Hold the phone! "Also, singing wearing spectacles makes you sound more like a duck. I use contact lenses when signing - you really can tell the difference if I'm wearing glasses."

If this was the case, there would be a lot of really great vocalist that sound like a duck--which is not the case. If your specs are having an effect on your voice, you're either not wearing them properly, or there's something anatomically wrong.

I've been wearing glasses since age 12, never sounded like a duck, and some folks would put me in the baritone range. I'll match my bottom notes against the Statler Brother's baratone any day, and come to think of it, I believe he wears glasses as well (could be wrong on that one though).

I do agree, however, that you must learn the words in order to gain confidence and maintain good eye contact with your audience. Once in while, you can take a quick glance at the words, and that's not a bad thing. Most of the time, though, you should be looking at the crowd, smiling, using a bit of body language and be enthusiastic--it's contagious.

Like most of the performers on the site, I now use a laptop computer in conjunction with the keyboard. It serves several purposes, including holding the lyrics to more than 600 songs. The lyrics are in bold, black pring using 14-point Times New Roman font so you can see them from any angle or distance on the computer's 14.5-inch screen. At the top of each page, the keyboard settings for the song are in bold, 20-point font.

The same songs and settings are in my Music Finder Directory, and after the first word of the song's title the key the song is performed in is in brackets. For example, "Margarettaville (A)" tells me that I play and sing the song in A-major. This eliminates lots of problems and decreases dead time to less than 2 seconds between songs. Keep in mind that you can scroll through the MFD using the 2000/2100 and Tyros scroll wheel feature without selecting the song. Then when you end the song you're singing, it's just a matter of pressing the enter button, press the intro button, and you're ready to kick right into the next song. When you can keep the music flowing, one song after another, with little or no dead time between numbers, you'll keep the dancefloor filled, you'll build confidence and everyone will be smiling at the end of the evening.

Good luck and stick with the lessons,

Gary