A Voice Apart

Working with the producers for over three decades, and especially for the last several years, never ceases to amaze me. First of all, being a vocal consultant, especially for my clients, and in-studio vocal producer, I'm unable to explain to them that they don't need to autotune or melodine every vocal line, because I am present in the studio for the very reason to pull out from the artist an authentic and the best performance. Moreover, some of them are playing the role of a song writer or co-writer with the artist and myself. By the end of the session, I'm beginning to hear a similar tune and/or style, which is already familiar to my ear. Verbalizing my concern with various producers, I came to the conclusion that music and "vocal plagiarism" is very much so in fashion.  Their belief is that if the certain sound and style is "hot" right now and selling like "hot cakes", why not write and produce something similar, and that also will p...

I have been working with beginners and professionals for over 37 years now. Strangely enough, I find that to work with the beginners is much easier than to work with people who had some vocal experience or a lot of it. The beginners do not know any better or any worse for that matter, and it is easier to put them on the "right track", as they don't have any pre-conceived ideas.  They also don't have the bad habits instilled in them either by themselves or by incompetent instructors, whereas those people with so called "experience" consciously or primarily sub-consciously are rejecting 'so to speak' the new modality of a "new behaviour", I could compare it with patients who receive new organs via medical transplant. Sometimes, the human body rejects something foreign, in spite that it could be a live saviour for the patient.  I also have older clients, and with them, there is another problem. They are very conservative, and they...

Last night, I finally (however delayed for the good reasons) returned from my recent UK trip. What was different this time was that not only did I bring my own artist for recordings and what not, but also attempted to work with the local artists or artists to be, via two Vocal Interactive Workshops and some voice repair private sessions. I've been doing all of this starting from Russia in 1975-76 and for the last 32 years, in Canada to date. Was I ever shocked when I embarked on what I thought was very familiar to me, with the British audience? Within the first five minutes I understood that I appeared to them as a complete "hurricane" on a bright sunny day (to put it mildly). They were sitting still and almost shockingly staring at me, however, with surprise and fascination in their eyes. I meanwhile, did not feel at ease at all. I felt like Maria from Sound of Music, but not coming out of the convent to meet a future husband, but rather coming in...? In my opi...