"just being an actor"....

Them's fightin' words!

Okay, not really...but you gave me an opening to mention something that's been on my mind for awhile now.

I spent years acting, and I've always tried to bring that same sensibility to every song I sing...because I believe a voice that sings a song has to be "in character" for that song. You can't just "be you" all the time, in every song. It's not always "you" when you sing four sets of songs at a bar from 9pm to 1am. In fact, the bands that have that one guy or gal who always sounds the same...are kinda lame.

But I agree about not wanting to ever sound phony. thing is, there are a lot of different personalities wrapped inside all of us, and it's good to invite them all out to play in different types of songs.

When you watch your favorite movie, you probably have fallen under the spell of a good actor, and "fake" doesn't spring to mind. I also think when a great singer sings a song with a lot of feeling, it's not necessarily that the singer is singing their own absolute truth, but simply that they can bring a variety of different feelings and sensibilities into their performance, because they are, well, good actors. That's the craft, to create a willing suspension of disbelief, made easy by a great interpreter.

A good actor gets inside the mind of the character, and reacts to the same stimulus with the same motivations that drive whoever they are playing. It's difficult, and good performances feel real, not fake. The many voices of Paul McCartney have propelled a lot of different songs into our collective consciousness due to his "good acting" techniques as a vocal interpreter.

So, I agree with you Lucian that a performance that sounds unconvincing or phony is a mark against it...but I also think that "being an actor" is an essential skill for a good vocalist. The truth doesn't have to be lived through in order to be conveyed in a song.

http://www.soundclick.com/MarkKaufman