Clean The House

It looks okay on the outside.

Is it ready to move into?

Let’s take a look inside.

New Student or Client:

Looks okay on the outside.

They sing and you know what is inside.

Baggage, garbage, and worse, alongside with talent and musicianship and an artist are inside.

What do we do?

Research And Discovery – R & D

  • There are layers of good training and bad training.
  • There are layers of useful pedagogy, worthless pedagogy, and harmful pedagogy.
  • There are facts.
  • There are myths.
  • There are good habits.
  • There are bad habits.
  • There is natural musicianship.
  • There is learned musicianship.
  • There is bad musicianship.
  • There is good vocal technique.
  • There is bad vocal technique.

If a vocal coach truly knows what they are doing, the clues are evidence of all the above.

If the student expresses what they want to improve, this also gives clues.

Cleaning House

There are myths and misinformation in many of the arts and it exists because it usually doesn’t cause fatalities.

In engineering and architecture, mistakes can be fatal. Bridges collapse. Buildings cave in. Forces of nature quickly destroy that which was not engineered for worst case scenarios.

Engineering can prevent destruction.

Tried, true, and proven vocal technique will advance a singer safely.

Bad vocal technique can and has killed careers.

As a vocal coach, you must discover what needs to be taken to the dumpster and what is working well.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but if it is, you must know how to fix it.

Clean house.

Layers

There are layers of musicianship.

Differentiation, perception, and identification of pitch are improved incrementally.

Half steps can be tricky to sing in tune. Can you sing a chromatic scale and land on the top note in tune?

Do you hear the difference between major and minor in a chord? In its inversions? In various voicings?

Can you hear and identify extensions and altered chords? C13 with a flat fifth, for instance-can you sing the tones in it? Can you identify it when your hear it played? Your musicianship would be strong, if you could.

Should we be stronger or weaker as singers?

You cannot sing perfectly in tune when your grasp of melodic and harmonic intervals is faulty.

Being able to sing all scales and modes accurately will boost musicianship greatly and will benefit intonation.

You must strip off the bad layers and build the good layers.

There are layers of abilities with style, phasing, rhythm, dynamics, vocal technique, articulation, breath management and more.

“Accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative.”

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