Like many people across the UK today, I woke up a little groggy at my usual wake up time. Why? Because the clocks had changed. This meant that my usual wake up time of around 6am was actually the equivalent of an hour earlier than normal – so 5am. And boy, did my voice FEEL […]
Many people who come to me for sessions arrive with a very clearly defined, self-assigned label for what kind of singer they believe they are. After working with singers in lessons for many years, this is something I see again and again. “I’m a weighty contralto with a light top” “I’m a super-light tenor with
Last time I wrote about how some songs are more favourable than others to sing. I also mentioned the three I suggest the most for clients to help begin to figure their voice out. I’ve also written previously about unsingable songs. But this time I thought it might be helpful to give some examples of
When people first start, we have to start building their voice from the ground up. This is true no matter how long someone has been singing, or how advanced the material they want to sing happens to be. Once we have a reasonable technical foundation laid down, we can start to deploy that newly built
Several years ago, I read the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is on the idea that for the areas we are each experienced in, often the first reaction is pretty correct. But for areas we are less experienced in, our first reaction is often not correct, and is missing a lot of nuance.
I send one email a week, at 6pm on a Sunday every week, to those on my subscriber list. I only send one so as not to bombard people with more emails than we already get. If you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up via the vocal prospectus signup at the bottom of this
One of the things I regularly discuss with clients is how a huge proportion of voice training, is actually ear training. Sure, we are looking to train our body and voice to operate in more refined and better ways, and in this regard it is undoubtedly a physical/physiological endeavour. However, we cannot hope to program
I have had these two videos saved for many years, and I revisit them every so often. 1. Kaufmann The first features tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conductor Anthony Pappano. Kaufmann is arguably the premier operatic tenor in the world today. In this excerpt, Pappano covers what the mixed voice is, and how one has to
