- The Medical Model February 8, 2014
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 ...
- Lopez Versus Connick: Really? February 7, 2014
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, ...
- Traditional Anarchist February 5, 2014
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 ...
- Entropy January 30, 2014
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, ...
- Sad January 25, 2014
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 ...
- “Freeing” the Voice January 23, 2014
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 ...
- Categories January 22, 2014
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, ...
- Feeding the term “non-classical” January 20, 2014
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 ...
- What Will It Take? January 13, 2014
How do you get through to opera stars who insist they know what other styles are when they don’t bother to go to the people in those styles to ask? Or maybe they do and the people they seek out are too intimidated to tell the truth. What makes it possible for opera stars who claim ...
- The Only Way Out Is Through January 10, 2014
It’s very hard when you are young to understand that sometimes in life you have nowhere to run. The self is always there and you cannot avoid it. If you are stuck in circumstances in your life, you are also stuck in yourself, and that’s the issue. Going forward when you have no path to follow ...
- “Operacizing” CCM January 9, 2014
We have all unfortunately heard some one or other famous opera star sing a CCM song with operatic vocal production. Even if the musical style is appropriate and the artist has a valid and creative arrangement for the musicians to play underneath her, it doesn’t mean that she sounds like a CCM singer. In fact, ...
- Specific Training for Specific Styles January 9, 2014
There is no such thing as good generic training for anything. General study produces general results. One of the basic tenets of acting is that all choices have to be specific and clear. You can’t be “kind of angry” effectively when that’s based on some kind of mood. You can’t be doing anything that requires focus ...
- Audra versus Carrie January 7, 2014
Anyone who viewed The Sound of Money (sorry, I mean The Sound of Music) on TV recently got to see Audra McDonald juxtaposed alongside Carrie Underwood. If we are to believe that the public doesn’t care, then we must also believe that they did not hear a difference between Audra’s sound and Carrie’s sound. It’s all ...
- Functional Training In Context January 3, 2014
As has been discussed here frequently, we are ever more in an era where functional training is being recognized as “the only way to go”. It’s certainly not new and it certainly does not “belong” to any one teacher or method. It has been around since the 1800s and has been written about by many ...
- Get Used To The New January 2, 2014
It has been announced that one of the latest pop divas is going to be doing Cinderella on Broadway. Carly Rae Jepson will take over from Laura Osnes in the leading role on Broadway. She isn’t a “legit” singer, even though the part was written for one who was. This is the direction of the ...