Coming up this month

Our move to the teaching studios in Marble Arch is proving popular. So many of our clients are excited about being able to come for a lesson and then stroll down the road to do their show (currently including Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia and Avenue Q).

Gillyanne and Jeremy both work as vocal technicians, improving voice use in whatever musical genre you want to sing.

Gillyanne is an expert vocal troubleshooter, targeting specific vocal problems, mentoring teachers wanting to work in contemporary commercial styles, and dealing with referrals from SLTs and Voice Clinics for vocal rehabilitation.

Jeremy specialises in high-level audition coaching, finding and working your strengths as a performer, discovering new takes on your current repertoire, and co-creating programmes for actors, singers and cabaret artists.
 

We've already booked the studios to April 2010, so if you want a lesson, make sure you email us straight away. November's dates are almost full and we're booking December already!

We've had our first confirmed booking from the "Hosting A Voice Process Course" pack. Aberdeen Performing Arts are sponsoring us to give a How YOUR Voice WORKS day (See it, Hear it, Feel it, Sing it!) right in the heart of Aberdeen city centre, at the Music Hall Round Room, on Sunday 9 May 2010.

Thanks to the incredibly efficient Paul Hudson (and Jeremy climbing out of his sickbed with a temperature of 102!) we were able to get the publicity materials, Vocal Process logo and photographs to the webdesigner within 24 hours of confirmation.

Because the event is being sponsored by Aberdeen Performing Arts, this day course is being offered at a substantial reduction from our standard day rate. You can find out more about this day and book your place by visiting the Aberdeen Theatres box office on http://www.boxofficeaberdeen.com/content.asp?CategoryID=8979

If you think you could host a Vocal Process course and have access to a group of people who might attend, please send us an email and we'll send you a Hosting a Vocal Process Course pack.

We're sold out...again!

The last of the Voicebox Videos DVDs has just gone to the library at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Thanks to Mary Hammond who snapped up the final copy. If you would like a copy for your own library, please order it from the Vocal Process website - there'll be a short delay while we have some more copies pressed.

And the Singing and the Actor book second edition has sold out AGAIN! In fact, even we ran out of copies and had to scour the net to try and find some for our Singing and the Actor Training last month. The publishers are on track for another reprint, and they should be hitting the shops (and our office) in a couple of weeks' time.

We're thrilled that the book is so popular, but obviously we have had to suspend our SATA book and Audio Guide package offer until the books are back in stock. In the meanwhile, the Singing and the Actor Audio Guide is still in stock and can be obtained separately from us. We devised it specifically for all you auditory processors who wanted to hear the exercises in the book being demonstrated. Visit the Vocal Process products page to get your copy.

There's been an awful lot of Cheer recently...

First of all, many thanks for the deluge of responses I've been getting from the Cheer email series. So many of you have written with suggestions, soprano jokes, or just to let me know how much you have enjoyed receiving a bit of cheer each week.

I've been using a state-of-the-art emailing programme to send the Cheer emails and these Vocal Process eZINEs out to you, and by now you will know that, like most state-of-the-art systems, they go wrong. Some of you have received the Cheer 2 email three times, and the program has even been sending out to a few of you who have unsubscribed!

Well, here's an update. I've been on to the Canadian makers of the program, who say that it's an unprecedented error and they've never come across anything like it. They can't reproduce what happened, and so they can't fix it.

Hmm.

It appears that I'm keeping my record up around electronic equipment (I've blown up four televisions, keyboards sometimes don't work around me, I drain phone batteries daily and I've given up on battery-operated watches). So I suppose if something's going to go wrong, let's make it spectacular!

So thank you everyone for your patience - the experts are stumped. Most of you have recently received Cheer email 10, so I'm going to stop that particular series and create a new one, hopefully without the glitches. It means that everyone should get Cheer email 11 (wherever you are in the series) and we can go on from there. And I've got some great jokes and a new raft of Church Bulletins coming up...

For those of you that have preferred not to receive the Cheer emails, I have personally unsubscribed you (again) by hand and have removed your details from the database system manually. Please do tell me if, by any chance, that hasn't worked and you continue to receive them.

If you want to unsubscribe from the Cheer emails, just drop me an email with "Unsubscribe Vocal Process Cheer" in the title - you will continue to receive your eZINE as normal.

Jeremy's article on dealing with nasal singing has just been published in the November issue of the Music Teacher magazine. Here, by kind permission of Rhinegold Publishing, is an excerpt from the article - the remainder can be read on the Resources - Articles section of the Vocal Process website.

You know your students are perfectly capable of speaking with a clear sound, but they will insist on singing with a nasal quality. Is it the genre, is it the vocal technique, or is it the desire to imitate gone wrong?

Before you correct someone for nasal singing, check that they are actually singing nasally - they could just be singing with a bright sound. Here’s the only foolproof test I know for nasality.

Start by choosing a phrase with no nasal consonants. 'This is the house that Jack built' or 'Alleluia' or even 'I love you baby' all have no n, m, or ng sounds. Say them aloud in your normal speaking or singing voice.
Now hold your nose closed with your fingers (block your nostrils with your fingertips, or pinch the sides of your nose together). Make sure no air can escape out of your nose. Say or sing your chosen phrase again, and notice whether you can feel your nose vibrating under your fingers. If you can, you have nasality – air and sound are leaking into your nasal cavities and trying to escape.

Slight nasality is a common aspect of many English dialects, and for those of us born in the Midlands or Liverpool, this exercise can be quite a challenge.
The nasal passages are controlled by a moveable doorway into the nose: the soft palate.

Here is one way to find and work three different positions of your soft palate.

Click here to read the remainder of the Teacher Nose Best article

Jeremy Fisher is a performance coach and writer, creator of the Singingcoach blog, and director of the voice training company Vocal Process www.vocalprocess.co.uk

The latest teaching DVD from Vocal Process, on nasality and how to control it, is in stock at the Vocal Process offices. Click here to order your copy of Nasality and the Soft Palate