A Voice Apart

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,...

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...

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...

Being involved in the music industry for over 30 years in Canada, I have a lot of observations watching it from inside and out. When I first came in March of 1980, there were a lot of things happening, musically speaking and otherwise, as music is always a reflection of what's happening in that present time. There were great artists rising up, like Celine Dion, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and many more. Specializing in vocals , I started my career with the garage bands and pop star wannabes. Those years the immigration from European countries like Russia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Poland and others was at a very high rate. A lot of people were coming with children and teenagers and being brought up the European way, were willing to work hard to give their youngsters music education and helping them to succeed in the music industry . The children of those times were also very receptive, seeing that the music industry was happening and true to their cause new stars wer...

For the last several years there has been a big concern among music industry professionals that the music industry is broken. Bigwigs and music industry gurus are exclaiming, “How can we fix it?” Last year I attended Music Expo Europe in London, England. The very first thing that was shown to delegates was a documentary film about the problems which the music industry at large is experiencing today. After the film the delegates were asked for their input for a future documentary film on how to fix the music industry. And the delegates, most of whom were also music industry professionals, were suggesting taking the music elsewhere – to the movies, videogames, Internet and what have you. Not one delegate, until I stood up and spoke on camera, speculated as to why it got broken in the first place. I said, “Please pay attention to the artists. Teach them how to sing properly - and in tune preferably, thus, complying with the standards of professional singing – and teach them how to express...