Welcome to the blog dedicated to answering your questions. Maybe you have questions regarding singing and how to develop you singing voice? Maybe you have questions regarding your speaking voice, or health related questions, or questions in regards to performance? Please browse through the posts in case your question has already been answered. If you don’t find your answer, go ahead and submit your question here.

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A: Yes, I work a lot with singers and speakers with these kinds of issues.  Any time we get discomfort, surrounding muscles compensate. For example, when you hurt your foot you start limping when you attempt to move forward - i.e. other muscles compensate.  When you experience discomfort, pain, strain, or hoarseness in your voice, other muscles compensate in an attempt to produce sound.  If we don’t do things to create balance, the condition becomes worse and it takes more and more effort to produce sound until it is chronic. The key is to rebalance, strengthen and free the muscles so you can create free resonating sound again with less effort than before. My Sing With Freedom home study course deal with these issues extensively too. Also see the article on hoarseness :  Why Your Voice Gets Hoarse

A. Yes, it is as natural as it is to fall when you begin to walk as a child.  And just like when you were learning to walk, you need to develop muscles and balance so it soon becomes easy.  And to use the same analogy, it’s not the warm-up, but the overall balance, strength and coordination that enables you to walk without falling. Once you got it, warm-ups are of course important.

A. Yes, you train and then you very soon realize that you are not tone-deaf at all – just untrained.  Very few people are really tone-deaf, although the expression is often used. The fun question to ask someone who says he is tone deaf is:  How do you know? You will find that the person is very well aware that he/she doesn't sound great? In fact, he probably hears very well. There is probably nothing wrong with your hearing. To be able to sing on key you have to be able to create vibration (sound) without restrictions.  The beauty is that you can develop this much faster than most people think. However, if you practice via singing scales I can guarantee that it will take much longer than necessary.  Also see the article on “How To Sing On Key”

A. I don’t claim to be a vocal coach for classical or opera singers, because if so one needs to be very familiar with the repertoire.  I am indeed focused more on contemporary styles of singing (I have  however been trained in classical singing myself).  Classical singers benefit from my method because it focuses on awareness and freedom rather than style.  Many classical singers also use far more effort than needed, so we make sure to train the functionality of the voice. This also helps the singer to express with greater freedom and authenticity. 
 

A. Well, when you say “try”, we don’t know you are doing or what the muscles are doing. The reason you can’t do it because the muscles that make it happen aren’t developed.  The bummer is that most people spend years and years singing scales, frustrated over this so-called “break”, but never discover the awareness of the muscles that make it happen - thus never develop theses muscles.  Sorry for the pitch, but in the Sing With Freedom program you develop greater awareness in the first 40 minutes, which we build on the create significant results in a couple of weeks.

A “Passagio” is one of those classic terms that I find unnecessary to use in my teaching (unless as fun trivia). It’s a term from the operatic school and refers to the “passage” – the bridge – between different registers, especially between chest voice and head voice. (The human voice actually has several areas of “register changes”.) What many seem to have forgotten is that the classic operatic “passagio” training strategies are about maintaining an operatic quality of sound while you pass through the “passagio”. Those strategies may not at all be helpful for contemporary singers.

A This is perhaps the most common concern of contemporary singers and an understandable one. It’s also a concern that will hold you back from tapping your true potential. The reason you want a coach on your team is to help you do what you want to do, but do it better. You want to be able to do it night after night. You want to be able to do it on a bad day. You want to feel free to express the way YOU want to express. If the coach helps you do that in a session or two you will feel it. If the coach is into promoting the “right” and “correct” way to sing, you are correctly concerned that he/she is teaching from the book and wanting to change your sound, rather than bringing out the best in you.

A: “Open your mouth” is a common instruction. “Darken the vowel”, “push from your stomach” , etc are other common "tricks". All these “tricks” do work in the same limiting way as if you were to do a biceps curl using your back and shoulders. You can actually lift more when doing so. But how much does it develop your biceps? When we discover how to sing high notes without this kind of external help, we also become freer as artists. Now we can express truthfully and freely.

A: It's not dumb at all. It is a very common question - unfortunately. See, your diaphragm has been working since they day you were born. It is working when you sleep, and with every breath. It is so amazing that so many people have been led to believe that they have to learn how to use the diaphragm in order to sing. And many think they are doing something wrong with their diaphragm because they don't sound as good as they would like to. If you can breathe, your diaphragm is working fine (I'm not saying their isn't room for improvement of all bodily functions). I hope you have read "The New Era of Singing Training"