We all know the feeling of striking out at an audition or even worse, at a performance. Afterwards, the questions swirl around in your head: “Why did I miss that note? I was so ready, why did I crash and burn? What happened between my perfect rehearsal and that stage?”
PGA pro golfer Tom Lehman would say you simply lost your rhythm. In a recent article (“Getting into the Rhythm” by Tom Lehman, Northwest Airlines World Traveler, August 2001, p. 24), Mr. Lehman starts out by recalling a basketball game he attended with his wife. As he watched a player shoot free throws, he predicted correctly that the player would miss. His wife asked how he knew. It turns out he’d been watching the practice and saw that this player nearly always dribbled the ball exactly seven times—and he aced those shots. However, in the heat of the game, the player varied that pattern and dribbled eight or nine times and missed.
Voice teachers have been using sports metaphors to communicate concepts in singing for years and the tie-in here is obvious. You have to figure out the exact “rhythm” or sequence you use to ace your arias in the practice room and then learn to duplicate it on stage. Take Pavarotti for instance. While you can’t get into his mind, you can do what Tom Lehman did at the basketball game. Visualize Pavarotti as he approaches one of his great high notes. Just like the basketball player, when Pavarotti is about to ace the note, he generally stands the same, moves his arms the same, has the exact same look in his face, his jaw, tongue, cheeks—you can see it in your mind’s eye, can’t you? Think back to Joan Sutherland and actually visualize the physical rhythm of many other legendary singers in the same way. To ace your arias in the heat of the game, you need to be able to have the exact same physical rhythm everytime.
Tom Lehman goes a step further and shares his mental “rhythm” as well. You might think about this and apply it to your singing. He writes, “Like every pro on the PGA tour, I have my own ritual when I walk up to hit the ball. It’s more mental than anything else. Watch pros play a round and I think you’ll be impressed with how little their routine changes. My routine hasn’t changed much in 20 years and I think that’s been a big key in my success. I don’t want to give any dark secrets away but right before I hit the ball, I’m basically envisioning the shot I want to hit. Yours could be something different, but it should serve the ultimate purpose: to help you find the tempo and make your next stroke as natural as possible.”
Setting up a mental and physical rhythm isn’t enough however. The hours preceding the game are critical as any seasoned performer or player knows. In the article, Mr. Lehman mentions that on the day of a game he is careful to maintain neither a frantic pace nor too leisurely a pace. I’ve heard of teachers telling their students that on performance days, they are to lie in a darkened room and not speak all day long and other extreme measures! (I think this advice is for singers without children!) Perhaps you might consider Mr. Lehman’s advice, “If you’ve been having a leisurely, lazy day at the course and have been hanging around for hours before you hit your first ball, you’re likely to play lethargically. The key is finding a balance. You want to be sharp, but you don’t want to feel ‘wired.’ On the other hand, if you jump out of bed, drive 100 miles an hour an change into your spikes in the parking lot when you get to the course, odds are, you’re going to play a hurried, harried round and rush your shots.”
I’m sure a lot of singers relate to this tendency to arrive at a performance in a harried state. I learned this lesson as a young singer performing my first Verdi Requiem at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. I was not yet performance savvy; I thought I could proceed with my normal frantic day and then run out to the city and sing! I taught my students until 5 PM, (vocally and mentally exhausting) ate dinner while driving an hour through rush hour traffic (tension and indigestion) arriving only 30 minutes before curtain (not leaving enough time for emergencies. One traffic jam and I could’ve been late for the actual performance!). I arrived in a harried state to sing a very difficult role. I was exhausted before I started and barely made it through. Miraculously there were no disasters but it could have been just the opposite. Since that day, my husband has helped me remember that lesson with his own sports metaphor, “this is game day!”
There is a lot to be said for Mr. Lehman’s 20 years of a balanced performance day routine. I’ve noticed over the years in reading Opera News, talking to friends in the opera circuit and interviewing great singers that many talk about their “routine” or their rhythm on performance day.
I think it would be an interesting topic to start up on the Classical Singer Forum and in Letters to the Editor. What is your routine on performance day that helps you get that performance edge? What is your routine right before a difficult passage or high note? Write me at cjw@classicalsinger.com or visit the forum at classicalsinger.com where we have a discussion started on this topic.
