A Voice Apart

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

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

As it appears to be, the latest craze in the entertainment business is "everybody's favourite" Lady Gaga's act...? Is it really though? It no doubts is for the young generation. Sometimes even too young. On July 12th I was cordially invited by one of my artist's mom to attend the newest Lady Gaga tour "The Monster Ball". Let's first talk about the audience. Needless to say, there were a lot of under legal age kids, who I'm not sure should have necessarily had to hear it with their ears and see it with their eyes. The material of the show was quite explicit and definitely not for all ages. It was a lot of liberation presented by Lady Gaga on every level. You could not understand who was male and who was female in that show and who was seducing whom. She was reciting in between of her "escapades" how liberated she was, how free she was (I presume in her sexual preferences and what have you) and did invite the audience to feel free and

Practicing vocal coaching /consulting/producing and whatever else connected to the music business for over 30 years in Toronto, I can testify that people have changed dramatically over last 3 generations. In my opinion, with technology progressing, the mental, physical and emotional state of human beings is dramatically regressing. Obviously there are quite a few factors related to why this is happening. One of them is that people are using technology instead of their brains, not along with the brains. It looks like their brain cells are dying one by one and they are unable to think straight, let alone make some viable decisions or, god forbid, try to put 2 plus 2 together without the computer or calculator. How scary is that? Taking into account this phenomenon, they are evidently not as physical as well. They spend the majority of their day staring at the computer screen and trying to figure out their whole life via internet. Sometime ago, I asked one of my young male students if

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

If you look at the history of the music industry for the last three decades, we can notice that a lot of famous people are not with us today. A lot of them "went away" much before their time. Some of them died from drug overdoses, some of them died of AIDs, others shot themselves or committed suicide one way or another. Why is that happening you might ask? These artists seemed to have had it all - fame, success, wealth and everything else under the sun. But could they handle it? Evidentally not. The question is why. Yes, a lot of talent has been discovered by fluke and accidentally. Some of the talent was searched for and by different means: numerous contests, Canadian and American Idol competitions, Britain's Got Talent and what have you. And if you watch these aforementioned shows, you would see that it's not exactly about vocal talent. At least it wasn't always the case in recent years. It seems to be that the judges were almost looking for somebody who was, so

Let's suppose that a patient needs brain surgery and then finds out that the actual surgery will be performed by a Doctor of Orthopaedics! "How could that be?," you might exclaim!!! It's true - it is highly unlikely that it will happen in real life. However, in the recording studio there is person who is usually called the "Producer" assigned to be a "jack of all trades" and, so to speak, "brain surgery is included". What do I mean by brain surgery is the actual narrow field of vocals? Primarily the producers are instrumentalists and majority of them are very good at their craft. But, very rarely, they are also the vocalists, least of all vocal mentors . Quite often, the clients come to our studio with their own recordings and reveal that the producer was excellent in everything else... until it came to vocals. Some of the producers, apparently, did not even care about the vocal performance and some of them were trying to give