How Long Does Vocal Training Take? The one question that wins out as the most frequently asked question of all is “How long will these lessons take before I can sing well?” My answer is always the same: “I have absolutely no idea.” Success in vocal training really depends on several factors, including: a) the student’s inherent […]

  Discovering The Art of the Vocal Line Singers and visual artists alike often refer to the concept of “line” when discussing their art. It makes perfect sense why this term crosses over from one discipline to the other. Let’s look at a few ways in which the notion of line has similarities in both drawing […]

Healthy Belting “Sing your high notes loudly and with force, as if you are calling for a taxi,” “Sing your high notes as if you are a cheerleader yelling at a game.” “Never leave your chest voice as you are singing the highest notes in your song.” “Feel as though all of your high notes are […]

Vocal Performance: Where the Rubber Meets the Road Mostly what I do as a teacher of voice technique, is to help singers train their voices to be able to emit tones that are full, rich and beautiful. We work on building what is commonly called the mix, in order that students can learn to sing over the […]

Nasal Resonance vs. Nasality In Singing When a car pulls up next to you at a traffic light, and the driver has their in-car sound system blaring (full-blast, with the bass turned way up), your own car window might buzz or rattle. What you are experiencing when this happens are sympathetic vibrations. Even though the sound is not […]

Moving Into The Head Voice Many singers have the idea that in order to sing high notes with power, that they must stay in their chest voice and keep pushing harder and harder in order to avoid breaking into falsetto. Unfortunately this type of singing is a common reason for vocal strain, and ultimately vocal […]

A Few Thoughts on Vibrato Vibrato is a slight oscillation in both pitch and intensity that occurs spontaneously in a well-balanced singing voice. Ideally, vibrato is the result of  the interaction between the vibrations at the vocal folds and the slight vibrations at the diaphragm. The result of these two simultaneous vibrations the a vocal vibrato: a natural […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]