Yes, they are deelyboppers I'm wearing. I was being the last female cockroach on earth, of course. One of several Ignobel Award Ceremonies I have had the honour of playing. Picture from www.improbable.com
Sandra and Phil’s High Performance Laboratory
Okay – so you’ve learned to sing and you can carry a tune. But what next? Do you find yourself standing on stage feeling a bit of a lemon, worrying about what your feet look like, whether your tummy’s sticking out or your hat looks stupid? Which hand do you hold your mic in? What do you do with the other one? (Don’t go for cheap laughs now…) Should you use a stand? What should you do with the cable? Is sitting on a stool cool or Cliché Central these days? Did some idiot just clean the floor with hi-shine polish? Is that dress see-through? Do those shoes make you look like a luscious vamp or a munchkin on stilts?
Me too. See-through dress? Check. Stupid Hat? Check. Inappropriate choice of song? Check. Falling flat on my backside in the middle of a big band concert in Valence in front of 1500 people? Check.
But I’m still here. Counting the bruises, and giggling about the mistakes.
There are tricks to selling a song, and very few of them are down to whether you’re actually much cop as a singer. You can have a lovely voice and be as dull to watch as Saturday night TV. Likewise you can have a voice that sounds like your Great Auntie Joan’s parrot, but if you can put a spin on it, no one will even notice. So Phil and I thought that it was high time we shared some of our toppest secrets of ‘making an idiot of yourself on stage’ with the big wide world and we’ll be running workshops, probably in South East London, so you can learn to ‘sell’ your songs too. With Professor Phil Mead at the keyboards and myself with the clipboard, serious spectacles and white coat, Sandra and Phil’s High Performance Laboratory should have you warbling confidently in no time.
And yes, I am singing a love song to a food mixer. It made perfect sense at the time...
Of course everybody has their own way of performing and not everyone (in fact remarkably few people) needs to throw themselves around the stage like I do, so we’ll be looking at ways to make YOU shine – however that might manifest itself. The groups will be small, so that we can really look at what makes each person perform to their best ability.
I’m not going to teach you to sing – I’m assuming you’re okay on that one already, though since much of performing is about confidence with timing and root notes, we’ll be looking at ways to be comfortable with the technical side of things.
I’m not going to tell you how to dress – that’s up to you, though we can discuss what will make you feel best up there on the stage, whether it’s tatty jeans, Chanel chic, flapper feathers or an original Adrian gown. And, girls, we’ll talk about what goes on under that fabulous costume too (look away now, boys, you really don’t want to know…)
Only something that comes from inside of you will look ‘honest’ up there on stage. Sometimes, though, it takes other people to help you discover what that something is and who knows – it could be us.
For more information, please email (leave out the obvious gap between the parts of the address below…)
sandra @vocaholic.co.uk
So - what do I do with my hands again?
