How to Give Your Audience Goosebumps
I know and love why you’re here.
You’ve had one and you want to create one.
That moment where your heart feels like it’s doubled in size and your gaze doesn’t leave the singer’s face, you’re utterly captivated.
Time has melted away and you feel like you’re in exactly the right place.
The resonance in the room wafts over you like your favourite perfume, the melody transporting you somewhere otherworldly.
And the skin on the back of your neck feels ALIVE.
These are the moments that remind us why we ever wanted to be on that stage in the first place.
Oddly enough, the thing we strive for most often as musicians is NOT what creates these moments and the sought-after goosebumps.
Perfection. Each note being sung exactly bang on. Cleanly.
A well thought out journey of volume, texture and intensity.
Singing (or rather CONNECTION) is not a paint-by-numbers kinda activity unfortunately.
You can't sing softly here, add a stronger mix there, insert a breathy tone here and expect to light people up like a firework.
People get goosebumps when you are really THERE.
You know this deep down, you’ve experienced it.
Goosebumps appear when we FEEL a connection.
When a note wavers with genuine emotion.
When there’s an unexpected guttural cry at the start of a phrase.
When the whisper is connected to a memory of heartbreak.
When you throw caution to the wind and decide that authenticity is more important than perfection.
Nobody feels spellbound or intoxicated when you sing an orchestrated version of a song with your head stuck in your technique, I can promise you that.
So how do we do it?
In my humble opinion, I think it needs two ingredients:
A WILLINGNESS TO BE VULNERABLE AND BE SEEN and
A WILLINGNESS TO GET LOST AND LET GO
BEING TRULY SEEN
Does that idea make your skin crawl as soon as I bring it up? If so, you’re in good company.
Being open and vulnerable can feel like you’re on a rollercoaster without being strapped in.
Unsafe and terrifying.
We spend so much of our lives curating a version of ourselves that we feel is accepted and loved by others.
We filter out our flaws as much as humanly possible and try to polish the rest.
This is why so many singers lock themselves away in the practice room, hammering out sections of songs over and over again, with the sole goal to get it PERFECT.
Because we can hide behind perfect.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for training your voice so that you can trust it. So you can confidently express the stories you want to tell in the way you want to tell it.
But what I’m not advocating for is sucking all the humanity out of it and replacing it with “perfection”.
Perfection is the opposite of goosebumps.
GETTING LOST AND LETTING GO
I get it, performing this way feels risky. You might already have the sweats just reading this.
Because the thought of not having control over exactly what sound could fly out of your mouth at any given time makes us anxious.
What if a note cracks?
What if I’m flat?
What if no sound comes out or I flick into my head voice when I didn’t mean to?
We’re not actually afraid of these things happening. We’re afraid of what we make them MEAN.
We feel that if our performance isn’t good enough it means we’re not good enough.
That we shouldn’t be up there on stage.
We think that other people will judge and criticise us and that we’ll be seen as a failure.
What we don’t usually think about is how that is just a story we’re believing.
And one that we’re indulging in.
Now I know that undoing years of insecurity is a big ask, especially if you have a performance coming up soon, so how about we just pack it away for a while?
What would happen if you stopped making the performance about YOU?
What if you switched your focus?
Get swept away by the music. What the lyrics mean to you. How singing is such a gift.
Or the audience and how you’d like them to feel while watching you.
The funny thing is that more mistakes happen when we’re panicking, stressing, trying to grip onto control and wrestle our voices into submission.
That’s when our nerves are at their loudest, they rob us of our breath and they scramble our thoughts.
It’s amazing the difference in my students’ voices when I ask them to let their voice do what it wants, to be messy.
More resonance. More freedom. More colour. And more joy.
Again, THOSE are the ingredients that give goosebumps. Not whether or not your tongue is in the right position for that lyric.
Do the preparation. Teach your body what habits you’d like it to learn.
And then trust in the preparation you’ve done and surrender.
I know most people don’t want to do that.
It takes a lot of courage to do that.
But if you’re here on this site, I’m betting you have courage by the bucketful (you just might not realise it yet).
So go out there and drench people in escapism and wonderment and notice how you end up enjoying some yourself.
And if you’d like to dive into an experience that supports you in this, Embody Your Voice is the one to peek at.
