Do Skype Lessons Really Work? I’ve been teaching via the Internet for about as long as Skype has been in existence. The great thing about studying via Skype is that you can always get in a lesson when you need one. If you are away at school, on tour, live far away from me, or […]

How To Sing Across Your Break Smoothly There are many different reasons people have difficulty moving from the lower register (chest voice) into the upper register (head voice) smoothly; but primarily it is a matter of the muscular systems of each register being antagonistic, or at odds with one another. Try this experiment: starting in a […]

As a professional singer, there was something fun and exciting about living from gig to gig when I was in my late teens and ’20s; but as I was nearing my ‘30s and entering my second decade of my performing, I noticed that my enthusiasm for the lifestyle of a professional singer was waning considerably. […]

The Text Is the Heart of the Song A singer is unique from every other musician in that they perform in words.  A well-written song has a melody line which supports the text, and not the other way around. A master composer or songwriter uses melody to produce the maximum impact of the text being sung. […]

A Healthy Body Means A Healthy Voice Unlike other musicians, singers actually live inside  their instruments. A guitarist can simply change strings, or send the guitar in for a new fret if there are occasional problems; if a guitarist has an allergy attack, eats something that didn’t agree with them or had trouble sleeping the […]

Balancing The Registers In Your Voice Most every singer has noticed that when they sing in a lower part of their range their vocal quality has a similarity to the way they speak; yet as they move to higher and higher pitches there is either the tendency to begin to yell and strain, or to suddenly flip […]

Each musical instrument has both a vibrating mechanism and a resonating mechanism. The vibrating mechanism is the source of the sound waves, and the resonating mechanism refines, augments and amplifies those sound waves giving the instrument its unique tonal character. A few things that make the voice vastly different from every other instrument include the […]

What do we mean by practice? Practice means a repetitive action done on a regular basis.The more an action is repeated, the more embedded the action becomes in the subconscious mind and the autonomic nervous system. So when you practice you make something your own. In vocal technique this means that it becomes automatic, so […]

Strengthening Your Vocal Mix Something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible when beginning serious vocal training is the concept of vocal power. The majority of new students who come to me who have been singing in more aggressive styles of music will often seek training in order to mitigate the feelings of […]

Get That Gunk Off of Those Cords! Allergies? Still getting over that cold? Ate something last night that didn’t quite agree with you? There are many reasons that people get occasional excess mucus on their vocal folds. For most people, the presence of excess muck on the cords often goes unnoticed, but for singers, it […]