Song Interpretation Layers

Performance is a type of communication. As musicians we communicate the notes, rhythms, and words that are written on a page. But if that is all we’re doing, if we only communicate the written music, our performance won’t be very good. It might not be bad, but it won’t be good. In order to communicate the real meaning behind these notes, rhythms, and words we need to delve into them. This is interpretation.

I define interpretation as the steps taken and choices made to apply one’s life experiences to the written music, in order to best communicate the meaning behind the piece to an audience, with the goal of giving a great, meaningful performance. There are so many methods and viewpoints on interpretation, ranging from “do whatever you like, notes and rhythms are just a suggestion” to “who are you to change what the composer wrote” (the latter is paraphrasing the great Patti LuPone). Wherever you land on that spectrum, you need information. The more information you have about a piece, the deeper you can delve interpretively, and the higher your chance of having a great performance. To that end, I have come up with what I call Interpretation Layers. They are numbered for the sake of ease, but that doesn’t mean the process is or should be linear. You don’t have to do Layer 2 before Layer 4, and you can always go back to Layer 3 from Layer 6. The exception is Layer 1.

Layer One: Learn

The most basic of steps of course, but you can’t perform very well if you’re still learning the notes, words, and rhythms. Once you have those you are capable of performing the piece, but if all you do is sing everything the way it’s written without any more thought being put into it, the odds of having a great performance are slim. It won’t necessarily be bad, it just won’t be exceptional.

Learning the piece itself is the bare minimum. You also have to learn about the piece, meaning who wrote it, why they wrote it, when they wrote it, and if it’s part of a larger work. You’ll approach a song from a musical written by Stephen Sondheim in the 1970s much differently than you would an aria from a cantata written by Johann Sebastian Bach in the 1730s, and those will both be different from a standalone jazz standard from the 1920s. Getting this most basic layer is crucial to any of the others, because it gives you the foundation of the notes, rhythms, and words, as well as a direction to start interpretively. 

Layer Two: Listen

Listening to other people can give you great ideas. Find performances of the piece you’re working on and listen to the different interpretations. The goal shouldn’t be to copy, but to get inspired. This doesn’t mean you can’t take a pause that someone else does or try out an interesting embellishment they use, but you should endeavor to make it your own. In practice you can do anything and everything someone else does, but when it comes to the actual performance for an audience, following someone’s exact interpretation is not only plagiaristic and unoriginal, it’s lazy.

While you’re working in this layer don’t discount any performance. Listen to the recording on YouTube that is from someone’s undergraduate recital, or a young kid doing a cover in their bedroom. Either one might give you ideas you would have never thought about anywhere else. They could be some of the best versions of the song. Or they could be terrible – but even then you learn something. Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned, not just in music, but in life, is from watching someone do something and thinking “okay, well that is what we shouldn’t do.”

You want to listen to multiple versions if possible. The difference between two people doing the same song can be profound, and the difference between the same person doing the same song at different times in their life can be just as profound, if not more so.

Layer Three: Lip Sync

This is the one that elicits the most eye rolls from some of my more “serious” peers, but I don’t believe it should be discounted. Lip syncing in itself is an art form, and can be stunning when done well. Lip syncing to a performance or two that you like can help you work out different beats of performance. It can help you work through whatever character aspects or physical gestures you want to incorporate. Essentially it allows you to begin to feel the piece in your body in a different way. Take some of the performances you find in Layer Two and lip sync them. Taking out the pressure of executing the notes and all that comes with that can help you focus on learning the words in a new way, and figuring out how they will inform your eventual performance. Also, it can just be a lot of fun. And you have full permission to pretend you’re on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Layer Four: Speak

Vocalists do have a clear difference from instrumentalists in one interpretive area; we have text. We have words that can inform so much of what we do. Those words are the main way for us to access the meaning and decide what we want to bring to the song. Connecting to our lyrics is crucial if we want to take a song’s performance from good to great. In my experience this is the most informative layer. In Layer One you’re getting the basics. Layers Two and Three are all about other people’s interpretations. This is where you get to bring yourself into the piece. Speak the lyrics and do your best to make it sound like the words are coming straight from you. Speaking the lyrics will give you so many different ideas. This is where you can really play. Completely abandon the rhythm and meter implied in the music. Place your emphasis on a different word in a line each time you go through it. Do things you know you won’t like, just to see what you shouldn’t do.

It will also show you any gaps you have in the lyrics. It is an astounding phenomenon, but you can have sung a song hundreds of times but not know what line comes at the beginning of the chorus the first time you do this. It makes sense when you consider music and speaking function differently in the brain. The point is, speaking the lyrics will not only help you find your interpretation – it helps you learn the piece on a whole new level.

Each song will be different, especially in this layer. Some songs are not as deep as others, so the work you do here can be pretty superficial, and that’s okay. Think about the difference between something like the songs of Papageno in The Magic Flute versus Dido’s Lament from Dido and Aeneas. Or “When You’re Good to Mama” from Chicago, versus “Words Fail” from Dear Evan Hansen. Or “Bootylicious” verses “Sandcastles,” both by Beyoncé. There is only so far you can go with the first song in each of those groups, while the depth of emotions in the lyrics of the second ones is limited only by your imagination.

Layer Five: Acapella

This layer is when you start to piece things together. Adding the notes back in can allow you to play with the interpretive ideas discovered in the other layers without worrying about matching up with the accompaniment (hopefully you have a good sense of pitch though, or this work could go very wrong).

Just like Layer 4, this is a time to experiment and play. Take a different run of notes here, use a higher note there (known as an “option up” in Broadway circles). Stretch out this word here, take a pause there. None of it has to go into the final performance – you are merely testing things to provide yourself with the best information for the performance.

Layer Six: Accompaniment

This is where it all comes together. You should be aware of what kind of accompaniment you’re going to work with in the end too. All accompaniments exist on a range of static to dynamic. The most static is a recorded accompaniment, because it does not allow you any leeway in regards to timing. The most dynamic is you accompanying yourself on whatever instrument. If you want to you can choose to add extra beats to a chord to satisfy something you’re feeling in the moment. All other forms of accompaniment fall somewhere in the middle.

The key when working with an accompanist(s) is communication. A single accompanist (piano, guitar, whatever) may be able to follow any creative choices you make very well in a performance (dynamic accompaniment), or they may insist on performing the music exactly as written (static). Someone you collaborate with frequently will be naturally more dynamic than someone you’ve rehearsed with once. In the latter case you can often just say something like “hey I want to take some time in measure 34, and I’m actually going to be a third higher on beat four of measure 20” in whatever time you have with them before the start of the performance. It would be best to have a pencil handy so they can mark that, just in case they don’t have one themselves.

Working with a large group like an orchestra can be similar. It will naturally lean toward the static, because fifty other musicians are not just going to follow you on a whim in a performance, but communicating with the conductor can allow you to implement some of your ideas.

You should be prepared for all of these scenarios. And know that if a situation is more static, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice every interpretive idea, you just have to think carefully and evaluate how to implement them if you can.

Some final thoughts to consider. After going through all of these layers you may not make any changes to what is written. You do not have to change notes, or rhythms, or make any big pauses to have a great performance that moves people. But even if you perform all the notes and rhythms exactly as they are written, your performance will have more nuance behind it after going through the layers, especially the work in Layer 4.

If you are making any significant changes in regards to the notes or rhythms, make sure you are judicious about how you do that. These changes to the music itself should always have a good reason. Take your ego out of it, and think about how best to communicate the piece’s meaning to your audience. “I want to hit this high note instead because I want to impress people with my range,” is a bad reason, because it is completely ego driven. “I want to hit this high note because I feel the emotion of the text drives the energy up to it,” is a good reason. And if it comes with the bonus of allowing you to impress, that’s fine, just make sure it’s more heavily weighted toward that good reason.

“I just like it,” is not necessarily a bad reason, but you should dig deeper. Why do you like that change? Figuring it out not only makes it more significant and meaningful, but could also point you in a direction that you hadn’t considered yet.

These layers can and should be worked simultaneously. It is truly a never ending process; just because you’ve done some Layer Six work, doesn’t mean you can’t do more with any of the other layers. The nature of life is that it gives you new reference points constantly. You may come back to a piece after a few years and come up with a completely different interpretation than before, simply because life has been lived in the meantime.

It all comes back to the communication with the audience. Finding a good interpretation to show the audience what a song means to you can lead to a truly great performance. If you can connect to the meaning of the piece and communicate that, if you can lock in and make the audience really feel something, then you have done your work as a performer.