Jeanie’s Blog

“Imagine your throat is filled with a big pink mist.” “Imagine you have a watermelon in the back of your throat.” “Sing as if the sound were outside your cheekbones.” “Picture the tones strung together as if they were a pearl necklace.” “Release the tone on your air and let it spin.” ...

If you decide to sing so you can be “famous”, you are in for a bumpy ride. You cannot create fame. You can create competence, you can create a high level of skill, you can be blessed with a good instrument, you can be emotionally communicative and musical, and you can do whatever ...

In order to do something, first you have to learn what that something is. If it is a new activity, it can take a while to figure out how to do it correctly, as even if you mentally understand what is being asked, you may still be far away from executing it well. All activities ...

We all get lost. It’s part of the process. If we did not risk getting lost, we would live without adventure, without risk, without challenge. People in the arts truly cannot afford to live that way. Maybe if you work on a line in a factory, doing the same thing over and ...

There is a big difference between can (am able to), should (what would be right) and ought (duty or correctness). We need to remember that. Yes, a 15-year-old can belt the last G in “Defying Gravity”, but should she? Yes, you can teach a person to “scream” without being hurt, but is that what ...

I wish a had a dime for every person I have had to “untrain”. They come to NYC, graduates of some program in some school, singing like Wagnerians, badly, and can barely manage a music theater song written after 1965. The voices are HEAVY, thick, immbolized and very ponderous and they struggle with ...

Integrity is defined in the Oxford dictionary as being “honest, fair and good”. We all hope that those who teach singing are that, and that they put the welfare of their students above their own. We hope. Of course, teachers would have to actually monitor themselves on a somewhat regular basis, asking “what’s the ...

Integrity is something that everyone needs. You don’t get a textbook

When I was a child, my father used to tell me stories. I liked the ones he made up that were about “Jack and Orey” (Daddy, tell me a story about Jack and Orey). He concocted some characters named Oompha-Oompha and Itchy-Scratchy who were always doing funny, silly or tricky things. I ...

Adults who want to learn to cross over, or go from singing primarily in one style to another, have special challenges. They have more life experience, which is useful, and that can make it easier for them to understand what is needed in their “cross over” training. The musculature, however, can take more time to ...

A very common occurance: Kid grows up singing with the radio/TV/internet, all the popular songs of the day (Top 40s). Kid decides he or she likes singing and wants to learn more. Kid gets ready for college, has to go either for classical or music theater training (done by classical teachers) or ...

Those who can do, and those who can’t, teach. How about those who can do and those who can’t, could have. There are many people in the world of the arts who had “the goods”. They had talent, training, and the discipline to do something with their particular art. They may even have had a ...

Those who can do, and those who can’t, teach. How about those who can do and those who can’t, could have. There are many people in the world of the arts who had “the goods”. They had talent, training, and the discipline to do something with their particular art. They may even have had a ...

If you have ever taken a yoga class you know that after it is over, you feel better. The stretching you do makes the muscles feel looser and freer and the strengthening also invigorates the body. Overall you feel freer and stronger, and if you continue to do this over time, you can ...

We have discussed functional training here previously. It’s a new subject in the world of voice, however, so it deserves a bit more time. In functional training for singing we are isolating behaviors that occur in the larynx from those that occur in the pharynx. We are distinguishing behaviors that have to do with ...