I had a great idea for a newsletter this week. It came to me right while I was editing videos and I thought, 'that's so good, there's no way that I'll forget it.'

Don't worry, I'm not going to bury the lead here. I totally forgot it.

Now, if this was the first time that this happened to me, one mi...

I've been thinking about this for some days, and struggling a bit to decipher the words from the sentiment. It's easy to fall back on clichés when talking about this. Since I've mentioned that though, here's one of my favorites:

If you're not falling, you're not trying hard enough.

A little contex...

This is another popular cliché, and I admit, I'm not fond of this one either, but what if we thought of it as lifetime learning? Does that make it any better?

The hard part of this, in my opinion, is two-fold. One more insidious than the other.

The first is humility. No matter how far along the jo...

The simplest of ideas can be the most profound.

If something isn't working, choose again.

Still singing out of tune?

Then choose again how you approach your appoggio breath management. Choose again how you listen to and evaluate your vowel alignment. Choose again how you have practiced your ear t...

I have never been a fan of that saying. It reeks of dishonesty or of being disingenuous; not traits that I wish to embody. Yet it frequently is deployed when discussing how to manage stage fright.

Okay, what about:

Mood follows action

That, I would submit, is what 'Fake it 'til you make it' reall...

I hadn't come across this concept before in all the years that I've studied music and worked with performance anxiety. It really hit me like a ton of bricks (in a good way, of course) and really helped me to understand a lot of what I had done in the past, albeit unconsciously.

In the pursuit of yo...

Most of us have probably heard that we have to practice music every day. This is because the skillset is developed over time, and the muscle control involved in it needs accurate repetition in order to be second nature.

I would also like to posit that there is another reason, and it relates to why ...

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The internal experience of upper register singing, in cricothyroid dominant singing voice, or in the middle register for sopranos and mezzos, sometimes referred to as 'mixing head and chest voice' or 'mix voice' (though I feel that those phrases are misleading) can often sound very different to us i...

When we work on songs, it's easy to get overwhelmed without realizing that we're getting overwhelmed. Even the simplest of tunes is far more complex than the scales that we sing in our vocalizations. In order to have our vocalizations help our songs the most, we do well to create vocal exercises out...

Being a musician, or an artist of any discipline means prioritizing your artistry. I think that one of the most important skills we learn to support this idea is that of saying 'no', in a kindly fashion, of course!

Let's be clear, I'm not talking about being a meanie bean here. There are considerat...

Evaluate, adjust, try again.

Three thoughts for the new year, though not specifically related to new year activities!

January is nearly done, but the year has just begun. According to self-reported statistics, most new year resolutions have by this point failed, but I reiterate, the year has only ...