When you are learning to sing, it is important to consider not only your voice but also your eye focus. Understanding eye focus and using it correctly can help you to improve your memorization, steady your attention, and define your performance.
Performers who are unaware of eye focus when they sing will commonly shut their eyes, hold tension around wide eyes like a deer caught in the headlights, or dart their eyes around unconsciously. When a performer is inexperienced in standing and singing in front of an audience, fear and tension manifest on the face. My tips for overcoming stage fright and my guided meditation for stage fright can help you with your performance fears. Learning about eye focus and practicing these exercises will give you another tool for replacing performance anxiety with a plan that will enrich your singing experience.
Another common mistake singers make is moving the head up and down and popping the eyebrows following the shape of the melody. Many singers build these extraneous movements into their singing technique when they vocalize and can’t drop these habits when they perform. This is very distracting for the audience. Practicing eye focus as you are learning will help you to build awareness and relaxation into your technique.
So here’s the plan.
Relaxation Exercises
Start with these simple yoga practices to relax the eyes, build awareness, and release tension:
- Squeeze and Open: Squeeze the eyes shut, hold for a few seconds, and release. Then, open wide, sustain for a few seconds, and release. Gently massage the muscles around the eye sockets. Take your hands away, and notice any new sensations or relaxation.
- Clock Exercise — Around the Clock: Imagine the face of a clock in front of you. Slowly move your eyes in a clockwise motion looking at the imaginary numbers from 1 to 12 as you count out loud. Remember to breathe. Next, rub your hands together. Place them gently over your eyes, and relax your eyes in the warmth of your palms. Once you are done, repeat this exercise in a counter clockwise direction.
- Clock Exercise — 12 to 6, 3 to 9: Using the same idea of an imaginary clock, move your eyes up to 12 o’clock and then down to 6 o’clock. Repeat several times. Rest, then move your eyes from 3 o’clock to 9 o’clock several times, side to side. Relax.
Performance Exercises
Now you are ready to practice using eye focus to define the phrases of music in your song or aria. These exercises will help you to develop good eye focus techniques that you can use when you perform:
- Scan the Horizon: Before we begin, relax your neck muscles, and remember to breathe. Don’t hold your breath when you are learning and practicing this skill. Now, imagine the horizon in front of you, as if you were looking across the ocean, out to sea. Gaze from side to side along the horizon line, halfway between the floor and ceiling. Don’t make this movement too extreme; we don’t want to see the whites of your eyes. If you move only your eyes from side to side and keep your head still, you will appear to be thinking. If you move your head side to side along with your eyes, you will appear to be looking for something. When you are performing, focus on moving your eyes so that you appear to be thinking thoughts.
- Focal Points: Pick three point along your horizon line, and linger your eyes at each point for a moment. Left, middle, right. Middle, right, left. Left, right, middle. Go slowly, sustaining your eye focus for a few seconds at each point, and breathe at each point while you are sustaining. It’s okay to blink.
- Focus on Phrases: Next, time the eye focus points with the text in your music. Focus your eyes on a point, and sing your phrase or text idea to the focus point. Then release your diaphragm so that the breath can come into the body, shift your eye focus, sustain the focus on the next point, and sing the next musical phrase. Repeat this process for each phrase: release, shift, sustain, sing. You can watch me demonstrate this in my video above.
Go very slowly at first, until you can feel the logic of this practice. Your eyes focus helps to define the thoughts that motivate the text in your music. The physicality makes it easier to memorize your music. And you are building the storytelling aspect of your performance using this wonderful skill. Eventually, you will be able to use these eye focus techniques spontaneously, replacing anxiety with a plan.
