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Step 9 in increasing your chances of getting on any vocal reality show should be that you should drop all the overly animated hand gestures and awkward moves.

If you've gone through all the steps up to this point then you should have at least done the training in front of the mirror in your bedroom or rehearsal room and, surely by now, you will have seen that the hand gestures looked stupid and surely you will have removed them from your performance. If not, drop all the overly animated hand gestures when you are singing. In fact, write this down on a piece of paper: "overly animated hang gestures, never again" and go out in to your back yard, dig a hole and bury that peice of paper. If you do this then everytime you start to do one of those stupid gestures you'll remember that you buried them in your back yard and your brain will tell you to stop getting all Maria Carey.

And, if you are a guy, NEVER DO THEM. Girls, sometimes, if not over used, can get away with it. But I still don't recommend it. Bury it in the back yard!

Just so you know, those types of hand gestures irk the heck out of all of us behind the scenes. No one wants to see the worn out, mimicked Mariah Carey hand gestures. It's just overdone and really stupid, especially the one in which a contestant does a vocal run and points their finger in the air to animate their vocal gymnastics. Just stop it! Pointing towards someone to emphasize something in the lyrical content is okay, every once in a while. But don't overdo it. Every time I see a contestant start to do the overly animated gestures I almost puke.

Look for our final article in our series of ten when we talk about how to audition for American Idol and the importance of eye contact is for any vocal reality show audition.