A Voice Apart

I've been in the music business, here in Canada, for over 30 years. I ran my professional vocal school , which is now a division of 4 A.M. Talent Development & Artist Management Group Inc., as well as, our own independent label, Royans Universe Records for over 27 years.  Over all this time, I've been vocally training people (estimated over 18,000 students) and also recording a lot of demos (first tapes and then CDs).  From time to time I was attempting to do the full productions with some of my prominent and talented clients, where I had to engage the services of a Music Producer, while myself, I was trying to play the role of Vocal Producer. "Vocal Producer?!!!" You may exclaim, "What's that?". For years, I was trying to answer this question to the best of my abilities and especially to convince and persuade those music producers who I have been (or potentially would be) working with. Some of them had no concept of it, outright; others had dif

In the first article, “Non-surgical Voice Repair. What’s that? Does it apply to Susan Boyle as well now...?”, I described the Sony artist’s performance on The View as being an unfortunate precedent. In that article, I was talking about her (in my opinion) beautiful, however improperly used voice and about my revolutionary Vocal Science technique, which could (no doubt) remedy that problem. Sometimes a performer may severely damage his/her vocal cords, larynx and even the whole vocal box while using the incorrect technique. In this particular instance then, the performer’s “instrument” is at stake.  In North America we have an expression, “He/she has a nice voice” (or good/great voice and what have you). That’s wonderful, but it’s only a description of the instrument. What about knowing how to “play” it? Imagine if Liberace, who had a famous great pink grand piano, suddenly would start playing it with his elbows? Funny, hah! But the singers with good voices, including Susan Boyle, are d

Almost everybody knows now what happened to Susan Boyle on the television show “The View”. The question is why, and could it have been prevented? Being a vocal mentor and world renowned non-surgical voice repair specialist for over 35 years, I could say with absolute certainty that YES! It DEFINITELY could have been prevented if Susan, as well as many other renowned vocal performers, actually knew what they were doing with their voices and were using their voices upon design and not just by praying and keeping their fingers crossed while on stage (playing it by ear). You can clearly see the fear on Susan’s face about a minute before the disaster happened. She obviously knew intuitively that she would not finish that show, as she felt the restriction in her vocal box and knew there was no more space left to go anywhere except even deeper down into her throat where her vocal cords split and what I call “vocal impotence” had occurred.  Horrible!!! And every singer’s nightmare!!! But it c

After all these years of bigger and bigger live music shows, everyone that’s been to a concert, large or small, expects any great show to have an encore. So after singing, playing and entertaining the crowd for two or two and a half hours on average, the crowd expects the artist or band to come out and sing with the same excellence, energy and conviction another song or two to close the show. The problem is that the majority of singers are not singing it by design. And primarily they deliver their performance by what I call, ‘playing it by ear.’ That means that they do not have an adequate vocal technique or at least the knowledge about it, which would allow them to save and protect their voices, and make it last for hours on end. Ultimately, they’re using the wrong set of muscles while singing and thus using and abusing their vocal apparatus sometimes to the bitter end. It’s a known fact that even Celine Dion once lost her voice during her concert. Luckily she found a