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In our syllabus, I give a very basic overview of what we are trying to achieve with training a voice. The third step can be loosely described as clustering vowels. What follows is a brief preamble to outline this process in the context of voice, to lead you in to a very helpful video on understanding this from a brilliant video producer called Tom Scott.

What does ‘clustering vowels’ involve?

Broadly speaking, what we are trying to do is shade each vowel that we need to sing to be more similar than different. Each vowel still needs to be intelligible as recognisable as itself, but most of the time people sing vowels in a way where each is excessively divergent/different from one another. This results in overall inefficiency in singing, makes singing more difficult, and also restricts the level of smoothness one can rise to in their singing. Continue reading “Clustering Vowels: When singing feels almost TOO easy”

In a recent article I mentioned how the pandemic has screwed up a lot of people’s routines and schedules, especially in relation to voice and music. For others it has introduced the space to build a vocal practice routine. Yet for many people in the modern world, carving out and sticking to a regular routine in anything doesn’t come naturally.

The writer James Clear talks about how building a new habit into your life can take anywhere from 18 days to 254 days to establish. It takes time, and building sustainable habit is the key to this.

Today, I wanted to talk about the easiest way I’ve found to build a practice routine for yourself, why it’s important, and the mindset involved. Continue reading “Building a vocal practice routine”

I send out a weekly email to my readers every week on a Sunday. I send out a freshly written or appropriately updated and relevant piece for that week (you can sign-up and get a copy of my prospectus via the sign-up box on this page).

At the end of each year this means I’ve sent out around 52 articles. From how much certain articles are clicked on, I can see which articles are the most relevant and helpful for people. In this article, I wanted to provide a link to THE most read articles of 2020. Continue reading “The Most Read Articles of 2020”

I was chatting to some older singers recently, who were struggling with their voices. I mentioned this is fairly typical for untrained voices, and these were the varying responses…

“What exactly happens to your voice as you get older?

I used to be able to sing pretty high with a strong voice when I was younger…

But now, it feels like I sing much lower, maybe an octave lower, and it’s much weaker than I remember.”

This is actually a fairly accurate (albeit abridged) experience of what happens to voices that do not receive help as they age. As they asked, I explained what happens and why, and I thought it was worth discussing that here. Whether you are in your teens, over sixty, or somewhere in between, it is really helpful to know how the voice changes as we age, and what tends to happen along the way. Continue reading “The Journey of a Voice: What Happens In Each Decade”

All my clients are singers, and a large number are professional/professionally-minded musicians and artists. For various reasons, the kind of client that works with me tends to be at the higher end of the self-development mindset. This means that whatever they do, they tend to take it seriously and work hard at the things they do, to whatever extent they can.

Discipline vs Motivation

Something that often comes up with clients is the topic of discipline and/or motivation. This is true when there is often a lack of a specific musical outlet, or just when people have been doing the same thing for a long time. While I love my job and every day is different, I am at the same coal-face every day. As such, discipline is essential when it comes to working on my voice and continuing my own development.

To some extent, when external factors aren’t motivating us emotionally, this often highlights the difference between those who are highly disciplined irrespective of external circumstance, and those who are highly motivated primarily because of external circumstance. Continue reading “Discipline vs Motivation: The Power of Sustainable Habit”

If any of you have studied anything to a high level, you’ll know just how deceptively complex almost any given subject can be. This seems self-evident for subjects like quantum physics, philosophy, economics, brain surgery, microcomputers, etc. Even their subject titles require some explanation to most lay-people, and almost every word used within that subject requires deep understanding and definitions to put everything together.

The Learning Paradigm

With such subjects, we enter into a mental paradigm where we accept that complete knowledge of all elements is not possible. This paradigm directs helps us appreciate the vastness and nuance of the subject, and directs our learning. It also typically keeps us humble and always open to further insight.

Viewing subjects in this way usually helps us see the multi-faceted nature of such subjects, and not to assume anything. This further helps us to grasp that we need to study from experts, undergo apprenticeships, and spend many years in training to acquire requisite skills to get our understanding right.

One key thing to note: in such subjects we accept that often what may initially seem like an obvious and sensible question to ask, may in fact reveal a thought process that shows one does not (and sometimes cannot!) fully grasp the nuances of the subject at hand. Continue reading “Why certain singing questions SEEM important, but aren’t”