Mark JW Graham - Singing Lessons Nottingham

March 16, 2025July 5, 2025

Jason Alexander on the learning and creative process

This article forms part of our advanced vocal techniques collection. Click here to dive deeper.

I think a lot about the learning process, and the creative process. While there is heavy overlap between the two processes, they are not exactly the same.

Nevertheless, people often want to rush both. They want to push as hard they can, like it’s all metric driven, like it’s a profit and loss chart in a high-pressure sales room…

“OK, we have to acquire one new note a week, because by the end of the year I’ll have more range than any singer ever”

“This song feels comfortable, so I can’t be pushing myself, gotta find something that finds my limits again”

“If I can’t nail this song in one attempt, I’m a total failure”

Utter nonsense!

Yet we have all thought along such lines at some point or another. We may never have articulated such things in so many words, but we’ve all FELT that way about progress.

That progress has to be measurable, quantifiable, dissectible. And that measurable progress needs to be constant and even day to day, week to week, year to year. Slow downs, setbacks, or worse, variable performance is not acceptable.

Learning and the creative process really isn’t like that. With such a mindset, frustration and burnout is an inevitability. Continue reading “Jason Alexander on the learning and creative process”

February 2, 2025July 5, 2025

Making Your Living In Music

I’ve been working as a voice coach for about a decade and a half now. Many of my clients are professionals who earn some or all of their income from making music. I also know many other musicians who work within the music industry.

As such, I thought it might be worth sharing a few things that have made working in the music industry achievable. If you are trying to make a living as a singer/musician, or would like to learn more, please do have a read.

1) “Musicianship” is a skill

When I first started making music in my teens, people noticed I seemed to have an aptitude for it. They would say things like:

“You’re good at music… you should do music for a living” was something I’d hear a lot.

It didn’t strike me until years later, that’s like saying:

“You’re good at maths… you should do maths for a living“.

In reality, there is no job that is just “maths“. There are jobs that employ maths as a skill, e.g. accountancy, actuary, mathematics teacher, even engineering, but being “good at maths” is only one component of the skill set needed to become valuable within a job.

Similarly, just because you love singing, this does not automatically mean you HAVE to become a solo performer or front a band. There are always a plurality of jobs that require musical ability as a skill, but it is deployed differently within each arena. Continue reading “Making Your Living In Music”

January 26, 2025July 5, 2025

Six Things Most Inexperienced Singers Don’t Grasp

There are many things that most inexperienced singers don’t grasp. As I was falling asleep a few nights ago, my mind was going over this particular topic. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of comments from students who are learning to sing, others who can already sing, and still further comments from singers who are out there performing regularly.

“Oh I don’t struggle with stamina, I mean my voice is often tired about 10 minutes into singing, but that’s fairly normal”

“I gave up on that song. I tried to sing it once and it sounded bad.”

“I can’t hit the note in practice, but I definitely hit it while at the [loud] gig”

“I’ve got about 100 songs I do exceptionally well”

If you’ve found yourself ever thinking any of the above is normal, please do read on. Real pros grasp why these things aren’t true. The sooner you can grasp the reasons why, the sooner you can leverage the parameters of good singing to your advantage, (for very little work!).

1. Practice makes permanent, not perfect

People often say “practice makes perfect”. But that is not true. PERFECT practice makes perfect, but most of us don’t practice perfectly. What practice of any quality does, is train the body to do something in that way. Practice makes whatever we are doing permanent, for better or for worse.

Some singers practice too little, thereby not leveraging the power of practice to make things permanent. Some practice imperfectly too much, thereby ingraining bad habits deeply and making them hard to remove. Continue reading “Six Things Most Inexperienced Singers Don’t Grasp”

January 19, 2025July 5, 2025

How to sing when sick or at half-capacity

It’s been a brutal winter for colds, chest infections, flu, and many other illnesses. Sessions since the New Year have often involved putting singers’ voices back together after illness. I thought I’d walk you through what I typically do. Then we’ll conclude with how our process of voice training engenders a ‘bulletproof’ voice.

My first client of the year had been suffering from an awful chest infection. They had been ill for 3-4 weeks, and coughing up mucus throughout that period. In our session, they’d said they’d tried the usual warm-up of lip bubbles the week before, but anything more demanding than that was just a train-wreck.

So what did we do?

Warm-ups
We took it slow, starting with our usual warm-up, but kept it light and breezy. We didn’t try to access their whole range all in one pass, but instead started with a short pass. Then we took a rest.

After that we did another pass. Going a little deeper, and a little higher than before, then another short rest.

Then one more pass unlocked the whole range, before another rest. I enquired as to how it felt at each step, to ensure that (despite it sounding fine), everything felt OK to continue. It’s a slow warming up process when we want to solve how to sing when sick. Continue reading “How to sing when sick or at half-capacity”

January 12, 2025July 5, 2025

RIP Sam Moore

Sam Moore – the soul man – was a fantastic soul singer who most of you will have heard, often without realising. He was born October 12th 1935 and died recently on January 10th 2025.

He was most famous for being part of the soul duo, Sam and Dave. They were active from 1961 til 1981. Sam Moore was the higher of the two voices, and he was a huge influence on many aspiring soul singers of that era.

To commemorate his incredible voice I thought I’d simply send out a few of their greatest hits. Here are some live and in-studio versions of his songs.

Soul Man (Live)

This is by far the most famous of their songs, and showcases how epic his soul singing ability really was. He sits up at the 2nd bridge as comfortably as most male tenors sit into their chest voice. Incredible.

A few of you keen-eyed musos may also recognise many of the band members from the Blues Brothers line-up.

Hold On, I’m Coming (Live)

When something is wrong with my baby

This is a less well-known song, but shows how capable he was at singing ballads despite his voice sitting so high.

What a fabulous voice. I hope you’ve enjoyed diving into the back catalogue of one of the greatest singers of the last 100 years.

January 5, 2025July 5, 2025

Three Singing Tips for Results in 2025

Happy New Year!

I was thinking this week about what to share with you, and someone asked me “do you do New Year’s Resolutions?”.

This got me thinking that many of you may be wholly on-board with the New Year’s resolutions pattern, and others may merely like some suggestions on what to focus on in a new year.

So here are three simple things I suggest that you focus on this year to hear progress with your voice. None of these are complicated, in fact, in many respects it’s about doing less and working smarter. Continue reading “Three Singing Tips for Results in 2025”

December 1, 2024July 5, 2025

What Makes a Truly Great Song

To illustrate what makes a truly great song, I want to use an analogy.

Jimmy Carr

There’s a comedian in the UK called Jimmy Carr. He is a one-liner comedian, and while his comedy tends to be quite crass, he had something very relatable to say about crafting great jokes.

In an interview, he commented that there are certain comedians whose material is quite lack-lustre, but that they work their butts off with on-stage antics to make it funny. These are the often highly energetic comedians, typically a bit slapstick. They rush about onstage, imitate the actions in their jokes, etc. They generally put on a highly physical performance and energetic output to generate the laughs. If the person just stood still on stage, no laughs would be generated.

Build the comedy INTO the joke
Carr’s preference however, is for building the humour into the structure of the joke itself.

In his view, a well-crafted joke is one that you could write down on a slip of paper, pass to someone who is a non-comedian, and they could read it out with no knowledge of the punchline, and everyone would laugh. Continue reading “What Makes a Truly Great Song”

November 24, 2024July 5, 2025

How different illnesses affect the voice

Well, it’s that time of year again. Illnesses of all shapes and sizes are going round. I’m on my second consecutive weekend by being wiped out by something or other.

I only recently sent out this regular article on how to bounce back after illness. I don’t like re-sending articles so I thought we’d go over the different illnesses that you can catch that affect your voice, how to distinguish them, and some suggestions for attending to them.

CAVEAT/NOTE: I am not a medical doctor, and I’m also trying to cover a lot in a very short space. As such, I’m going to talk in broad generalities to get the message across. We’ll group more similar things together, and discuss the range of symptoms you’ll generally get. Almost all of these will benefit from paracetamol to take down infection/inflammation.

1. Colds / Sinusitis

We’ve all had colds, so I don’t need to linger on this. Runny nose, snot/mucus either out the nostrils, or down the back of your throat (post-nasal drip). Some facial pain, swollen eyes, etc. If it lasts a while or gets bad, it can become sinusitis, i.e. an infection of the sinuses. This can sometimes requires antibiotics to aid recovery. Continue reading “How different illnesses affect the voice”