Here are some things to think about before calling me to set up a consultation:

1.    Can you commit to a regular schedule of lessons?  This is different for each person–anywhere from once a week, to twice a month to monthly.

2.  Can you make time with everything you have going on to practice for a lesson?  This usually means anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours per week., depending on if you are an amateur or young professional singer.  Please keep in mind that there are many things we do in a lesson that you can think about incognito as you go through your day.

3.   Are you willing to understand that what looks possible on paper, is not always possible in real life because of traffic, illness, work-related issues that come up, family things, grocery shopping, laundry to do, etc?   For example, if you work from 9-5, and schedule a lesson for 6, that is not realistic or in your best interests.  You need dinner, you need to switch gears, you need to allow for traffic, etc.

4.   If you smoke, please do not call me for a lesson.  

5.   Realistically, private voice lessons with an excellent teacher are probably more expensive than you thought they’d be.   We are often more experienced, trained, and joyful in the continuation of our own education than most medical doctors are in their fields.   Therefore, be advised that you will be paying as much for voice lessons as you would with a private trainer or sometimes, psychologist.   If this is not an option, ask for a referel to another teacher who is starting out or consider taking a voice class or singing in one of the Washington area’s many excellent choirs.

6.   If private voice lessons are not important to you right now, you can always ask me questions by email and I will do my best to answer you.   Studying singing should increase your energy and capacity for joy.  Lessons should enable you to  shine as an individual as well contribute to the larger world.   While the vehicle for doing this in my studio is most often technical study, it is always with an eye toward better music-making.

And on that note, I’ll stop writing and hope to hear from you!

During the summer of 2008, I began reading and working through Julie Cameron’s book, “The Artist’s Way.”   It is a book for everyone, a way to connect into the Spirit of Creativity which lives in all of us.   It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher, a short-order cook,  a corporate executive or a housewife, the same Creative Spirit flows through all of us.

Ironically, I am a career musician and teacher, two jobs one would assume are creative.   But I had long run out of steam, mostly thinking that creativity was of my own doing, rather than really understanding what it means to be a channel for a never ending Source.  I think that those of us with college degrees in the arts are especially prone to this misunderstanding!   And, of course, I had absorbed the lessons of my generation, which were:  as a woman, you could do everything and do everything well and at once–Career, marraige, children, house, family and community.

What a bunch of bull-dink.  No wonder I hit fifty and completely ran out of steam….

Working through the book I began to release my heavily guarded and restricted Creative Impulses and renew my relationship with the Spirit within.  Some call this the Sense of Self.  Recovering the joy of creating, of becoming child-like in exploring life, takes work for someone like me.  I am always so serious.  But once I seriously gave myself permission to play, (!) writing, singing, teaching, playing the piano, composing music, tending my family, cooking, exercising, listening to my husband–all things rejuvinated. 

It is the artist’s way.

The judges are an ecclectic group of artist-teacher-producers with a wide variety of experiences and skills. Our job is to pick the winners based purely on artistic merit and not on how well the applicants manage to do in spite of their disability. The six of us sit in a room with about 100 audio CD’s and DVD’s, listen to parts of all them, jot down comments, and come to an agreement. The winners each receive $5,000.00 plus an all expenses paid trip to perform at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here in Washington, DC in a winners’ concert. (This year’s winners’ concert takes place in the Kennedy Center Family Theater on April 28, 2009.) There are all levels of accomplishment, and the artists’ disabilites range from minimal to severe. The bottom line always is, who are the best musicians and how would they stack up next to any musician of any genre competing at the national and international levels.

One of last year’s national winners is a finalist in the current season of American Idol. Another is pursuing graduate studies at Manhattan School of Music while maintaining a busy concert schedule. Sometimes events take unexpected turns, such as the Senegalese Hip- Hop group that illegally immigrated after winning and coming to the States–they completely disappeared after the Kennedy Center winners’ concert, having cashed in their return plane tickets. (This year there were four more Senegalese Hip-Hop groups that did not make it past the first round…)

The CD’s and DVD’s are mostly inspiring, and it is rare that we are bummed out by what we hear and see, even if the music-making is not of a competitive level or the disability is heart-wrenching. Perhaps it is because we recognize that everyone has “won” in several ways, both by our opportunity to even out the score for those who are struggling against severe odds and in society’s recognizing that Depression, Krohn’s Disease, and severe psoriasis are debilitating conditions that do disable.

A generation ago there was little help for these illnesses, and few opportunities for the disabled to publically express themselves and/or feel like contributing members of society. Each generation has seen improvement since the days when we locked our disabled in institutions and forgot about them, or lost patience with people who had chronic illness or told them that it was “all in their heads.”

To tell the truth, I think I was the real winner. I went through a long, dry spell where I forgot that music-making is a response to what is in our hearts and imaginations. In listening to these VSA recordings, I was reminded of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s poem:

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

We know that breath management is dependent on the coordination of the body with what happens at the level of the vocal folds, vocal tract and articulators.  They are all dependent on one another even though we sometimes work things seperately.

But instead of working this coordination,  I suddenly decided to veer in another direction and have the student listen to some great French organ works of Cesar Franck, who lived about the time of Gabriel Faure.    Some of my students know  that I grew up as the daughter of a fulltime church musician, but rarely do I reveal the Pipe Organ Geek that lives in my soul.   My crib was behind the wall of the organ in the first church my dad served, I grew up weekly, if not daily, hearing the King of Instruments,  attended high school summer choir camps, studied organ in college and one of my brothers earned a Masters Degree in organ performance. 

So in a flash I knew that if this student could hear the French reed organ pipe sounds that were developed during the Romantic era in Western Europe, played on a good pipe organ, she might be able to develop an inner compass to execute the lines of the Faure that she wanted to sing.   And by developing that part of her ear, she could take what she already knew technically and start to apply it without my “interference.” 

During the Romantic period, French organ builders introduced a type of windchest which was able to control higher wind pressures.  The new sounds could imitate the woodwind instruments of the bassoon, oboe and flute.   So between the new mechanical action of the organ, and the new woodwind sounds, the organ could produce lovely legato “singing.”

The student, who is very talented anyway, instantly “got” the connection of Cesar Franck’s  “Prelude, Fugue and Variation” to the vocal line of the “Pie Jesu.”   She and I were both amazed at what an instant difference it made in her singing.

And I was humbled at how my shutting up enabled the student to learn more!!!!

It made me think of a recent Time Magazine article called “Singer’s Little Helper,” which was about the use of “Auto-Tune” in the recording industry.  Auto-tune is a computer program used to make pop vocals sound perfect (or imperfect! as the case may be) and is now standard practice, and has been for awhile.  This is nothing new, but it seems to be catching the general public by surprise and has caused much tongue-clucking among many singers and voice teachers.  The magazine article also stated that one concern in the industry is that singers are getting lazy and not doing their homework.  “Perfect” singing is manipulated in recordings just like Ideal Bodies and Faces can be achieved by air brushing and computer-imaging.  It is the illusion that SELLS.  And let’s face it, where would we be without Illusion and Fantasy.   But as my brother, Jim, a recording producer in Nashville, has said to me over and over, “I can tune-up a singer and put great instrumentalists and arrangements behind them, but I CAN NOT MAKE THE SONG SING.  That is up to the singer.”

What I want to discern as a teacher of singing is how Auto-Tune may influence my work with students in all styles of music, both in and out of the recording studio.  We can’t underestimate how these recordings shape our self-concept and therefore, self-worth, unless we also look at the way the Beauty myth affects both men and women in this culture.  The roots are deep and insidious:  We understand on an intellectual level what the issues are, but at the feeling level we are constantly judging ourselves against these so-called “perfect’ products and coming up short.  It is either that or the seemingly effortless sound of a good recording deludes a singer into thinking little effort is required and they can produce the same product.  Especially with their families and friends telling them that they sound as good as the recording!

Please bear in mind that I am not judging the merit of Auto-Tune–it’s use, and other effects, including reverb, adjusting wet-dry mix, etc., actually turn recording into a whole other art form FROM live performance.  There will be some who read this who wonder why I state the obvious, but there are many voice teachers and singers who don’t understand this distinction.   I am also not talking about the individual emotional experience of listening to our favorite recordings.  What I am talking about is that what we listen to often needs to be distinguished from live performance in the same way that the models in the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Issue be differentiated from the real, in-flesh person you have chosen to be close with–friend, spouse, lover.  Illusion and Reality each have their place.  It can be amazing when they do come together and I think THAT is what artists are called to do.

In Part II of “Live vs. Auto Tune…” I will share some observations of how computer-generated Perfect Recordings affect some of the singers with whom I work.

1.  If a singer was born after 1980, chances are good that they have grown up spending more time listening to technologically-enhanced recordings and watching polished music videos that actually singing.

This means that often their whole singing concept has been shaped by listening to and imitating Perfect Recordings rather than the unparalleled experience of actually daily singing and being part of live music–making as a participant or listener.  Almost always, the singers have little physical connection to their singing, although their hearts are in it

2.  The Perfect Recording syndrome affects classical singers, too.  Before personal recording devices became common, you listened to great singers to become inspired, for emotional release, to develop a tonal ideal and learn repertoire.  Now singers regularly listen to their voices recorded on devices that were never meant to capture the complete acoustics of singing–think old audio cassette recorders, digital cameras and simple computer mikes and this aural feedback becomes part of a singer’s vocal identity.  These are often the singers who have lost the simple joy of singing

3.  An equal challenge is the singer who hears herself as if she is the Perfect Recording.  Anyone can record themselves and put it on the Internet.  I can not tell you the number of singers I have tried to listen to on MySpace Music or YouTube where the singing was dismal.  They are the singers who expect that their producers and sound engineers can fix anything and everything.  (See Jim Frazier’s quote in the first post.)  They are often the ones who hear from their boyfriend, Senator Whoever, ‘wow you are as good as the recording!’  And they are the ones who are surprised to find out that turning talent into a craft takes effort

These are just some of the things I’ve observed about how the evolution of the recording industry has effected people’s concepts of live singing.   We just have to remember that they are two different art forms, and that what we listen to affects our whole being.