Hey there, this is John Henny and on today’s vocal tip I want to talk about fooling expectations.
Popular Music works in patterns traditionally, verse-chorus or verse pre-chorus, chorus, and you will have repetitive verses and repetitive choruses you keep coming back to the same patterns
Now as a singer, you need to set up expectations and then fool that expectation or not deliver on the expectation. I’ll tell you what I mean. You set up a pattern in the verse, when you come back to the verse for the second time, if you sing it the exact same way with the exact same intensity, exact no choices, exact phrasing timing, what you’re doing is you’ve set up an expectation, and then you’ve delivered on the expectation, which means you’ve become predictable, really good singers set up an expectation. And then they fool the listener ever so slightly by not delivering on what the listener expects. they’ll choose a different notes. They may pause slightly, or what they call back the phrase, they will do little things to re-awaken the listener’s interest.
Our minds are constantly wandering and we’re constantly distracted. And if we are in a situation that becomes predictable, our minds will wander. So, really good singers keep re-awakening a person’s attention and focus by fooling their expectations.
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