Emotion,
intention and motivation in performance preparation
by Nicholas
Bannan
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Introduction
Many readers will be aware that Gillyanne Kayes and Nicholas
Bannan carried out an experimental session linking vocal technique
to emotional motivation at Harmony College last August. They
are currently working on a further exploration into this important
aspect of our art about which details will be published in
due course. Nicholas also attended Directors' College, which
was held at his department in the University of Reading, and
wrote the following as a response to some of the issues raised
on that occasion, and as a foretaste of the research he will
report at a later date.
The Brain
Human brains are divided into two halves, like the rest of
our bodies. We all have a dominant side for a variety of activities:
a dominant eye, ear, hand, and foot. This is not a simple matter:
David Gower was a right-handed bowler and left-handed batsman.
What it comes down to is the means by which responses - memories,
reactions, links to other organs - are processed in the brain,
and this is largely to do with timing. If identical messages,
whether visual or aural, were processed at precisely the same
time, there would be no 'depth of field' which allowed us to
gain the benefit of stereoscopic vision (which is itself time-dependent,
somewhat in the manner of a cine film) and hearing; and we
might find it hard to tell whether we already knew something,
as in the effect we have all experienced known as deja vu.
So our brains have evolved to talk to themselves across the
mid-line, and have developed varying capacities partly dependent
on the way they grew in the womb, which defines our handedness.
We also need to achieve balance between the two halves of
'single' organs, such as the tongue and larynx. Psychological
or physical conditions, which favour one side of the larynx
over the other, will cause problems - one reason why posture
is important. The tongue, too, needs to move evenly in the
mouth; though some people find this hard to achieve because
their jaws are inhibited on the same side as their dominant
hand - look in a mirror and check how evenly yours moves! So
those face-making exercises have an important purpose to help
correct unbalanced muscle use.
Within the brain, there is a corresponding set of balances,
which helps us to cope with tasks with efficiency and success.
Language and logical operation are seen as left-hemisphere
processes, and emotional and qualitative responses as right-hemisphere.
Singers depend on both working in harness in order to perform.
The lovely sound we are geared up to experience ourselves make
(RH) can be 'switched off' (LH) by a message, which says: 'should
I be doing this'? While a signal 'that's the right note at
the right time' (LH) can only allow your best sound to emerge
if the RH provides the accompanying message 'and it feels good
to make this sound'. We all know people who get everything
right but sound dull and uninspired. The LH tends to plan events
cautiously and one-at-a-time, so you get the notes that way
rather than as an uninterrupted, flowing line. The RH, on the
other hand, relishes the freedom to experience. Chord-worship
is an RH phenomenon (subject to the permission of the LH!).
Words are more LH, music more the RH side of things. Think
of the people in your club or quartet who you might consider
RH-dominated or LH-dominated. It may largely depend on where
they learned their singing (operatic types tend to me more
RH, church singers more LH), or on other social, educational
and psychological factors. But recognising this may give you
an insight into how to rehearse to meet their needs.
BABS Directors College January 2001
However, it's not (never is) as simple as that: remember,
we are indivisible selves, and have got that way as a protection
(which works most of the time) against being schizophrenic.
A couple of incidents from Directors' College help illustrate
this, and I will use them to suggest ways you can handle emotional
motivation in rehearsal, whether you are in charge or standing
on the risers.
Sorry I haven't a clue !!
One of the key tasks, which teams had to cope with at DC,
was the cunning variant required of the game Humphrey Littleton
invented 'The words of one song to the tune of another'. The
idea was to challenge directors to develop their craft by devising
untypical versions of standards. Standards were chosen because
the guinea-pig choir would know them. The variants, such as
singing an upbeat tune as a slow ballad, etc., would then sort
out whether the CD's could make their intentions clear and
attain a performance with unfamiliar singers (therefore depending
on universals like gesture and clear demonstration) and provide
the conditions in which the singers identified with the task.
The CD teams were given plenty of time and support to rise
to this task. The choir had about twenty minutes to turn it
into a convincing musical result under their leadership.
Two features were apparent in the solutions teams brought
to this task: they agreed their intentions by devising an emotional
context in which the treatment of the song had a chance of
appearing credible; and they expressed this through narrative.
So, consider turning 'Baby face' into a slow ballad. One option
might be to imagine a hesitant, almost sobbing, performance
representing the thoughts of a devoted husband recalling how
he was first attracted to his wife 50 years before. Consider
telling this story to a group of singers and requesting they
'sing it that way'.
Well, the result (and this really happened at Reading, with
due credit to all involved) is most likely to be: nothing.
Guys who had sung a convincing up-tempo 'Baby face' five minutes
before were simply struck dumb, or managed a croaky entry about
a third below the notes defined by the pitch-pipe. Why?
What this shows is the effect of hemispherical inhibition.
The positive (RH) emotions normally associated with delivering
'Baby face', on which a choirs' performance would normally
depend, were switched off by the narrative, which gave the
context for this 'special' performance. This in turn disabled
the LH analytical processing, virtually robbing singers of
the normal confidence they would have in response to the pitch-pipe.
And, in the sensitive social conditions of the risers, this
was not a private matter: for the fast-response RH processing
which enables group co-ordination to become instinctive was
also momentarily disabled. Result: great idea, but nil music
- and a sense of baffled frustration.
'Earthing' the choir
What, then, should the team have done to prevent or overcome
this problem? The solution is neither complex nor time-costly:
the singers needed to be able to re-locate their (RH) social
interdependence and regain the balance between the hemispheres
which would restore 'permission to sing' while maintaining
sensitivity to the new motivation they had just been given.
The simple way to achieve this is a common feature of barbershop
and other choral practice: assemble the chord through humming,
so that singers can tune in to the emotional world suggested
while still managing to make the musical sound of which they
know they are capable. Call it 'coming back to earth' (earthing
the choir?): a vital stepping-stone between unfamiliar, un-negotiated
emotional experience and the shared outcome of ensemble singing.
On a more general note, there is a message too for how we
use words to sort out rhythmic problems in rehearsal. Recall
that some of the tasks in the DC session involved singing material
to unfamiliar rhythms (ever tried waltzing to a foxtrot?).
A common ploy to get rhythms right is to ask for them to be
spoken. But beware: guys who have mastered singing the notes
beautifully to these words and are then asked to 'switch off
the music' in order to say them to a rhythm are again entering
a hemispherical twilight zone. And the result will often be
that the blend and tuning they could normally take for granted
will have gone out of the window, especially when you think
what has been sacrificed - the four supportive parts of the
barbershop texture reduced to talking out loud!!
Do it on a Barbershop Chord !!
The solution to this, too, is dead simple. Retain the act
of singing (and its RH processing) at all costs even if, in
order to get rhythm right, it's done on a monotone. If you
need to rehearse all four parts, do it on a barbershop chord.
If you need to work on just one part, (the Baritones, say)
let them sing the notes they should: or demonstrate it if you
are the CD or section leader. If God (or evolution) had wanted
us only to talk, we would not have been given two hemispheres:
look after the one which allows you to enjoy your singing.
Nicholas Bannan
Any comments to n.j.c.bannan@reading.ac.uk
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