One of the things that I’d like to do in my newsletters is branch out a little bit more than I generally do on the YouTube channel. This week, since there’s been quite a lot of talk in the RVC about audio interfaces, I thought I would break this down a little bit and offer some thoughts on why expan...

Context is key. In music, the key gives you your context.

How cool is that?

I get asked to make videos about riffing frequently. While I’m happy to do them, I have to arbitrarily choose a context for the video. If, for example, I did a video with a bunch of smoking blues riffs, those would probabl...

If you wanted to go somewhere, and you didn’t know how to get there, you wouldn’t look up directions once you arrived, right?

You’d look up the directions before you left, check that the route looked correct, and then set out. Along the way, you’d be aware of obstacles and potential problems. You’d...

Whenever I get to teach, or I am personally working on counting music, I feel like I’m really doing the good work of teaching. Counting seems to be avoided or maligned despite it being one of the most powerful tools available to us as artists. Here are a few considerations as well as a frame of refe...

…but what is important too.

The gold standard is for them to work together.

When we sing exercises, how we sing them matters as much or more than what we’re singing. The right exercise for a particular skill or passage done poorly or incorrectly will do more harm than good. Doing our daily vocal p...

I’m going to be short and straight to the point today, or at least, as short and straight to the point as I can be.

Question:

Do I have to warm up?

What are warm ups good for?

How does warming up help my singing?

Why do singing teachers always make us make all these weird noises?

BLUF:

 The word 'phrasing' gets thrown around a lot, but what is it, and what does it mean for us as vocalists? How do we work with it? What do we work on it with? What effects change in phrasing?

Allow me to explain.

The example below is the beginning melody of the song 'Every Breath You Take' written ...

Hello and Welcome!

For those of you who have been members of the newsletter for a long time, thank you for being around to witness these transitions. This, I hope, will be a major upgrade.

The new website, and your credentials, was fully switched to yesterday, and as I type this today, everything ...