- Who Really Cares? December 16, 2013
Singing teachers forget that in the music industry, very few people care about vocal categories. Outside of classical music, and it could be argued that it is true there in some cases as well, the only criteria are: how well do you sing and how captivating are you when you do? The vocal categories that ...
- Breakthrough December 14, 2013
Ohio State University has announced that it will be presenting a special Voice Forum on April 4-5. One of the topics listed is “Vocal Pedagogy of Commercial Styles”. How about that? When I started my course at Shenandoah, Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) as a genre was not yet recognized anywhere else. There was no formal course ...
- Oberlin Symposium December 10, 2013
On January 31, February 1 and 2, a break-through symposium is happening at Oberlin College Conservatory, once of the nation’s premier classical training colleges. During this three-day event the medical experts from the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic will join Oberlin faculty and me as we look at “new things” classical singers are being asked to do ...
- Stupid Casting December 9, 2013
You have to wonder why the wrong people are cast in major roles on in musicals. It isn’t new and it has always raised eyebrows but doesn’t go away. On Broadway, Sarah Jessica Parker (famous and powerful person of diminutive stature) played Winnifred the Woebegone in Once Upon A Mattress. This role was written for the ...
- The Sound of Money December 7, 2013
Many of you will have watched last evening’s Sound of Music on NBC starring Carrie Underwood, Stephen Moyer, Audra McDonald and Laura Benanti. Regardless of how you feel about the movie with Julie Andrews or the original play with Mary Martin, this production was a big deal, drawing 18 million viewers, making NBC very very happy. ...
- To Give Up or Not Give Up – That is the Question December 3, 2013
I know quite a few people in New York City who came here to become successful professional singers and who, after long years of striving, did not actually accomplish that goal. Some of them left the city, some of them became other things (mostly therapists or teachers), some of them kept trying, off and on, ...
- Holiday Music December 2, 2013
Here we are again, in “the holiday season”. We’ve just seen Thanksgiving and are in the middle of Hanukkah. Then there’s Christmas, New Year’s and, if you celebrate them, Kwanzaa, and maybe “Festivus” (for the rest of us), created by a Seinfeld episode. We will be bombarded by mostly Christmas messages and music from now ...
- Be Yourself November 23, 2013
Can you ever not “be yourself”? Can you be John Malkovich? You can always only be yourself. There is no other “self” to be. The image you have of your self, your identity, is a mental concept, and it is liquid. “That’s just my nature”, “that’s how I am”, “I’ve always been this way”, “I can’t ...
- Listening To Students As If They Have Something To Say November 23, 2013
I have had occasions in a lesson where the student mentioned something that was calling his attention which seemed to me to be of little import. A student might say, “When I sing that sound, I feel a kind of funny pulling in my neck, up by the base of my skull.” In looking at ...
- The Periphery November 22, 2013
Does stiffness in the upper back make it harder to sing well? Does an issue with your knee interfere with vocal production? If your foot hurts, how can that make your singing different? The body is a whole. Everything affects everything. You may not notice it, you may be used to whatever is going on, but ...
- Cold Case Detective November 21, 2013
What happens when something you work with that is always successful suddenly does not work? What do you do? When teaching functionally, using vocal/singing exercises with a clear knowledge of what they do and how they do it, it is possible to elicit a specific response from the vocal mechanism that is free and able to ...
- Singing as Sport November 20, 2013
How about considering singing as a sport? I think singing shows could do well to have a “voice over” of performances like they do at the Olympics, with the TV commentators. Commentator #1: OK, folks, this cadenza coming up, with all the melismas, is a 3.5 in difficulty. If she does it in one breath, she ...
- Breaking Through Your Own Ego November 18, 2013
If you are a good artist, you will serve the music. That means you will not only understand what the words mean, literally, you will understand what they mean to you. You will also understand how that meaning effects you, what it does to you emotionally and how that emotion (or state of mind) shows ...
- In Defense of … Stupidity?? November 13, 2013
OK, to continue from yesterday’s post. Does knowing that you have an engine in your car make you a better driver? No. Does knowing that your piano has strings, hammers and a sounding board make you a better pianist? No. Does understanding you have a heart that beats all day long make it beat more efficiently? That would ...
- Why Is It So Hard? November 12, 2013
Why is it so hard for singing teachers to decide anything concrete? WHY???????? They can’t decide that you have to know even one single factual piece of information. The argument for this is that people have done very well learning to sing by knowing nothing and teaching only flowery images for technical training. Great. For all ...