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I’ve done articles before on vocal longevity, on making sure you give yourself rest periods when practicing and singing. This week I want to expand on this in a way that most of you should find helpful – I want to discuss the idea of “micro-rests” and “macro-rests”.
Think of it like someone running a marathon.
Runners HAVE to pace themselves. Sometimes they will reduce their speed a little, or a lot, often before a key stretch they know is going to take a lot out of them. It is personal for each runner what their strategy is (mainly based on what they find challenging or fatiguing) but they must each strategise on how to pace themselves and above all, to do it in a way that allows them to keep going and maintain their performance.
In relation to singers, we want to have different degrees of “rest” opportunities… for example:
1) Macro-rest – taking a longer opportunity to rest your voice, often taking a break to pause for 30-60 seconds at the end of a challenging piece
2) Micro-rest – taking a shorter opportunity to rest your voice, often DURING songs to reduce total vocal load on your voice.
Macro-rests
The idea of taking a macro-rest is fairly well understood and practiced. If we sing a song, and feel tired when we finish it, we take a break. Bands do this all the time live. I’d encourage you to do the same when practicing sets of songs even at home – it will make a difference!
However, this is often not enough to enable a singer to give continually high vocal quality the whole way through a song. Instead, I advise looking to micro-rests for additional support.
Micro-rests
Micro-rests are the idea of taking additional shorter opportunities to help your voice recover/keep going throughout a song or set. These will often be done DURING a song. Let me give you some examples of what I mean, as this is a little tricky to grasp at first.
Note: None of these micro-rests will generally last longer than a few seconds (hence the prefix micro!), and may not even allow you to stop singing whilst you do them. That said, these are strategies that can help keep you going even in the face of monstrously challenging songs.
1) Change tiny melody fragments
Often, there is no way you can even stop singing a song or a set. So instead, try modifying key melody lines of difficult songs to make them less demanding on your voice. It’s about finding those bottlenecks where you feel like you are struggling.
These could be notes that are just a tad too low, or too high, or perhaps just the arrangement of the notes just is not forthcoming in your voice. Changing melodies in those moments to something else that works well can be incredibly helpful. Think of the runner example, where they chill out the pace to enable them to keep going but without actually stopping.
Such changes might only affect 3-4 seconds of melody across the whole song, but when a given song feels like an eternal onslaught, this can make ALL the difference in the world.
2) Add/create space in the track
As another example, maybe the tiny melody changes aren’t sufficient for you. Even with a melody change it still feels like a 3-4 minute constant onslaught. So, try adding an extra bar or two into the song where no singing is required.
If you accompany yourself or work with a band, this could literally be sticking a few bars of no singing in – e.g. a moment for a guitar/other solo, dwelling on the chord progression to build to the next section of the song etc. If you work with backing tracks and feel comfortable editing the track, this could involve copying and pasting half of a verse somewhere to space out the song a bit more.
Alternatively, if you use backing tracks and don’t feel comfortable editing the track, identify lines that don’t matter so much and just don’t sing them. This may involve altering the melodies leading up to and away from those lines so it doesn’t just seem like lines are totally missing, but there’s plenty of creative ways around this.
This addition or creation of space in a song can give you just enough vocal respite to continue on, and can dramatically reduce the vocal loading you are under.
3) Make sure you’ve got easy songs in your set
One final suggestion is to introduce songs into your set that act as a easy buffers between challenging pieces. Rock singers and function band singers are especially guilty of having sets that are technically demanding from start to finish. That just isn’t sustainable for most singers (not to mention acoustically fatiguing for the audience!).
Think of it like having a song that is a gentle jog for you. Keeps you warm, keeps your voice moving, but it is so pedestrian you could do it without any real thought. Having songs that provide some respite for you as a singer can be HUGE for helping you get through a set.
Try a few of these out.
I am a huge fan of modifying melodies after I’ve learned and nailed a song. Just because I CAN make it through the song as written doesn’t automatically make it the “best version” I could ever sing. This can not only turn a behemoth of a song into something manageable with little modification, it can actually elevate a song to a whole new level. It’s really down to how creative you can be with a song.
Learn More: Related Articles
If you want to learn more about performing and improving your own performances you may enjoy these related articles:
Performance Anxiety: What is it, where does it come from, what can we do about it
Performance Workshop with Rhonda Carlson: Part 1
Performance Workshop with Rhonda Carlson: Part 2
Performance Workshop with Rhonda Carlson: Part 3
Ease, Strain, Time to think: Improve your performances easily
5 Simple Tips to Improve Your Performances