Thoughts from Vocal Process
Following on from my previous article on using the Slide, the Swing and the Hiccups in opera aria coaching, my client has brought Porgi Amor, from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. It’s a tricky aria at the best of times – it's the first thing the Countess sings and it’s very slow and sustained. Add to that [...]
Those of you who know my work and the usual technical or musical precision of my instructions will perhaps raise an eyebrow at me using imagery in my singing coaching sessions. But today I was working with a new client and this fun session produced the swimming pool slide, the swing and the hiccups. The background [...]
I was checking our archives today and rediscovered a great resource on musicals Gillyanne and I put together almost 16 years ago. Back in 2003 we were invited by Rhinegold Publishing to write a substantial piece for teenagers studying musicals in the UK. It's over 6,000 words long, so I thought over the next few weeks [...]
My name is Jeremy and I'm a teacher / performer Sharing knowledge and co-creating comes very naturally to me. I am by nature and by nurture a co-creator. I started accompanying other musicians at quite an early age and trained as a collaborative pianist, winning a national prize performing with (now Sir) Simon Keenlyside. I've worked [...]
Hello, Jeremy here. I wish I could answer the title question with a simple sentence. But since a coaching session includes vocal technique, performance coaching, intuition and diagnosis geared towards each individual person, that's a little tricky! And if it's not possible for me to describe a coaching session, what would possess anyone to book one for [...]
How do you find a 16-bar singing audition performable unit? The 16-bar audition is a newish feature of life as an actor/singer/dancer in the West End. It’s a way for the casting panel to see new people but without taking the time to hear whole songs. The point for the actor is to show a very [...]
I've been working with a lot of singing teachers in the past few months. They teach in as many genres as you can name. Most have a performing background. A few have performed exclusively in CCM genres, most have had some classical training and/or performed as classical singers. On our recent Singing Teacher Training in Australia, [...]
Giving Feedback You have the Form of your lesson planned, you’re Focusing on your student in exercises and in songs, you’re analysing what energetic state they are in today, but your lesson will still not be great unless you perfect the art of Feedback. Feedback is... Feedback is the life energy of the lesson. And feedback [...]
Interpreting stroboscopy - what you see isn't always the truth. How do you translate what you see as a singing teacher or vocal coach? A World Voice Day special Singing and speaking are the manifestations of sound - as a listener, we don't have to see what's happening to understand the sounds. After all, it's possible [...]
I've been thinking about music and what it is, how it's written and how we perform it. I first showed the following sequence in a workshop at Chichester University in 2018. Let me know what you think! What do you see? The image above contains a number of white dots. There is very little meaning in [...]
