Jeanie’s Blog

Point of View – What’s Yours? Everyone on earth has their own point of view about life. The primary point of view you live through affects everything you do. Women often make relationships the window through which they see everything. The roles they have: wife, mother, sister, daughter, niece, aunt — often are key aspects of their ...

Noble It means righteous, virtuous, good, honorable, upright, decent, worthy, moral, ethical, reputable. (Google) It would be nice if everyone in charge of the various things that run our world were “noble”. So often, it is the case that people who make decisions don’t even contemplate, let alone behave, in a way that has any nobility. Probably, ...

Half-Truths We live in an age of “spin”. Perhaps average people don’t necessarily lie all the time, but it’s pretty common for the truth to get “fashioned” for various reasons. This has made it impossible for any of us in our entire society to know what is true and what is not and that is bad news for ...

Clarity. How do we find clarity? If you are in touch with your own goodness you will have clarity about what is and is not “right”. You will understand a few basic things that do not need to be proven or questioned. Those that live in any kind of dogma, any type of programming that comes from ...

Hodge-Podge If you go to a medical expert, a specialist, to find out about something specific, for instance, a hip problem, and the expert says, “Here is a range of possibilities as presented by a number of other experts, who can tell you what is available to address your hip problem. I can’t recommend any of ...

Talk Is Still Cheap It is very easy to give verbal support to a person or a cause. It is a way of saying , “You go, girl!” In most cases this is a very safe behavior and requires very little energy. It is a bit more difficult to say, “You go, girl!” if the “girl” you ...

Taking Responsibility Everyone is responsible for what shows up in his or her life. Whether you intended it to be there or whether it got there “by accident” it is incumbent upon you to deal with whatever it is that’s there as if you planned for it. Most people do not operate that way. “It’s not my ...

In order to live a decent, happy life, you have to have a conscience. That entails various ingredients, but quite a few people who consider themselves to be “nice” never actually look to see if their behavior could be unconscionable. As someone who has encountered a good deal of envy, jealousy and resentment throughout my life (which ...

Big Changes I am announcing here that I am no longer affiliated with Shenandoah University. Those who have associated my work with this university should know that what continues there under the banner of the Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy Institute is not going to be about my work in any way. If you would like to know ...

How is it that there is no such thing as “classical training”? It has been written about here many times that “classical training” was all there was for decades if you wanted to study singing. Either you took lessons with a person who taught “classically” or you taught yourself. Now, however, we have other options. There are several ...

Middle-Aged Guys With Long Hair Not my favorite thing.  : ( Beware paunchy middle-aged guys with pony-tails and bald heads. There are a few whose hair goes below their shoulders, thin, grey and totally unattractive. What are they thinking? It makes them sexier? More authoritative? Younger-looking? And, there are a number of these fellows teaching singing, mostly to ...

On Broadway:  It’s All About The Acting Currently, on Broadway, you will find the values at musical auditions  ranked in this order: Excellent actor Excellent dancer OK Singer If you have a spectacular voice but you can barely act, you will not, NOT, work on Broadway. If you are an excellent actor with a so-so voice, if they really like ...

Singing That Changes The World Can you really change the world with singing that has been so electronically manipulated it could have been generated by a computer and no one would know the difference? Is the magic of one human voice, unaltered, not enough any more? The pop music world is dominated by beautiful young people many ...

Hold On For Dear Life Over and over I encounter the idea that someone can hold on for dear life to the muscles of the throat or to the larynx and sing well. SAD. The person responsible for this idea gaining validity worldwide was herself an awful belter…..choked, strangled and shouty. She “investigated” her own throat and decided ...

Beware the Slick Packaging and The Hype Lots of people sound like they have something really good to offer. If you are easily taken in by packaging, you can be duped. Sometimes things that look fancy and expensive, once you dig a bit, are still just junk. There are currently an amazing number of teachers of singing ...