perfume

It is helpful to think of and use all our senses when we learn to sing and perform. Perhaps one that is sometimes overlooked is our sense of smell.

There are many songs that describe scent particularly of flowers, but let’s explore some other ways we can use our sense of smell to help us.

Read ‘Surprising Facts about your Nose” in this link:

Memory

If you use a certain scent during studying, it may help you remember those facts later. You could try this with learning words and text, to see if it helps you recall the work you did in the practice room.

Resonance

Your nose and sinuses are used to help your resonance. This is why if you have a cold or suffer from hay fever which blocks your sinuses your speaking and singing voice sounds different, or sometimes it feels uncomfortable to make certain sounds that require resonance in the areas that are inflamed/blocked.

Resonance due to emotion

If you take a breath in when you laugh (let’s call this ‘true emotion’), you make sound resonance from different areas than if you are faking a laugh/not happy. Have a little experiment and see what feels different to you?

One way to access these resonance areas/areas that describe joy or love is through scent/imagining smelling a rose or similar. This may help you to act/sound with your voice a certain emotion.

The science says:

‘Spontaneous laughter is often higher in pitch, longer in duration, and shows spectral characteristics that differ from voluntary laughter; voluntary laughter, on the other hand, is more nasal than spontaneous laughter. Perceptually, spontaneous laughter is perceived as more authentic than voluntary laughter, and as more positive and higher in arousal.’

Performance Practise

When you are performing a song or an aria, try to ground and build your character using the senses including sense of smell. Where is your character? What surrounds them?

Are they by a stream with the smell of wet moss?

Are you singing about a flower with a perfume?

Is your character in a hot dusty place?

Anserwing these sorts of questions and deciding on this in advance will help you more easily create a sense of place and setting from which to communicate your poem/emotion of the character.

Putting this into practise: Smell the Rose

One idea often suggested by singing teachers is to imagine you are smelling a beautiful rose before you sing a passage that is very beautiful/shows love/has warm and legato phrasing. The way we breathe in a delicious beautiful smell will open into different areas and therefor resonating areas than when we smell a horrible smell.

Sometimes I suggest a pupil thinks of something they particularly like - sweets, ice-cream, marmite… whatever helps them think of that nice slow breath in and helps change the resonance to colour the voice differently, and communicate the emotion needed.

As always, feel free to comment below and add your experiences of using smell to improve your singing and performance communication.