How To Gesture While Singing

Every song tells a story, and when singing for an audience you want that story to shine through and connect the audience to the song and story. All the movements you make on stage should relate back to and enhance the story telling of your song. Being able to move and sing is important, yet starting small is best. Try these tips for striking the right balance of movement while singing:

At home, practice moving around and singing, doing simple tasks as you sing just to practice doing two things at once. Once you can move around easily while singing, try speaking the words to your song and take note of what gestures you use. The way you move your hands when saying the words to the song will help you to identify the most natural gestures for when you sing the words.

Some songs don’t require much movement at all. During your initial practices it’s probably better to move too much and then later eliminate the movements that don’t enhance the words of the song. Movement simply for the sake of movement can detract from your song, rather than enhance it. For example, a classical song generally won’t need many gestures and requires little movement. Take a few steps but don’t stray too far from where you started.

For those of you who have just begun singing, your first priority should be to concentrate on your singing and technique rather than movement. When you first begin singing before an audience, don’t try to tackle to many things at once. Just developing your vocal technique will most likely be enough to keep you busy. Once you have learned good technique you will then need to learn how to move because movement adds to your artistic interpretation of the song. You need to know where to look and how much to move when you sing.

Most beginner singers want to move their hands a lot when they sing because they assume that gesturing makes their song more interesting and exciting and it can when done properly. Just remember it is not just your hands you should be moving, move your entire arm so that your elbows are not glued to your sides and make sure that your hands are not clenched but open.

Especially if you tend to move your hands when you speak, you will feel uncomfortable and unnatural if your try and keep your hands by your sides when you sing. Work the song as a monolog to discover what’s happening and how the character would react to the actions in the story. By becoming the character in the song, gestures will be part of your natural reaction to what is happening you can use those same gestures when you sing to help tell your story. However avoid excessive gesturing only to fill dead space.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you’re determined to learn how to sing like a star but can’t afford the cost of private singing lessons don’t worry. It’s possible to teach yourself to sing with affordable video singing training like Sing With Freedom from Per Bristow. All the best with it!