A Voice Apart

I have to say that this 11th season of American Idol is extremely exciting to watch. The quality of the auditioners is much higher than in any previous years. The judges are much more objective and really looking out for the quality of singing more than ever before. I do agree with their choices close to 100%! For the record: Trust me, it's a very high mark in my standards. To their credit, they really did raise the bar of vocal performance quality. But for what cost though and on whose account? Unfortunately, on the account of the participants who are ultimately teenagers and young adults. I've never seen in previous shows, people literally falling off of the stage, passing out of the exhaustion and literally losing their consciousness and were not able to stand on their feet. In times I felt that I was watching some episodes of "Grey's Anatomy", "House" or in previous years, "Chicago Hope". All of those shows were dedicated to...

Vocal technique, who needs it, you may ask? In my opinion, everyone who claims themselves to be even a beginner singer. I've been involved in the music business for almost four decades and had been having conversations and discussions with numerous music business professionals - producers, A&Rs and managers. I found that when I was pointing out that certain singers were obviously hurting their vocal anatomies, either pre-diagnosed or already diagnosed with vocal problems , and thus, could not perform their duties, concerts, tours and what have you, their take on it was that the certain singer/performer was so talented, wrote good songs and performed with a lot of emotions...? I acknowledged all of those components, but tried to mention that the latter is not all, and if the singer is shooting their sound out, so to speak, blindly, while concurrently keeping their fingers crossed and dying of fear, that they may not deliver the proper sound or even the sound at all, that ...

When I’m talking to any singer, I always bring up to their attention, that they do represent the instrument, so to speak, and the player. In this instance, I mean that their physical body, their mental state, anatomy and physiology integrated and synergized, represent the actual instrument. The support, the structure, the placement and projection of the voice to its aimed destination, represent the player. The late celebrity pianist “Liberace” had always travelled with his favourite pink grand piano. Being the greatest pianist of all time, he definitely knew how to extract the maximum capacity from that instrument. That’s what I call “The Total Performer”. I.e. He owned a great instrument and he was a brilliant player. When the singer gets into vocal distress , the industry and naturally the doctors are concerned only about how to fix the vocal anatomy of the Artist. And if it’s fixed successfully, they applaud to the highly qualified surgeon and applaud the Artist,...

I remember watching one of my favourite movies-"Basic Instinct", with Michael Douglas and Sharron Stone in main roles. There was one of the scenes where Michael Douglas's character was making love to his girlfriend, which in real sense, resulted in the actual force, as he was already attracted to Sharron Stone's character and felt angry, because he intuitively felt that the outcome of it could be deadly for him in the end. I have a similar feeling when I am listening to a singer reciting a great song with great emotion, while actually "forcing/murdering" their vocal anatomy. The audience, who does not know any better, are saying "Oh my god, He/she is such a great singer !" while having not the slightest idea of what that singer is experiencing and what it does to his/hers vocal chords and vocal box in general. That's, in my opinion, qualifying as a "vocal rape", nevertheless. As a consequence, the singer will get a nasty gro...

Everybody knows there is a rock style and there is an alternative rock style. But not everybody knows that there is an alternative… to music? How so you may ask? The fact is that the music, like everything else in life, has its own standards. Many years ago, I wrote an article which was called “First, Third and a half and Fifth and a quarter, to our shame, became our music standards".  I was talking about the triad which usually consists of the first, third and fifth steps from whichever musical key you want to start counting. I believe it is self-explanatory now and describes it perfectly. However, world renowned judges, primarily performers themselves, at times make strange decisions with respects to who is going to make it through the blind auditions and move on under their supervision, and who is not. To my surprise, there were a couple of vocalists who were dead-on musically and pitch wise, but for some reason, did not get chosen. And there were definite...