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We Want You To Sing!

17 Nov
Rebeca Randle, the Singing Lesson Expert

Singing Lesson Expert

We want you to sing. That’s why we called this The Singing Blog. The writers of this blog have an incredible number of years in music education and they know a tremendous amount about learning to sing. This blog will be constantly updated with posts about everything to do with singing, from finding a great teacher, to dietary do’s and don’ts, to exercises and drills to help develop technique, and so much more. We are excited to bring you the wealth of our knowledge about the process of singing and how best to train to be a great singer, both technically and emotionally. There’s a joyous world of singing out there, from professional performance, to karaoke, to singing in the shower or the car, and we want you to enjoy it.

Become a regular visitor and we promise to bring major points to your attention that will help your singing, improve your understanding of the art, or just know more and have more fun.

If you’re looking for a great voice teacher, you can begin with the Singing Lesson Expert.

 
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Singing Lessons- The Fairy Godmother Syndrome

08 Nov

Singing lessons are the best way to improve your singing, hands down. And you would think that if someone was paying their hard earned money to be trained in all the philosophies, techniques, exercises, and skills that would make them a better singer, they would do the work necessary to get great results. However, what we notice over and over again is that many students sit back and do next to nothing. Yes, they attend their lessons, but they don’t practice on a regular basis. It’s as if they believe that all they have to do is show up for their lesson and they will be magically transformed into a great singer. As if their own personal Fairy Godmother was going to wave her magic wand and produce some amazing results. Or even worse, that their voice teacher is this fairy godmother and, wand in hand will turn the student into a powerful and talented singer.

Singing Lesson Expert, Rebeca RandleIt is more than clear that if you don’t know how to do something very well, given a basic amount of talent to start with, the way to improve is to learn everything you can about how to do what you want to do. This makes perfect sense and is completely true when it comes to singing. Students seem to accept that they have a lack of knowledge and bodily control and that’s the reason they came to take lessons in the first place. So what is it that makes them not practice?

Are they too busy? We are all busy. It seems like we are all attempting to cram two or three lives into one; fitting fifty hours into a day. When you take lessons, it’s important to not just allocate the hour or half hour per week for the lesson, but to schedule a block of practice time each day while you’re studying. Are they too lazy? Well, they were motivated enough to sign up for weekly lessons, so it’s hard to imagine that laziness is the true reason. Are they afraid? Maybe we’re on to something here. But which demon is it that they’re afraid of, failure or success? I know when we’re dealing with fear, the student is in an emotional state and rational thinking kind of goes out the window. Yet if we examine the failure side of the equation, not practicing creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. If the student is beginning with a lack of knowledge, technique, and control, and as a result seeks out voice lessons and finds a highly qualified and gifted voice teacher, then to fail to practice insures that they don’t internalize the expertise and are destined to fail. Who would logically follow that path? Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing- Make The Song Your Own

12 Feb

Singing is all about presentation. Be the character. Tell the story. If I tell you to make the song your own, what does that even mean? First of all, what is the song. What’s its energy? What does it have to say for itself? Is it more about the tune, the words, or the rhythm? Or do all the components play their own part? An even better question is who the heck are you? Do you have a style? Do you stand for something? Is there a story you need to tell?

Singing Lesson Expert, Performance Coach

The happiest of marriages between singer and song is when essence matches essence. That’s pretty easy to do when you are the songwriter, but that’s for another article. For right now, let’s just say there’s a song you’ve always wanted to sing. Why? Obviously you’ve heard it. Did you love how that singer sang the song? Was it all in their presentation or did aspects of the song leak out all through the performance. Sometimes a song just captures us because of what it is, regardless of any performance of it. It has essence, or personality to use a different concept. Yes, a top level singer can create a rendition of a song that takes your breath away, but that is their interpretation. That interpretation is not the song, only an artist’s version of it. You would never want to simply duplicate an existing rendition. There is no reason for it. The song has already been sung and recorded that way. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing- Your Dream vs. Your Self-Talk

02 Feb

Singing can be a perilous experience. You have hopes and dreams. You invest your heart in some amazing fantasies. There are icons out there who you idolize. You’ve seen them in concert, listened to their Cds, watched them on TV, heard them interviewed, and you want to be just like them. Can you do what it takes to get there?

Each and every artist who you idolize did not get there overnight. Just the making of their CD took a year or more and it probably wasn’t their first recording. They’ve had coaching, very specific training, and usually a group of individuals helping to lead them to that successful location where you and millions of others noticed them. They have worked hard to reach that height and it usually hasn’t come easy. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing Lessons- Lead Singing vs. Background Singing

11 Jan

When you take singing lessons, you want to become the best all-around singer that you possibly can. You have no idea in advance of all the opportunities that could present themselves to you. That is why it is so important to find a voice teacher who has gotten the complete download. Because there is a massive shift in techniques that you would use depending on the function you are attempting to fulfill. If your teacher is too one-dimensional in their approach, you will miss out on some great stuff that would have kept you in constant demand in the music community where you perform.

The dream is to be the star, the focal point, the “it” factor. And toward that end, singers are working tirelessly to get an edge. Something unique, something quirky, something that will make them stand out. They play with their voices, developing affected sounds, asking the world to “look at me,” all the while weakening their true talent for actually singing. I would never deny the singer their shot at the attention that they crave; however, I want to tell the other side of the story. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing Lessons- Is Cost All That Matters?

05 Jan

When considering taking singing lessons, you’ve got to consider your goals. What do you want to get out of your lessons? Are you just playing around and any slight progress you make will be OK? Or do you really want to test the water and see how good you can be? A big part of the equation is the natural talent that you bring to the table; I won’t deny that. If you believe that you have great ability, you’re going to want to attract a great coach. However, you can’t be sure where you stand with regards to your natural ability without a professional evaluation of your voice. Just like the old body building stories of the 98 lb. weakling who turned himself into a chiseled he-man, amazing things can happen when you put your mind, heart and soul into it. There are countless stories in the world of athletics of late bloomers who initially didn’t set the world on fire. Michael Jordan comes to mind along with countless others. What does that have to do with singing, you ask? Well, singing really is a quasi-athletic endeavor. You are learning how to master very specific muscles in your body and you deserve the best possible trainer for that task, no matter what your objectives are.

The tragedy that I see is that when students are shopping for voice teachers, the number one criterion on their list is price. That is an ill-conceived strategy. Voice lessons are a bit of a buyer-beware industry. I don’t mean to scare you, but there is no regulation out there regarding teacher quality or training. Anyone who wants to put out their shingle can say they are a voice teacher and it’s up to you to sift through the lot and separate the wheat from the chaff. Please hear this clearly. The best teachers are not the cheapest. It doesn’t work that way with any other product so why would it work that way with singing lessons? You get what you pay for. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing Lessons- Understanding Acting Improves Your Performance

31 Dec

Singing lessons can be quite complex due to the number of elements that must be mastered in order to become a high level performer in your own right. Expert singing teachers not only train your physiology and work out your voice’s musculature, but they help you select your repertoire and lead you through the process of interpreting the songs you choose to the highest degree. It’s all about delivering the goods and those goods are the emotional essence of the lyric and the story behind the song, its subtext.

Rebeca Randle in performance

Most singers, whether they be pop, rock, folk, musical theatre, or fill in the blank style performers, are not the songwriters for the songs they perform. Therefore, they are in the interpretation business. What does the writer mean by what he/she wrote? What does the song communicate? What moods are expressed through the singing of the song? And even deeper, what about who I am makes this song resonate with me? What connection can I make with the writer, the subject, the awakened feelings, and my own inner vision of what the song is about in order to make the hearing of the song meaningful for all my listeners? This goes for both live performances and recordings. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing Lessons- a Focus on Body awareness

27 Dec

Singing lessons with a master voice teacher include so much more than just the techniques to create a good vocal tone. It is important to become completely aware of the fact that the instrument you are playing (singing through) is your own body. Therefore, a predominantly unspoken and under appreciated aspect of singing lessons in all forms of vocal instruction, is care and maintenance of the physical body. Once that door has been opened and the process of body awareness has begun, there are a massive number of quality points and tips that can aid you in becoming a better singer.

Singing Lesson Expert, a pastoral performance

At the forefront of your new body awareness is adequate hydration. Drinking enough water is incredibly important for the body on so many levels. Water helps function in the body chemistry to create energy. It is one of the most important body lubricants. Holistic health practitioners suggest drinking roughly half your body weight in ounces of water. In other words, if you weigh 120 lbs., you need to drink 60 oz. of water. I know very few people who drink enough water and in addition to that, wet drinks are not only not water, but also often increase our need for water. Coffee and tea are diuretics and every ounce of diuretic you drink subtracts an ounce of water from your storehouse, so for every eight ounces of coffee or tea you drink, you need an additional 8 ounces of water to offset it. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing Lessons- The Anatomy of a Great Lesson

22 Dec

For singing lessons to be as effective as possible, they must have three very strong components to their design. Those three components are concept, exercises, and implementation. If your teacher is not delivering all three, you are being short-changed and you might want to consider finding a better voice teacher, one who could be considered a master teacher.

Singing Lesson Expert, Rebeca Randle

The first of the important design components is concept. A great voice teacher designs your singing lessons in such a way as to know exactly where they are taking you and the exact best way to get there. It is so important for the voice teacher to communicate the design and scope of their lesson program to their student. Everyone should understand that it is critical for students to practice to get maximum benefit from their singing lessons and the way for them to choose to practice the most is for them to have total buy-in as to the reasons for each element that they are asked to practice. A student who is excited about what each aspect of their curriculum is designed to help them achieve will work harder on their assigned tasks and will improve at a much more rapid rate. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Purchasing Voice Lessons- How To Get The Most Value For Your Money

17 Dec

A great voice teacher is worth their weight in gold. The best teachers have years of training, not only about what makes the voice work and the steps to go through to work your own voice into singing condition and heighten your awareness about how to use it, but even more importantly, how to assess where you are at this very moment and the exact, correct steps to take from where you are to get to where you want to go. There is a large gap between voice teachers who simply hang up their “shingle” because they can sing and they suppose they can probably tell you what to do to sing yourself, and the well- schooled, lifelong teachers who really know what they’re doing and who won’t teach you to push and other ill-advised strategies that are ultimately damaging to the voice.

The challenge here is that most of the best voice instructors are remarkable voice teachers and are not usually good entrepreneurs, lacking the knowledge or desire to market their services and get out there to the world. Over the last five to ten years has come the advent of some opportunistic marketing companies who, as music lesson companies, “handle” all of the administration of coordinating teachers with students. Don’t misunderstand stand me here. Overall, that is a much-needed service. Students are desperate to find a good teacher and teachers are hungry to find students that they can teach. Unfortunately, in these arrangements, only about 25% of the student fees actually get to the person doing the teaching. So for those of you looking for an extraordinary teacher, I ask you to consider the following. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Singing Lessons Are The Surest Way To Learn To Sing Better

14 Dec

First of all, we need to explode the biggest myth out there regarding singing, and that is that singers are born and not made. While it is true that there are a variety of physiological gifts that may give one person an advantage singing over another, never underestimate the importance of hard work and training. You would be surprised to learn how many of your favorite professional vocalists have had substantial lessons, coaching, and training. If you will allow a sports analogy, every athlete is born with varying degrees of talent in their chosen area. Yet, it’s not always the most naturally gifted athlete who has the most success. At the professional, Olympic, collegiate, or other serious levels of competition, everyone has at least one coach, and often several. Yes, Michael Jordan had a coach, and every other major star you can name did as well.

If you watch shows like Dancing With The Stars, there is an amazing transformation that takes place from the beginning of the series where virtually no one has highly developed skills, until the end where, after weeks of diligent training under the tutelage of expert teachers and choreographers, a polished dancer emerges.

The same thing is available to those looking to become singers at any level. Whether you want to just be a better shower singer, rock your friends on Karaoke night, or break into the business as a professional singer, there are definite steps to take and the first one is to take singing lessons, voice lessons, vocal lessons, or whatever you choose to call them. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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