I’ve become a big fan of Tom Metzger’s ‘Owning The Stage ‘ articles and have really begun a quest to study and improve this area of my singing and you should too. Technical proficiency really is an element that will only get you to a certain point. Until you can truly connect with the audience your performances will be lackluster at best.

The beauty of the internet is that you can find a myriad of examples to study. This is not A Cappella but is indeed a great performance as she has the audience wrapped around her every note. I love the confidence with which she commands the stage.

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I’ve enjoyed the recent discussion about comedy in relation to competition choruses and quartets on the barbershop yahoo discussion group and offshoots on various forums. I’m not even going to begin to touch on the competition scene and scoring since I don’t even pretend to know all the intricacies of judging.

One thing I do know is that some excellent comedic elements can push raise the entertainment value in the eyes of your audience take your ’score’ in their eyes from just an average performance to one they rave to their friends about.

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Several months ago I heard a business coach give the following advice – "Make your mistakes in a hurry" – the basic premise being that there is time value in our actions much like the time value of money.

Many of our best laid plans fall by the wayside because we stay in the planning and calculating stages way too long. Although I don’t advocate being like Microsoft and releasing operating systems long before they are actually ready for use, I would say that if you have a great idea go ahead and start to implement it. Don’t be afraid of failure. You’ll figure out the 99 wrong ways to do something but you’ll also eventually get to the 1 fantastically efficient way to do it also.

Much the same with learning to sing. If you’re afraid of making a mistake you’ll be so tentative that it’ll take you forever to become accomplished. Make your mistakes fast and confidently Try different mental pictures to help your breathing technique until you find something that works for you. Play around with your vocal placement to explore all your resonators to find your best sound or have different match options when singing with other voices. Don’t be afraid to ask for coaching from great singers and when they give you a great tip practice it ruthlessly.

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We’re in the middle of some site upgrades but for now you can visit www.A-CappellaMusic.com/forums for the latest discussion

I know this has nothing to do with A Cappella but I wanted to explain a bit how the new integration works.