A Voice Apart

Last night, we happened to catch a concert which originated in Paris and the venue held, no doubts, over 60,000 people! It was truly packed. To the credit of all those people and the two well-known bands, in spite of the unstable political situation, the concert went on and actually, to my surprise, was very well received.  While watching the concert, I became more and more scared that singing (off key, off tone and off tune) is becoming our standard.  I originally came from Leningrad, (St. Petersburg, Russia), and was deeply enrolled from the age of 6 in all sorts of music. Education in Russia is taken very seriously; so I spent 12 consecutive years, 7 days a week doing music and, specifically, singing.  I, apparently, possessed ‘perfect pitch’ which, I am not sure right now that I still have.  I have been teaching singing since I was 17. That makes it close to 42 years now and 32 years in my own school here in Toronto.  ...

I am a fan of all arts related talent shows.  The other day, I watched " So You Think You Can Dance " and one of the judges commented on the performance of one of the auditioners.  He said something along these lines, “It was so nice to watch you and even nicer to witness your talent paired with the great skill you own.” GOLDEN WORDS!!! I right away made a mental note and thought, “I would not say it better myself”. However, by the looks of things, it mainly applies to dance, but somehow not to vocal performance.  Over the years, I’ve been on a lot of panels and ran a lot of vocal workshops and seminars within the industry format, and the comments were always directed towards the great song, the great dance performance, while singing, the great overall talent, but not to the great singing performance or vocal skill, for that matter. It felt like the industry did not account for the skill required to produce at least a decent vocal performanc...

I've been watching American Idol quite precisely for at least the last decade and this time watching the auditions, I said, "Finally, the singing quality is becoming quite strong and definitely more listenable than ever before." Little did I know. After that last 12 "best" were chosen, the quality of singing all of a sudden subsided substantially. How so, nyou may ask? I do't know for sure, but judging by previous experience of watching my own client on the "Rockstar Supernova" television show of 2006 and my other client on "Canadian Idol" of 2007, I could certainly say that somebody was so called "helping" them to "achieve their dream"by trying to teach them in the last minute (whether it was a vocal coach or producer) some new "vocal tricks". Both times watching my own clients on the above designated shows, I nearly fell off the chair while listening to their "new and improved" version of their ...

Really... Guess what? Who ever told the contestants how to make the well known tune their own? And what, in any case, did the judges mean by that? I guess it's still somewhat a riddle to the participants and to the audience, for that matter. Watching American Idol for the last 9 seasons (not to mention Canadian Idol for at least 7 seasons) I couldn't help but notice that those young kids and even more mature adults, are stuggling to turn and twist the well known cover tune into something which is hardly recognizable, as the melody has often been changed, the vocal licks were inserted all over the place (most of the time not corresponding with the style) and that made it just unlistenable and simply left a bad taste in the listener's mouth. My husband and I are big fans of 50s and 60s music and therefore we're very familiar with the songs of that era. Occasionally, while both of us were watching pre-final stages performances (where these types of songs were required t...

How “different” or perhaps weird do you have to be to make it in the music business? And why do you have to be “different” or furthermore weird to attract the attention of the general public? I don’t know if I have the answer, but I do have a few ideas and thoughts. In my opinion, people in general are bored and they are constantly looking for something that is not as mundane as their regular lives. And there is nothing necessarily bad about that, as long as it is not being taken out of proportion. Yes, we all want to watch and hear something new and unique. And that’s fine. However, especially lately those new and unique ideas are being turned into very weird and ugly acts. The music videos are becoming more and more explicit and are reminding of XXX porn more so than any music. The content of the videos outside of the porn is reminding of some type of Halloween in the absolutely worst interpretation of that word. That is one side of it. Now let’s touch on a couple of other sides. I h...