Dances With Coaches pt 2: Choosing A Coach

Lets take a moment to talk about how to choose the voice coach thats right for you shall we?
A lot of times we hear that a coach has done wonders for someone's voice, or has an excellent reputation and so we eagerly sign up for sessions with that coach hoping that miracles will occur for us, sometimes without really looking into how the coach works or what their actual experience is.
For example classical coaches often have no experience with other forms of music or voice production and sometimes actively discourage ways of producing sound that are outside the specifics of classical technique. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you are looking to work in classical music of course, HOWEVER, sometimes a singer is working with a classical coach from a very early age and later discovers an interest in pop songwriting or musical theatre and is actively discouraged from "ruining their voices" with other styles. Yes. Happens ALL the time.
Likewise, a coach who works as a Musical Theatre coach will understand how to prepare us for auditions, support our working up repertoire and a specific style of performance skills, but could be ill- suited to helping us work with jazz or pop material.

Jazz and Pop coaches tend to be attractive and powerful personalities,"self taught" in some instances, and although potentially very useful in the short run for helping us understand ourselves as artists, sometimes their lack of technical understanding shows up in our lack of foundation as we move out into our careers and stumble on our own bad habits.
ALSO
Not all coaches have YOUR best interests at heart!

Many coaches may have a decent skill set but are in fact frustrated singers, demanding of your respect and obedience without offering a respectful and supportive environment for you to grow in. You'll know it because you will feel like you are never "good enough", and you're working to "please the teacher" rather than understanding the technique for yourself and growing into a "self coaching" professional singer!

SO…Not all coaches are good for all things. I always suggest a singer INTERVIEW THE POTENTIAL COACH FIRST in person or on the phone. Most pro coaches will have a short "meet and greet" moment with a perspective client. Take advantage of that and ask as many questions as you can about their background and experience, client base and working methods!

A quick interview will help you determine if the relationship will feel good to you and allow you to be supported while you grow!
Find out how they trained, who they coach, how they work and what their expectations are before diving in and becoming either financially or emotionally committed!

Dances with Coaches part 1

This weeks "Basics of Singing"clip #7 is about the "trill" or the rolled "R". This simple exercise isn't easy for everybody, but it's the fastest route to increasing head resonance. In fact it's been a common exercise covered by every single coach I have ever worked with as a singer.
Lois Pearson, who was an excellent first voice coach to have, taught me the basics of breathing and how to vocalize safely after I lost my voice touring my rock n roll band as a teenager. Although we sang Frank Sinatra songs in class which was awkward for me at the time, her knowledge of how to coach breathing technique is something I still use in my work today.
The trill was part of how she started me vocalizing without pushing and squeezing on my chords to produce sound. Loy Coutts with whom I studied voice for stage used the Linkletter approach which also utilized the trill to bring the skull resonance into focus.
Jose Hernandez, (who now coaching the Canadian Opera Company), was coaching singers I respected like Jane Siberry and I could hear the changes in their sound, so while I was performing regularly with my band on Queen Street I would visit his studio and learn the deeper and more powerful breathing techniques of Classical singers. Jose's work with me helped broaden my range and allowed for a kind of comfort and ease, he used the trill along with other exercises to create a more resonant sound.
It was when I joined the Nylons that my need for a coach became essential. Producer arranger Peter Mann helped me focus my Baritone voice but the arrangements also asked me to reach up (dependably!) into falsetto and occasionally down into the bass range, (something I never really mastered truth be told). Bill Vincent had been helping Nylons frontman Marc Conners achieve a vocal freedom and precision that I was very impressed by. Bill was a taskmaster who demanded a rigorous attention to detail and a deep focus. Under his tutelage I gained a freedom and ease that allowed me access to ALL of my range night after night as we toured and played concerts around the world. His extensive warm-up exercises set my technique for life…..and relied heavily on the trill!
When I worked with Seth Riggs while in California, (he basically checked the technique I had learned with Bill), his "speech level singing" approach used "less energy for larger results", perfect for his high level clients whose demanding schedules ask them to be in good shape vocally at all times. And trilling was one of the arsenal of techniques Seth used with Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.

Next week: Dances With Coaches part two: Choosing A Coach

NOTES FROM THE PLAYGROUND: Stage Fright (part one)

After almost 3 decades of coaching singers of all kinds I still find stage fright to be the single most challenging problem we face as performers.

The physical manifestations of stage fright, shortness of breath, shakiness in the limbs, uncontrollable pitch and a kind of sudden brain drain,(which can include an inability to remember lyrics), can steal our confidence and fill us full of dread about upcoming gigs and their becoming a potential disaster.

While instrumentalists use a separate instrument from themselves to make music, we singers use our actual bodies to create the sound so if the physical manifestations of fear and anxiety associated with stage fright are present then we can't control our bodies and all confidence that we can do a good job flies out the window. Horrible indeed.

But singers need to sing and music is meant to be shared and in my experience as both a coach and a performer even debilitating stage fright can be possible over time. In fact I started my career with a pretty acute case of stage fright,(born of a lack of belief in my abilities), and have ended up a relaxed and confident performer.

When I am coaching the Singers Playground Performance Workshops it's easy to spot the manifestations and work towards solutions that will lesson them. The key is to solving stage fright is to identify what the anxiety and fear is about. Usually it's simply an artist worrying about doing a good job. In most cases Stage Fright is a result of our perfectionist selves seeking to do the very best we can.

Artists seek to shape and mold, exercising a kind of control over our craft in order to create the desired results. This in itself is not a bad thing.

The challenge for us singers is that performing live is the least controllable of all singing situations. The jam at a party, the band rehearsal, even the recording studio are all situations where we can adjust details as we go to create the optimum support for our ears and our voices.

But performing live we have almost no control over the circumstances, usually jumping into a quick soundcheck exhausted from promoting the engagement, unfamiliar with the venue, working with a sound man that doesn't know our sound, using monitors that make us sound different from what we are used to, singing with a band that may be unrehearsed etc.

We end up feeling rushed and unsure, hyper aware of our perceived mistakes and unable to gage what the audience is actually experiencing.

No wonder we feel out of control and unable to do anything near our best in live performance!

I have found the single most important way to counteract perfectionism

and the ensuing anxiety is to use a vocal and physical warm up that is calming at a core level and allows us to get comfortable with the idea of just "doing our best" and letting go of trying to achieve the "perfect" performance.

For my clients this always starts and ends with the breath. The breath is the first place that stage fright shows itself with shallow breathing or a frozen diaphragm which leaves us unable to create the sound we know how to create.

Taking the time to breath through a warm up will help remind us to breath during the show and plant the idea that we will do the best we can under the circumstances, while acknowledging that the circumstances are indeed beyond our control.

The best rescue for a song going wrong is a big deep breath. Your brain has a chance to function, your pitch will start to correct and suddenly you will be able to hold notes again. Yahoo!!