Jeanie’s Blog

If you are a teacher of singing and you are learning to “move your larynx” or “lift your soft palate” or constrict your throat in any configuration at all, in order to add to your tool box, please, please STOP!!!  You are wasting your time. You are doing things that do not need to happen ...

Coming Back After Vocal Injury or Illness If you are a professional singer and you sing long enough you will encounter some kind of serious vocal problem that may have nothing at all to do with how or what you sing. If something impacts your vocal health, impairing your vocal folds and how they function, you are ...

It has been written elsewhere that if every kid gets a ribbon then the ribbon loses its value. If all things are equal, then there are no boundaries between winning and losing, good and bad, right and wrong, forward and backward. There’s nothing but grey. You can get lost when everything is grey. You can ...

Quite some number of years ago I did two workshops with the noted  Speech Language Pathologist, Dr. Daniel Boone (grandnephew of the famous D. Boone). He has been an important researcher in mid-20th century into speech science and has his practice in the southwest. He kindly told me I was the only singing teacher he could ever ...

Would you take a painting course online if the teacher could not look at what you were painting and make suggestions? Would you take a course in writing online if the teacher couldn’t read what you were writing? Would you expect to learn to play piano by looking at web videos? If you seriously want to ...

If you watched the Tony Awards in June you would have heard a variety of singing. Broadway covers all styles and all kinds of voices. You would also have noticed that there is a lot of belting and that, in fact, the belting is louder and higher all the time. The idea that people are shouting while singing ...

Sometimes words don’t stick. They don’t “go in”. They don’t compute.  No matter how much a person thinks he or she wants to learn something, there can be reasons why they don’t or seem unable to, even when they are highly motivated.  In this case, the person speaking can have the experience of feeling like ...

Many people who deal with singing professionally are clueless about it. The latest “Master Class” video by Christina Aguilera is a classic example of someone who sings very well (and has since childhood) but who has exactly zero idea about how we make vocal sound. Her ideas are as convoluted as some of the old ...

Are you standing on the shoulders of giants? This evening I saw a post on Facebook about a course that teaches youngsters about the giants of the civil rights and women’s suffrage movements. We don’t want our young people to forget those who went before and paved the way. They sacrificed and gave much so others ...

Ignorance is one of the great evils in the world. Blind ignorance causes all kinds of problems and always has. Ignorance is not knowing or unconsciousness. We can be ignorant in many ways. The grossest way, and the most dangerous, is to think that life is what you decide it is. You are born into a ...

Over the decades I’ve heard voice teachers and coaches say to students, “You are afraid. You are holding back. You are thinking too much”. The student nods her head and gathers up her pluckiness to try again to “do it better”. Sadly, this situation indicates great ignorance on the part of the teacher. The throat closes ...

If I worry about what you think of me, I’m in big trouble. If I don’t care at all what you think of me, I’m a brute. Which is it? Terry Cole-Whittaker wrote “What You Think Of Me Is None Of My Business” in the 80s. It was very helpful to me. I suggest you read it. ...

What Happens If You Sound Great and Still Have Vocal Issues? Hang in there, folks, This is long. Too much chest register in the middle voice or perhaps at the bottom can create functional issues. ...

The world is full of mediocre music. That’s not news. Mediocre — to me that’s music with little substance, lots of “effects”, created by technology pros with little regard for the talent or lack thereof of those who are doing the singing. The “producers”  manufacture a “product” that will sell. Sometimes it does sell, and sell like crazy. ...

Fear of Success? Yes, Fear of Success I have run into this so many times. Someone comes in claiming not to have been able to do something vocally for the entire length of their training and performance career. Often it is a baritone who suspects he is a dramatic tenor or a classical singer who has always ...