A Voice Apart

Your multiple choice test: A) To hire a whole bunch of dancers/strippers and bring so to speak a live video on stage to distract the audience from your singing completely. B) To bring a huge choir, which has been chosen by your team via vigorous auditions, and which sings extremely well to camouflage your vocal inadequacy. C) To hire a vocal technician who would not only save your voice, but assure the safety, health and longevity of your voice for life. Please take your pick. If you answered C, you evidently do have an above average IQ. Congratulations! If you, however, managed to pass a fake performance for the real one, congratulations also! You fooled the public and they unfortunately took it for the real thing! However, the times are changing and the public is becoming smarter. Not that the level of their IQ is necessarily rising, it's just they're getting fed up with lip synching, bad singing (for which they pay top dollar) and the circus or strip show, whi

BIG APPLAUSE yet again to Simon Cowell! What a BRILLIANT idea the well known MUSIC MOGUL came up with! He tied in the whole show with the American Thanksgiving holiday! If that wasn't timely then what is? Mainly, it clearly helped to open up every single participant's emotions and now we've seen them in a different "limelight"! On a regular basis, naturally, they're pretty scared, very anxious and very stressed trying not to fall out of the frame of the show and thus, not to win the $5 million dollar recording contract. For the first time in any shows of that kind (American Idol, Canadian Idol previously, The Voice and what have you), the winning conciliation prize was always an issue. All of the participants were claiming how poor they were, how much they wanted to help their families, and how much they wanted to realize their financial dream. Honestly, and I wrote about it before, it always left a "bad taste" in my mouth. As I said p

One more time again, I'm anxiously awaiting for the next episode of X Factor, but I would like to comment on the one I've just recently seen and heard. Now from the colourful stages, lighting, dancers, "spacesuits" and what not, we arrived to the actual singing (big credit to Simon Cowell), but unfortunately, not necessarily in the best understanding of that word. Whatever happened to the singers from the moment they were auditioning to the last episode which I witnessed a week ago? All of them, when they were auditioning, were sounding quite decent and quite promising. My guess would be that they were receiving some vocal coaching in the interim between the shows. I'm sure some of them had vocal coaches before and as every one of them (me, naturally, would be included) is preaching their own techniques, styles and methods, the participants quite likely could have gotten confused, especially under the pressure, stress and last minute advice. The question is, do th

Lately, a lot of performing and recording artists are experiencing difficulties (to put it mildly) with their voices. It is very sad, but it is the fact. We're hearing a lot about bleeding vocal cords, laryngitis, polyps, nodes and nodules in Artists' throats. Some also have dysphonia and some, acid reflux, separately or along with the aforementioned diagnoses. Now what...? The artist is in distress, the management and record company are in loss of millions of dollars! How to remedy the situation like that? It should be not that difficult; find somebody who knows how to solve these types of problems, preferably non-surgically and non-invasively, i.e. somebody who knows how to change the voice application so that the vocal anatomy would not be irritated by the pressure of the sound and somebody who knows about natural herbs and remedies, which would greatly aid any human voice, and especially the singer's voice. Find somebody, who, after the voice repair, will fi

I have to say, I am religiously watching the progression of the X Factor television show every Wednesday and Thursday on Pacific time (meaning from 11 p.m. until 1 a.m. of the next day) and I have to say, it's becoming more intense by the minute, and in my opinion, any good show should possess exactly that quality. I think about 95% of the time, it is spot on, i.e. participants are somewhat right and the judges are quite fair. However, in my opinion, and occasionally in Simon Cowell's opinion, the show reminds me of a big cabaret: the dancing, the lights and the effects are completely camouflaging the singing and moreover, all of the above are competing with the actual vocal performance. It is just too overwhelming to watch, however, in my childhood I really liked the Russian circus and it certainly has an echo of something precious that I used to enjoy when I was 10 years old... But then I remind myself that I'm not actually watching the Russian circus and then the q

What does Vocal Science(TM) mean and why is it considered to be a "Vocal Invention", you may ask?   The answer is: This technique allows the voice to work at the fullest capacity possible with positively no pain or strain on the vocal anatomy. It works wonders for the healthy voice, but i f the vocal cords or the vocal box in general are already damaged (or pre-damaged), this technique will help to restructure the voice into a different set of muscles (facial/sinus cavities), which will play the role of the natural amplifier or resonator, while simultaneously being put to work in full conjunction and coordination with the abdominal muscles and where the latter will provide the support for the sound to be lifted off of the vocal cords and off of the vocal box, thus in turn, the use of the throat, larynx and the vocal cords will be minimized and practically eliminated. In the case of the voice repair, the natural herbs and remedies will be administered to enhance