A Voice Apart

Over 35 years of teaching and especially over the 26 years over running my professional vocal school , it never ceases to amaze me why people would embark on spending money to equip their rehearsal spaces with expensive PA systems, microphones, keyboards and what have you much before they know how to sing or sometimes even play. Moreover, the so called singers are going to expensive recording studios and paying for their vocal recordings which take hours upon hours as they the crafty engineers are trying to autotune it or melodyne it to death. I just received a client who was definitely at the end of her rope and already literally losing her high range and basically killing her vocal anatomy with every note that she was trying to embark on. Interestingly enough, she was referred to me by a reputable recording studio . Her sensible engineer probably felt that if she continues any longer she will run of her steam completely and he will run out of the technology means trying to save the...

Outside of the training school which I have owned for almost three decades, I also own an indie label, Royans Universe Records, and attached to it a Management Company, 4 a.m. Talent Development and Artist Management Group Inc. More and more I am going into the development and management of various artists and naturally my crew and I are constantly holding auditions in the hopes of discovering someone unique and unprecedented and then graduate him/her to the music industry at large. And, yes, people are very responsive to this endeavour and every one of them, just like on the American Idol show, think that they are the "NEXT BIG THING". Due to popular demand we requested to listen to their music online and naturally to look at some of their pictures. And now we have discovered three categories of people that are approaching us. One category which is actually quite legit are those that look decent and possess some talent and, moreover, are willing thrive upon it and acquire so...

In my previous blog entry "Vocal Insurance" - Do You Need An Agent?, I discussed a perplexing issue that I have encountered over the years, namely people that were plagued with vocal problems but who were at the same time hesitant to call me on the phone so that I could hear their voices in order to deduce if I could help them or not. I finally posed a question about this on a discussion board and received an explanation from one person afflicted with a voice problem. He mentioned that he was very uncomfortable dealing with phones because of the current propensity of companies to use voice activated menus or having to deal with receptionists and operators in a manner that is very fatiguing for someone with a weak voice. All of what he was saying is 100% true and understandable. For the people with voice disorders it would be understandably difficult to deal with government agencies, voice activated menus and etc. As far as I'm concerned, not having a voice problem, the la...