is better than not being heard at all!

Also, you’d be surprised at how many people set up a mic directly in front of them… and then look at their guitar for the whole set. I have seen this many times in my role as Open Mic sound person, so I will say this: If you are playing an instrument and need to look at it, there is nothing at all wrong with positioning the mic a bit to the side so that you can sing into it AND see your guitar neck/keyboard or whatever wonderful instrument you happen to perform with. In fact, your sound person will probably thank you for it.

If there are helpful people positioning things for you, don’t be afraid to tell them what you prefer (in a nice way – sound people are sensitive beasties!). It is much better to get it right while you’re setting up – remember; they want you to sound good too.

One final note on positioning – try to put the microphone where you don’t need to lean in to it or to tilt your head up to much to get close enough to it… this will just generally make you more comfortable and allow you to stand correctly when you sing. Because good posture is important, ’nuff said!

Practice makes perfect:

I would definitely recommend practicing with a microphone if you can, so you can hear how much you’re getting back from it in different positions, and how the position of the mic affects the tone of your voice. A lot of live vocal mics have ‘presence’ if you get near to them (a frequency boost around the mid-tone of the human voice), and many singers use this to their advantage. Whether you decide to do this or not is totally personal preference, and depends on many factors, such as the mood of the song and what works best for your voice.

If you don’t have a mic you can sing with, then setting up a pretend mic when you practice can also be a help (although you might feel a bit silly!), particularly if you play an instrument, just because having something physically in front of you will make you more aware when it comes to a performance.

And finally:

I hope these tips will be of use to you. If you need any more explanation, have any questions, or even any disagreements or more tips, let me know in the comments or email hello@4014.co.uk (just make sure you mark in the subject that it’s for Ells, regarding this blog) and I will do my best to help.