Stopsing

Stopsing is an emergent term in contemporary music and performance studies describing a deliberate cessation of singing during a performance to create space, tension, and attention to silence. The practice may function as a compositional element, a performative gesture, or an interaction with ambient sound and surrounding visuals.

Definition and scope: The core concept is a controlled silence or interruption inserted within or between vocal material. Performers may end a sung phrase with a hard stop, insert mid-phrase pauses (caesuras), or allow longer silences that punctuate musical material. Stopsing can be executed by the vocalist alone, by the ensemble, or in conjunction with electronic processing.

Techniques and tools: Artists may employ breath control, cues from a conductor, metronomes or click tracks, and audio processing to align pauses with other sonic events. In multimedia works, stopsing can synchronize with lighting, video cuts, or stage action, creating relationships between sound, space, and time.

Contexts and genres: It appears across experimental vocal performance, contemporary classical, choral works, and performance art. Stopsing is often used to foreground listening, vulnerability, or the relationship between sound and absence, inviting audiences to attend to intervals of silence as material in their own right.

Reception and debates: Critics describe stopsing as a means to illuminate structure and listening, while some audiences find the concept opaque or disruptive to conventional musical narrative.

History and etymology: The term Stopsing is used in recent performance discourse and is not uniformly standardized. It is sometimes explained as a fusion of "stop" and "singing" or used descriptively in program notes and interviews.

See also: Caesura, Silence in music, Gesture (music).