|
|
| |
|
Welcome to Vocal Process eZINE 32
In this packed edition we
reveal the newest one-day course with Gillyanne, focus on our
Inhouse training, and report on some of our private clients. Jeremy
answers a
YQA on House Numbers, and introduces the brand new Second Edition
Voicebox Videos downloads with an extra-special launch offer.
We introduce our new shopping cart system, and interview dialect
expert Paul Meier. And finally, have you ever thought of complaining
in harmony? |
 
|
Courses
coming up
Finding Your Power
Voice
The new course we talked about in the last eZINE has
now been unveiled. Gillyanne will be teaching the day course Finding
Your Power Voice in
Exeter on October 4th. We've created a special page on the website
describing this exciting new course and what you will gain from it,
so click here now to read more about finding your own core voice,
boosting your sound and sustaining the power with
Finding Your Power Voice (the page will open in a new window).
Here's a reminder of the flagship courses coming up:
Singing and
the Actor Training
takes place in London on October 24-26 2008. Gillyanne and Jeremy
will be working with you for three days, giving personal input and
checking your practice on-course. To find out more about the course
content, click here to
download a pdf of the Singing and the Actor Training course brochure.
Remember that this three-day training is the main entry requirement
for Integrated Voice TM
Module One. We've already had a number of applications from the UK
and overseas for places on the course, so they are going fast. You
may have read about our special eZINE subscribers offer in
eZINE 31. We're going to hold the offer open for another few days
with its 100% guarantee, free Singing and the Actor Audio Guide and
the secret booking link. To read more, click on this link to go to
the
hidden Vocal Process eZINE subscribers' offer page.
Advanced Singing
and the Actor Training will be happening a few days
later on 29-30 October 2008. This
gives you two free days between the courses to consolidate,
practise, and embed the enormous amount of information and technical
know-how we give you on the original Singing and the Actor course.
If you
have already completed Singing and the Actor Training or its former
incarnation Core Training, you can join the course to brush up on
your current knowledge and discover new information on voice and
performing. This
Advanced Singing and the Actor Training link will take you to
our information pages, which gives you everything you need
to know about the course.
Integrated VoiceTM
Module Two
The Integrated VoiceTM Module Two dates are being finalised as we
write. Module Two will begin in October 2008 with Advanced Singing
and the Actor Training (see above), and will contain courses on
Endoscopy, Belting, Extreme voice use on stage, together with
observed teaching and coaching.
We are also including a special course on communication techniques
with your students and the development of diagnostic abilities. We
are opening some of these courses to invited members of the public.
If you are interested in attending the Endoscopy day, or the
communication and diagnostics course (Teaching in Your Studio),
please
email us for more information - these courses will not be bookable from the Forthcoming Courses page.
Inhouse training from Vocal Process
You many
know Vocal Process as a cutting edge course provider and creator of
training products for vocalists worldwide, but we also specialise in
private training courses for institutions and special interest
groups.
Liverpool
Institute for Performing Arts
Gillyanne has just returned from a three-day training course for the
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, teaching techniques from
her Singing and the Actor book. This has been a regular event for
many years, and this year Gillyanne's course was the first thing
that the new intake of students experienced. The three days act as a
solid grounding for the rest of their training.
"I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your teaching at LIPA. The
group discussion in the bar on Friday night was full of enthusiasm
about what we'd learnt. I really felt I'd discovered things about my
voice which was very exciting....now to put it into practise!"
Alice, current student at LIPA.
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama
Gillyanne and Jeremy have also been working at the RSAMD on the
Musical Theatre MA course for several years, and this year's
students have just completed their final showcase at the Criterion
Theatre. The purpose of a showcase is two-fold: the students get to
put a show together and experience a little of life on the West End
stage, and the theatre agents get to see (and take on) the potential
stars of the future. We've just heard that the 21 students have
created a great deal of interest in the business, with some of them
fielding up to 10 agency enquiries each. Congratulations to them and
to course leader Andrew Panton for an excellent job this year.
Academy for
Contemporary Music
Jeremy will be visiting the ACM for a day of vocal training for the
students there. The topics will include fundamental anatomy and
physiology, videos of how a voice works, and an introduction to
computer voice training. Having staged several courses at ACM
already, we know that the building is extremely well equipped with a
battery of Mac computers, so we're expecting the day to be more
hands-on than usual!
 The
British Voice Association
Gillyanne has been invited to share her knowledge on the Text And
Tunes For Singers And Actors event, organised by the BVA on October
11th.
Tutors
for the day are Gillyanne, Mel Churcher, Stuart Barr and David
Carey, and
Gillyanne will be contributing a one hour fifteen minute section on
Singing The Text.
Click on this link for more information (website opens in a new
window). Incidentally, David Carey's new book The Vocal Arts Workbook and DVD,
written with his wife Rebecca Clark Carey, is now available from
Vocal Process. Click on the picture (right) to find out more about
A number of institutions and performing groups have now benefitted
from Vocal Process INSET days and training sessions, including CSSD,
Motherwell College, The International Centre for Voice, and various
County Music Services across the country, together with prizewinning
choirs such as Cantate Youth Choir and the Kentwood Show Choir.
If you would like Gillyanne and Jeremy to work personally with your
organisation,
contact Tawny
for more details.
News of
our private clients
A number of our
private clients have had notable successes recently. Katy Secombe
has just finished at Chichester Festival in The Music Man
production, and Julia Glass has been on tour from Kuala Lumpur to Hull with
the international tour of Beauty and the Beast playing The Wardrobe,
Madame de la Grande Bouche.
Congratulations go to
Gina Beck, who this month joined the Phantom of the Opera company as
Christine, and who featured in the Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's 60th
Birthday Bash in Hyde Park last Sunday.
And Joanna Ampil is
currently wowing the critics as Maria in West Side Story back in her
native Philippines. Jo has released a special single with all the
proceeds going to the Sun and Moon Home for Children in Manila. You
can get a copy of the CD exclusively at the excellent Dress Circle, the specialist West End
musicals shop. Click here for the Dress Circle Website
Since we have so many
of our clients now in work, Jeremy has space for more new clients
wanting Successful Singing Auditions coaching. If you would like a
coaching session with Jeremy or a technique lesson with Gillyanne,
contact Tawny to book a one-to-one
session
Voicebox Videos Second Edition - this time it's MacSerious!
Jeremy has been slaving over a hot computer keyboard again, and the
Voicebox Videos Second Edition ebook downloads are now available on
the Vocal Process website.
 "It
is more than 2 years since I created the UK's first downloadable
endoscopy video ebook, Looking at a Voice. A month ago the ebook
creation company I use released a version that now creates
Mac-compatible ebooks, and they have sent me a copy of the upgrade
ahead of its general release.
It's given me an opportunity to introduce the upgraded footage from
the DVD, to increase the screen size of the video, and of course to
make the downloads available to our Mac users. You've been very
vocal about not being able to access the ebooks, so I'm expecting to
be inundated with requests!
The new editions of the downloadable ebooks play in a larger screen
size than before - see the screenshot above taken from my computer
screen. And you can of course buy each ebook individually or as a
group. And because they are saved as downloads, your ebook is
available immediately you have paid for it.
The upgraded versions work in a slightly different way to the
previous ebooks I've created - you can buy them by
clicking here.
PC users will receive a downloadable .exe file. Save it to
your hard drive, then double click to open. If you get a popup
asking whether you want to open it (it might say that it's an
unknown publisher), say Yes or click on Run.
Mac users will receive a downloadable zip file. Unzip the
file and open the purple ebook. Mac users may also need to download
a free plugin called
flip4mac
Celebrate with us
To celebrate the upgrading of the ebooks, Vocal Process is making
the first ebook in the series, Looking at a Voice, available as a
complimentary download. We believe in sharing information and
promoting expertise, so the eZINE readers are the first people to
benefit from this offer. This ebook, UK's first ever downloadable
endoscopy video ebook, is worth £5.00 (that's almost US$10, 59
Kronor, 328 Thailand Baht, 457 Afghanis, 1,067 Yen, or 162,894
Vietnamese Dong!)
You can download your own copy of the new second edition version by
clicking here:
Looking at a Voice second edition for PC
or here:
Looking at a Voice second edition for Mac
Pass it on!
You can join in the technological revolution by being the first to
share the information. Inside this new second edition Looking At A
Voice ebook is a special "Email a Friend" link. Click on it, add to
or change the message, send it to your friends and colleagues, and
they can download their own copy of the ebook from the supplied
download link.
Please remember that this is cutting edge technology, so if you
do have any problems with your download, just check the new
Voicebox Videos ebook help page on the website or contact us
directly.
Enjoy!"
PS If you want to use the footage in presentations and teaching
situations (something I'm very happy for you to do), the
Voicebox
Videos DVD version is still the best choice. The footage on
the DVD is saved at a much higher quality and can be played
full-screen. And of course the all-region DVD can be carried with
you to conferences anywhere in the world and played easily on any
DVD player or computer.
 And
now we're Romanpowered
When you order a Vocal Process product or book a course place,
your order is taken using two proprietary systems - the shopping
cart and the Paypal credit card/account system. Because the second
edition Looking at a Voice ebooks are slightly larger than before,
our original shopping cart couldn't cope. So we've upgraded our
shopping experience to include the new Romancart shopping cart. But
there's more to the story than meets the eye.
When Jeremy first approached Romancart a few weeks ago, they weren't
set up for delivering the particular combination of ebook, username
and password that he required. So with a spectacular display of the
best customer service we've ever experienced, Simon, the creator of
Romancart, rang Jeremy up... And several phonecalls later Romancart
had expanded their business to include all the things he wanted.
Jeremy's life is never dull, but it's the first time he's been
involved in the actual development of an online shopping cart!
You might find your customer experience a little easier with the new
shopping cart. Once you have filled in your contact details in the
cart, you can pay for your purchases using either your Paypal
account or your credit or debit card - look for the credit card icons on the
payment page. If you have any problems at all with the cart or with
payment, just give us a call or drop us an email. Who knows, perhaps
Simon will be
listening too!
On the House...
We had an interesting YQA from a young student in Essex: "Hi I
just have a quick question! I wonder could you recommend any musical
theatre male songs that forget the 4th wall like the Divas Lament
Song in Spamalot? I need a musical theatre song that is sung to the
audience. It would be great if you could recommend one! Thank you
very much. David"
A "fourth wall" song or "house number" is one where the singer on
stage knows that there is an audience and addresses them directly.
This happens all the time in a cabaret performance, but rarely in a
musical or stage play, as the characters are usually completely
unaware that they are being watched by a large group of people!
Jeremy got his thinking cap on and
wrote the following reply:
Hi David.
There are a few true fourth wall songs, but you can actually
turn other songs into fourth wall songs (house numbers) fairly
easily.
The first type is the true house number:
The singer is fully aware that the audience is there and "comes
out" of the show.
If You Want To Die In Bed, and American Dream from Miss Saigon
Comedy Tonight (A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum)
Invocation to the Gods And Instructions to the Audience (The
Frogs - Sondheim)
I think How To Succeed In Business comes under this category
too, as in the production I saw, the lead actor shared his
thoughts with the audience.
The second type is one where the character is playing to an
audience on stage. So almost any song that comes from a
"tribute" musical like Buddy will work, as the characters are
actually playing a concert to the live audience.
We Will Rock You does something similar.
The MC from Cabaret does this too - he expands the Berlin
nightclub audience to include the actual theatre audience.
Barnum (The Museum Song) is sung to a general group of people so
can work too
Springtime for Hitler is sung to the audience in the show, as is
Beautiful Girls, in Follies.
Get Me To The Church On Time from My Fair Lady (and in fact
almost any Music Hall-type song) can be a house number
You could also get away with All I Care About Is Love, or Mr
Cellophane, from Chicago
Then there's the unifocus song (the soliloquy) that has an
outward feel, or asks questions, or contains rhetoric.
Funny from City of Angels.
What More Can I Say from Falsettos
What Is It About Her from Wild Party
I Can Do That (from A Chorus Line) is sung to Zach who is
actually seated in the audience.
Incidentally, The Soliloquy from Carousel won't work, because
the singer is arguing with himself and is definitely not
including anyone else except perhaps God.
Strangely enough, This Is The Moment can work because you can
share your success with the audience.
And of course, anything (like This is the Moment) that can be
sung as a cabaret song will work too, since crossing the fourth
wall is the raison d'etre of cabaret.
That's 19 ideas - I'm sure this will help you come up with
others!
Having written the reply to David, Jeremy carried on to write two articles with
50 house numbers for men and 50 house numbers for women, in three
categories. Jeremy has uploaded the articles to his blog, and they
are also available for publication on your website or mailing list.
See the end of this eZINE for links to the blog. If you have any more ideas, just drop Jeremy an email - he'd love to
hear from you.
And David's response when he received Jeremy's reply? "Oh my
god you don't know how much you've helped me!! Thank you so much!!"
We're always happy to oblige.
Dialects and Accents with Paul Meier
 This
edition's interview is with Paul Meier. Paul is an expert dialect
coach, British born but now living in America. His coaching
resources have been developed over many years, and are used by some
of the top performing artists around the world. Jeremy interviewed
Paul on the eve of a new ebook launch, and discussed film actors,
the difference between dialect and accent, the signature sounds and
prosody of different dialects, Shakespeare, and Indian Call Centres!
The complete
Dialects and
Accents interview is on the website, but here is a taster for you to
enjoy.
IDEA
Jeremy: "I want to go to your big IDEA. Tell me about IDEA.
Paul: I found myself called to Hawaii to coach a leading
actor in the Flemish accent he needed in the movie, playing Father
Damian, the Belgian priest. And I had no time to prepare or collect
Belgian samples. I was in Hawaii at three days’ notice with no
preparation other than my memory of how Flemish-speaking Belgians
sounded, And I thought wouldn’t it be great if there was some kind
of online archive, so no matter where you were in the world, if you
had a laptop and a reasonable connection, you could listen to
categorised samples. And when I got back from that gig I started
IDEA with the help of a really bright and technically savvy student
of mine. Started in 97-98 as a result of that idea.
Jeremy: And it’s a great idea – it’s such a great resource.
I’ve used it myself. I have a question though. You’ve been doing
this for some time now. Do you have an inbuilt catalogue of dialects
that you can just go into your memory or muscle banks and go “Ah
yes, it’s this”, or do you still need to refer to recordings of
original speakers.
Paul: Oh, I use IDEA all the time as a resource. I’m called
upon to coach a huge variety of accents and dialects. And with the
proper resources there’s no dialect or accent in the world that I
could not undertake to coach. I’m coaching dialects I’ve never
worked with before quite frequently. But I’m confident with the
internet, not only IDEA but other internet resources, can quickly
reveal what you need. You go to YouTube for example and you want
someone in East Timorese, and bam, you can pull up two or three of
those people, jot down the signature sounds, catch onto the prosody
of it. Having done so many dialects for so many years, I’m very
quick at picking up a new one. I rely on primary sources all the
time.
Jeremy: I know, because we have your dialect books with CDs
sitting on the piano, and we find them so useful, one of the things
that fascinates me is how clearly you’ve broken things down for the
dialect learning. Was that something you did automatically or did
you have to work that out?
Paul: I’ve been doing this for nearly 40 years. What you see
on your piano stand is a life’s work that’s constantly being
refined. Much cruder, much earlier versions of that I was using to
teach at City Lit straight out of drama school. But the basic
approach to finding signature sounds, or what we used to call
substitutions (I no longer use that term), finding the footprint of
a dialect, that’s really the heart of it all along. But refining
each dialect, what information do you need, what exercises do you
need to climb into another sound, Liverpool, Manchester, or
Birmingham Alabama. Signature sounds – that coupled with more
elusive prosodic features, the hard-to-pin-down melody, cadence,
stress patterns. Those are harder to pin down but they are 50% of
the job.
Jeremy: Well you do see on film certain actors and actresses
who you know are doing all the “correct” pronunciation and yet not
living inside the ‘race’, let’s say.
Film work
Jeremy: I know you do a fair amount of film coaching
yourself…
Paul: I do.
Jeremy: I’m curious. What’s the timetable? Do you go to the
filmset, how often are you there, how long are you there for, how
much time do you get with the people you are working with?
Paul: Film, you’re booked today, you’re on the set tomorrow,
so it’s always that they want it yesterday. Dialect is almost
invariably the very last thing on people’s minds. The actors have
been cast without having been screened for their dialect ability –
there’s just an assumption that it’s not important or is easily
fixed. That’s great, because it keeps me employed! The most ideal
show was working for Ang Lee. What a gentleman. He believed in
rehearsal.
Jeremy: And what a marvellous director as well.
Paul: He booked me four months before the beginning of
principal photography, I had time to work by custom CD and phone
with the principal actors long before they got to the set. And then
there was a two-week rehearsal period before cameras rolled. So it’s
just a luxurious thing to have all of that preparation time, plus a
daily presence on set. And then you go onto other films and it’s the
very last thing that people have thought of. Often only when the
actor gets to the set, and they discover “Oops, can’t do that. Let’s
get a dialect coach for a quick fix.”
Jeremy: You’ve already mentioned two of the ways that you can
help people – the CDs and the phone coaching. Tell me a bit more
about the CDs.
Paul: More and more these days I never even meet the actors I
coach. I never even go to the film set. It’s become a virtual world.
Much cheaper than flying me business class to wherever and paying my
per diem and hotel. So I work often in advance of the show by a
custom CD. I will put all of the lines down, I will design the
dialect for the character in consultation with the director. I’m
doing that right now for a new project. I’ll design it with the
director, and when that director’s pretty confident that we have the
sound he wants, then I will record all the lines and talk to the
actor as if they are in the same room. “you may not be able to hear
this particular key sound, so let me isolate it” and I’ll isolate a
key sound and talk them through it. Not so much performing the role
myself but demonstrating, taking the thing apart, playing a phrase
here (in piano terms), listen to how this phrase goes. And I will do
that sort of isolated work with phrases in the script. And often
that’s enough – with a really good actor that’s enough, and then you
follow that up with phone coaching to find out if they’re getting
it."
Paul has kindly given us permission to include a fascinating audio clip from
the interview (made using Skype internet phone technology). Click on
the link below to read the rest of the interview and to listen to
Paul demonstrating different rhythm and melody patterns when moving
from Standard British to Standard American on the same sentence
(the interview is 3 pages, the audio clip is saved as an mp3, 1.9mb).
Click here to
read the rest of Paul's interview with Jeremy
And finally
 Jeremy's
blog this month includes links to a wonderful video event that began in
Finland, moved to Birmingham and has travelled around the world -
the Complaints Choir.
And there's an article on an interesting (and often
overlooked) way of earning a living as a professional pianist - that
reveals exactly how Jeremy found his first West End job. Click on the box
to find out more.
http://www.singingcoach.blogspot.com
 
|
|
