Garcia gives a lot of detail for several programs that he recommends as profitable for bringing feelings and emotions into the performance of a singer. This is my condensed list that I pull out of his text:
Know yourself.
Now this is a really big one. That’s why I list it first. It is a difficult affair that many people hire professional knowers to help with. Garcia, it seems to me, is suggesting that the singer will find a lot of material for emotional understanding right between his ears, or lungs depending on where you think the seat of the emotions is located. I believe there is much to recommend this self-knowledge. It would seem to be helpful even in a larger application. Any living individual would profit from this self-examination of the personal emotional life. Singers in particular need to figure out why they feel what they feel in order to bring themselves under control emotionally. I believe that many vocal glitches are desperation based. An inner calm is the best starting point from which to analyze one’s own emotions and the effects they have on the way we express ourselves while experiencing each emotion.
Speak the words naturally.
He doesn’t go as deeply into this little sub-category of advice under Expression as he does later on, but in this chapter he gets started. The essence of his advice is that by speaking the words as spontaneously as possible one can get a good start on interpreting the piece. One needs to incorporate the actions of the vocal instrument, observed while speaking the words, into the way one sings them.
Imagine the character and how that imaginary character would express the words.
I love this one. Garcia wants us to imagine a person we have only met in an Opera libretto so that we can develop some expectations of behavior for this hypothetical individual. How much fun is it to move out of self into a prince or a pauper? What about Jove? The Know Yourself exercise helps with this one.
Spend time with great art that evokes similar characteristics to the scene to be studied.
These days this is a really easy thing to do. The easy access to art today would blow the socks off an art lover of Garcia’s day. Not only can we view most of the art work Garcia may have only read about, we can do so from the comfort of our living room. I am quick to add under this suggestion to be an avid film and theatre consumer.
Have a plan for the interpretation of the scene.
This is a no brainer. Maybe I should say that the singer that launches out on a phrase with no idea what he or she is going to do with it ought to trade that vacationing brain for one willing to think.
Don’t fiddle around with each word, but treat everything on a priority basis.
There are only a few styles of music that need a different treatment for every word most others will not survive such treatment. This suggestion is an extension of the call for planning. Garcia speaks about important movements within the music and words. I also promote the idea of targeting only one or two words in a sentence for special attention. This is also the same thing great orators do. Garcia says that in a later chapter.
Analyze the results.
Here is the Rubicon. The formula he implies goes like this: experiment with all the above and think about the results. No doubt these experiments, in his day, would have been “in studio” shared experiences that Garcia would have been present to confirm as successful or, in the event the interpretive effort failed to convince the great maestro, he was there to suggest alternatives. Even with the full length mirror in which the singer could watch the proceedings in Garcia’s studio, is no comparison with having a video recording to verify success or failure. Garcia goes into to a lot of detail that boils down to what I often repeat to young singers: Look around you and see what human life looks like and sounds like. Keep these observations in mind, and use them in experiments for developing your interpretive tools and then analyze the results.
