How To Sing And Make Your Audience Laugh
Not all the songs you can sing after you've taken a course of singing lessons are serious
. They don't have to be and they shouldn't be. To be a real hit when entertaining friends, try singing for laughs!
There is an art to comic singing. You may be aiming to get your audience in stitches, but you still have to be a good singer to do this. You still need to work on your techniques, your breathing and your transitions between your head voice and your chest voice, just like a good course of singing lessons will teach you. You aren't going to get many laughs if you get up in front of an audience and sing badly. If you do get any laughs, they are probably laughing at you rather than with you - and how humiliating is that?
To sing for laughs requires you to shed all your inhibitions, so it takes a lot of confidence. If you hold back and are afraid of looking like a right idiot, you often end up looking like an idiot. If you aren't afraid of being a bit silly and get into it, hamming it up and being larger than life, then you'll look splendid and your audience will love you.
There are two main types of comic song. The first type is when the song is intrinsically funny, usually because of the lyrics. Gilbert and Sullivan's famous operettas are classic examples of these, with numbers by Australian Rolf Harris being more modern examples. The second type is where you parody a more serious song by using exaggeration and overdramatisation - intensely romantic love songs, especially the tragic ones, and pompous anthems are ripe for this sort of treatment, and nearly every operatic aria also works for this bufoonery. Think of Mr Bean in "Mr Bean's Holiday" where he lip-synchs to O Mio Bambino Caro.
If you are singing the first sort of comic song, you do better if you take the song seriously and don't go in for the over-dramatic stuff. In fact, funny lyrics seem all the funnier if they're delivered completely dead-pan. But you can, of course, have a twinkle in your eyes and a smile on your face. As the lyrics are the important thing here, you will have to work on making sure your enunciation is right so your audience can hear every word you're singing. And don't forget the words!
With the second sort, you can pull out all the stops when it comes to gesture, extravagant costumes and facial expression - to say nothing of vocal expression. Parody and exaggeration are the key here - you are doing the musical equivalent of a caricature in a political cartoon. If you're going in for an operatic number, sing with that very full voice with lots of vibrato and resonance (this takes a lot of doing to get right, so this isn't for beginners). And don't forget your Viking helmet and balloons up your shirt for a Wagnerian number. Get right into the dramatics - lots of hand clasping and gestures of despair, on your knees if necessary. If it's a tragic operatic number, don't forget to die at the end of it, with lots of staggering and groaning.
If you want to parody more modern singers - which is a lot of fun and really makes you glad you took those singing lessons - then you first need to study the person you want to parody. Copy their style of dress and their hair (a cheap wig helps here) and take it one step further. Watch the way they stand and the way they move. And then exaggerate these characteristic points.
Another way of singing it for laughs is by using contrast. Take a song in one style and sing it in another - rock & roll versions of national anthems or nursery rhymes, or operatic versions of Beatles numbers. The wider the gap between the words and the song, the better your comic act.
Male singers have one option up their sleeves that isn't really open to women as much, and this is the "pantomime dame" or drag act. If you've worked hard on perfecting your falsetto or counter-tenor voice, then a guy can do a parody of a female singer. Abba numbers often work well. If you've got a beer belly, bulging biceps or a beard, this is all the better, as this makes for a more hilarious contrast with the satin, feather boas, big wigs and balloons up the shirt - it doesn't have to be subtle!. Be sure to work on your falsetto so you can maintain it throughout the number. Don't worry about whether your audience is going to wonder if you've come out of the closet - they probably realise you're doing it for laughs.
If you're a man and you're very good at singing, you can try doing a "solo duet", singing the male part as normal but going into a falsetto for the girl's bit. This isn't for the faint-hearted or the inexperienced, as it's quite hard and takes a lot of practice. It helps to give your audience a visual cue that you have changed character as well as changing voices - change the angle of your body so you "face" the other character, or try taking a hat on and off. Practice in the mirror.
Male or female, if you are a good singer, you can try deliberately singing very badly. There is an art do doing this, and someone who is just a bad singer full stop doesn't sound anywhere as funny as a good singer being deliberately bad. You have to be good to be bad. As an example of how this can work, try watching the old Muppet classic where Fozzie Bear tries to sing "I Got Rhythm" and fails spectacularly to end up with "I Don't Got Rhythm" (it's on YouTube if you can't find it at your local video rental outlet). Singing out of tune doesn't work for deliberate bad singing, but messing up the words and bad timing do.
As always, practice is the key!
by: Rick Rakauskas
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