Jeanie’s Blog

Ever wonder what would happen if there was an “Olympics of Singing”? Don’t worry, sooner or later someone will think of that and make it happen. What would it entail? Let’s see: How many melismas can you fit into one word or on one note? How high can you belt? How loud can you sing? How long can you hold ...

There is so much in the world to lament. Suffering of all kinds, unnecessary selfishness, unbridled greed, poverty and disease. Artists with sensitive souls often watch all this and feel a strong pull to “do something”. What can we do? There are many great causes. Artists of all kinds have devoted their time, money and energy ...

Music today is not simple anymore. It’s overdone, hyped, electrically altered, arranged, and hardly ever just plain left alone. I wonder if any of the pop divas, on their own without any equipment, could hold an audience in someone’s living room. I wonder if they have ever sung at a wedding, in a small church, ...

We all know the planet is three-quarters water. The body is just about the same. Water represents the emotions. A calm smooth mirror lake is very different from a hurricane fueled onslaught of huge waves crashing ashore. So, too, can we be calm and serene or raging with fury. Water molecules like each other and stick to each ...

What do you do with a voice that is just not doing what the vocalist wants it to do? This can happen. Do you tell the singer that he can’t sing the music he wants to sing? Do you tell him he can’t sing it the way he wants to sing it because “he just ...

Attention teachers and students: Are you a singer age 10-17 or do you know a young singer who sings jazz and blues who wants to pursue singing at a high level? Here’s a chance to meet other serious young singers in a supportive and professional environment with leaders in the field of jazz and voice instruction.In ...

How do we learn? Educational experts are investigating this topic and discovering new things every day. The science of neurology is examining brain plasticity and discovering that our brains can grow, change and improve all through life, and that we can learn new things as we go. The idea that the brain stops at about ...

One of the things that medical students do is learn to “argue” or discourse about cases and patients. Doctors learn that verbal discussion and disagreement (point/counterpoint) is not only important but useful. A closed system in which argument is forbidden is always deadly. We see this in countries where freedoms are curtailed, and in our ...

On a recent “American Idol” Harry Connick, Jr. lectured Jennifer Lopez about pentatonic scales. Lopez apparently did not know what one of those was. Are you surprised? Do you care? Mr. Connick does. This argument reflects some of the things I have written about here over the years. You do not need to be (a) educated, ...

It seems that being traditional requires that all “old” traditions be upheld without question. Traditionalists stick to the rules as they are and have been and hold up the ideas of the past as being “tried and true” and worthy of continuity. A traditional person wants to keep things within the bounds of the accepted ...

Everything decays. Everything, even the universe itself, falls apart in time. The sun will die one day, so will all the stars. No matter how good or popular, eventually things decay, die and cease to be. We are in the midst of a sea change of taste, values, and expectations regarding singing and music generally. Educated, ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy00lD2bYT0 What do you do when people are screaming and yelling about how great it is for a kid (age 9) to sing — (a) a opera aria (b) that has nothing to do with a subject that could concern a child (c) is written for a male, a strong, powerful tenor (d) and requires vocal power and more emotional ...

We all know about “freeing up” the voice and letting go and having things relax and allowing them to “be easy”. That’s correct, right? We understand that deliberate squeezing and pushing isn’t good. We get that the breathing has to have some kind of “move low on the inhale” direction. We realize that screaming isn’t ...

If all music were the same in “character” there would be no need for titles or descriptors. If opera singers could do rock music and rock stars could sing gospel tunes and folk singers could walk onto a Broadway stage and sing a traditional show, we wouldn’t need categories. The Grammy awards wouldn’t have categories, ...

At a recent voice conference, the use of the term “non-classical” continued with impunity. Why is it that this term, which uses the prefix “non” to describe an entire collection of styles of music, continues? Would we tolerate the use of the term “non-CCM” to describe all styles of classical music? There is far less classical ...