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Hello my name is Barbara Lewis. Are you a
singer over 40? Do you have trouble
remembering some of your lyrics some of
the time? If that's the case. then I have
some great tips for you! Please stay
tuned! Hello again. I want to talk about
remembering lyrics now. I've been a
singer and a teacher for over thirty
years. And during part of those years of
performing, I did a lot of one women
shows - one woman shows. And in some of
those shows. I would sing act and dance.
Some of them had as many as 10,000 words
in them! And it was a pretty big task to
remember all of that. So I found a lot of
different ways to do it.
But right now, I want to talk about the
slightly simpler task of remembering
lyrics to songs, not big shows. So number
one... find the right lyrics! I find this is
really important these days because
there's a lot of lyrics on the internet -
and many of them are simply wrong. So
when you're singing your song... and
eventually you hear someone sing that
song correctly, you realize that you've
been singing the wrong words! it's very
hard to get those wrong words out of
your brain. So number ONE - get as close to
the source as you can. If you can, go to
the songwriter's site - website - and get the
lyrics there. Do that or listen to the
very first singer who sang that song and
jot down the right lyrics. And then you
have the right thing in front of you and
in your brain to begin with.
Secondly... what I would suggest you do is
listen to a lot of different, good
singers singing the right lyrics. If you
do that, the lyrics begin to come into
your brain in the rhythm of the song. And
that's really helpful. You almost don't have to work to
remember quite a few of their lyrics, if
you do it this way - if you listen to
really good singers. And you listen to it
often... Number 3 - write the lyrics down.
If you have a printer, take the lyrics
off the internet and print them out.
I'm going to show you here up on the
left how I do my lyric sheets.
In fact I have a whole video that will
explain a variety of ways to deal with
lyrics when they're on the printed page.
But have a look up here just for now. As you
see here, this is how your lyrics
should look when you print them out.
You're going to make them very clear.
Here I have three verses and I've
outlined the first line of each verse.
And in the end your map your lyric map
will look something like this.
So as you'll see, printing out your
lyrics can be very very helpful. I've put
a link to that video. it's a short video
on my website - just below this video here.
So you can go and look at that
and follow some of the tips, if you want
to. Number 4 has to do with movement.
Hand movement that you can use in a
concert if there's some words you just
cannot remember. There was one actually
in that video that I just showed you. There was one opening to the second... I think
it was second chorus - where it says "As a
nation trembles, a spirit soars." And I
could not remember "a spirit soars." So
when I started that verse "as a nation
trembles," I would always move my hand up
"a spirit soars." And on my hand I would
remember the the feeling of the words as
my hand soared up. These are the kinds of
things that you can do. Some of them are
a little bit obvious, but you can be very
discrete in your movements. And the
audience won't know but it will be very
helpful. Number 5 is total body
involvement. Now I'm not going to get
into that here. When you look at the
video, if you do, you'll see what I have
to say about getting your whole body
involved in remembering lyrics. Sometimes,
as a last resort, that's what you need to
do. You need to dance through the lyrics.
You need to move through the lyrics and
your memory
will bring back those words. You won't do
that on stage. You're not going to dance
on stage... unless you do! But you don't
have to. Your body will remember the
lyrics, and it will bring them into your
consciousness at the right time. So those
are my 5 tips. There's much much more information on my
website on the link that I put just
below this video. I hope this was helpful
to you. And as usual I wish you great
singing! I'll see you again soon. Bye bye!