Transcription Of “What you need to know about Singing Success and Speech Level Singing-“

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Brett Manning and welcome to the Singing Success Show podcast. I’m your host, and this is my co-host, Dustin Small. Good to see you guys again. Good to see you. I hope you’ve been joining us. If you haven’t seen the earlier podcast, go watch those because these kind of build on each other. Um, Let’s, let’s, uh, go do a couple shout outs.
[00:00:31] Why don’t you throw down, well, I wanted to mention, we just got word that Laney Wilson has made her Opry debut. Ooh, I believe that was earlier this week. I’ve heard great things so far. Awesome. What an experience for her. Gosh. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s supposed to be the craziest, most surreal thing that I hear from lots of artists that I can only imagine.
[00:00:53] It’s, yes. It’s almost like at that point is, would be like doing the, uh, Carnegie [00:01:00] Hall. That correct? Our, our Opryland is the New York Carnegie Hall. I’m singing Carnegie Hall. Well, you’ve arrived , so That’s right. Yeah. Uh, we have a word that Passion has got a new album coming out on March 6th, so it’s uh, awesome.
[00:01:13] It’s, uh, something that I’m looking forward to. Yes, me too. Had a little bit more, uh, influence to the quiet time there, if you will. Yep, absolutely. What else we got? And, uh oh. Hey, our friend Clark Beckham on Tour Clark. Wow. Why don’t you talk a little bit about Clark. Clark, uh, has been using my program for a little over 10 years.
[00:01:32] Uh, I ran into him about four years, five years ago. Gosh, is it five? Five years ago was doing a gig on Music Row and found out that he was, uh, the artist right before me. And then he got up there and said, Hey, I just want to give a shout to my vocal coach. He doesn’t know he is my vocal coach, but I’ve been using his program for like 10 years and it really saved my voice.
[00:01:56] And he told this beautiful story and he came over and met me and then we ended up working [00:02:00] together. I remember just being blown away, like, who is this machine up there? Honestly, the guy is a machine. If you haven’t heard Clark, The best description of his voice is capable. And that’s one of the best compliments I could ever give a singer when they arrived to a certain place.
[00:02:16] Like, you can do whatever you want. Right? And he’s that guy, just super soulful, brilliant musician. Um, a vocal artist who was first runner up on American Idols, season 14, I think Nick Fredo, or however you say it, Fred, whatever his name was. Uh, one that, but it was one of the closest votings they’ve ever had on the first place.
[00:02:36] And, uh, so his name will come up a little bit later as we start talking about getting a record deals and whether you want one or not. And sometimes it’s good, something’s bad, but yeah, so watch for him. Get his record. Um, it’s fantastic record. Uh, he has a performance of him playing here on the M channel, on the meal channel on Facebook.
[00:02:58] Uh, so we did a Facebook Live [00:03:00] here, and it was f. Right on. All right. What’s our topic for today, Brett? Our topic today is something you know a little bit about, I would hope. Okay. Well, um, here, well, here’s the question on our topic. It says, can singing success and or speech level singing hurt my voice? And what is the difference between the two?
[00:03:26] And I’ve got a couple talking points and my first talking point. To say something that, uh, is a little as controversial, I wanna say, I want to give you a damn good reason to never take voice lessons. Wait, say that again. A damn good reason to never take voice lessons. You do know why we’re here today, Brett?
[00:03:49] Yeah. I have a VO scotch and, okay, well carry on. I gotta hear this now. Then. Here’s a damn good reason because. , whatever you’re doing, you’re either gonna get [00:04:00] worse, gonna get better, or stay the same. Fair. And so you’ve had lessons and we can talk about that where mm-hmm. where you felt like maybe you just stay the same, nothing has changed.
[00:04:11] Yep. That’s a good reason to not take a lesson. Uh, you get worse that Yeah. If you get worse, that’s a very good reason to take, to not take a lesson. Um, A very famous country artist called, and I worked with her guitar player and she, and she was cussing in the background like a sailor with a raspy voice.
[00:04:29] He goes, tell Brett Meneses to fix my voice. And because some coach had been making her yell, and a coach who hates my God, who. Who? There’ll be a nice segue into this, Ken, singing Success hurt your voice. Well, apparently you hear hurt her voice cuz she was yelling. And yelling is the worst thing you’ll do as a singer.
[00:04:46] Crying. You can’t lose your voice. Babies never lose their voice, even when you want them to. They can say, ah, and never lose their voice. Why? Because it’s intuitive for them, counterintuitive, uh, [00:05:00] for us. But shouting is our intuitive sense. We panic because human beings are stupid because we are the only animals who run faster when we get lost.
[00:05:09] And whoa, that will lead you to yell. And so because, uh, this girl was yelling, um, she needed me to fix it, so I gave him a couple exercise to show her, and she basically just went to a throat doctor and instead of working with me, It’s fine too, cuz the guy she went does the same exercises and that’s cool.
[00:05:28] Um, would’ve loved to work with her, but, you know, she was so angry. I didn’t want to be in that fire though, man. I didn’t, yeah. I didn’t want to feel that fire, that rage coming on me like, Hey, I just wait for the, the fire to calm down. But, but she ended up winning her first Grammy recently too. I’m not gonna say who it is, but she, she, um, yeah, she got her voice heard.
[00:05:49] Mm. So people ask all this time and say’s, so a damn good reason to not take it is because you’re getting worse. in her case. Mm-hmm. saying the same in your case, and a lot of times in my case and some of the lessons I took in the past, [00:06:00] but getting better is a great reason to study. . Oh yeah, I would say so.
[00:06:04] But those other two reasons are 10. Two damn good reasons to not ever take a voice lesson unless you know, unless it’s reputable. Unless these people are saying, Hey man, I’m telling you what, in the first half hour you’re gonna say, I’ve just figured out my voice. There’s, it should produce radical change.
[00:06:21] I say, either you’re learning rapidly or you are wasting your time. Life is too short to learn slowly. Fair enough. Ouch. How many, how many things, how many lessons are we trying to learn in our lives? And we’re doing it too slow? Probably more than we would like to admit, unfortunately. But hey, we’re here.
[00:06:41] It’s all about improvement. That’s right. Improvement, fast, rapid change doesn’t mean being in such a hurry that you can’t go through the process you, it does create pa. You do need patience, but I have no patience for something that doesn’t work. I want to be patient with something that is. . [00:07:00] Well, what, what specific techniques do you find, you know, in all of your experience and knowledge that do tend to put undue strain on your voice and what you know, the opposite.
[00:07:12] What, what do you find eases that strain or immediately, uh, improves it? Well, the first thing, and you experience this in your first lesson, why don’t you, um, we were talking yesterday about someone you’d worked with before and she does similar exercise. But why, why, why it wasn’t working. Uh, I all, all we were doing were running scales.
[00:07:34] There was, there was literally no real demonstrations to Explan what it was, there was no demonstration. There was no technique. There was no information as to why this was being done. Yeah, this is basically do this, boom, now do this, nay, now do this, mama. And you see all the plaques. They were plaques on the walls.
[00:07:49] And that was basically all the ex explanation. This part. Uh, coach thought that they, they needed when you walked into the room, couldn’t be further from the case. Yeah. And, and it’s [00:08:00] not, it could be any, anyone, honestly, it’s, it’s, this person was recommended to me from a high up at C aa, who I was working with at the time.
[00:08:09] Mm-hmm. , this person was their first call for a vocal coach. No, it’s not like I was just, you know, down in somebody’s basement, somebody who just graduated Belmont as a, as a. a vocal, uh, performance major that just said, oh, well, you know, I can’t really perform much right now, so I guess I’ll just teach voice lessons.
[00:08:27] Why not? I mean, I’ve been in plenty of lessons. I can run scales on a piano. Right. How hard can it be? Yeah. This definitely was, was not the case. This per this person was, was called upon a lot Yeah. To work with lots of different artists, uh, some of which you’ve definitely heard of. Trust me on that one.
[00:08:44] Mm-hmm. . and for me it did nothing. So in your first session with me, we talked about disconnect the digastric and high oid muscles of swallowing muscles when we were doing this, which [00:09:00] keeps you from straining. And the second these muscles pull down, you know something’s wrong. Yep. So if I can’t hum high, if I can’t go.
[00:09:08] And by the way, completely un warmed up by the way, and. Your warmup shouldn’t have to take years. , you should be able to find your voice very quickly if you’ve disengaged those muscles. The vocal cords are vibrating freely. If they’re vibrating freely, they’re warming up quickly. If they’re not, you’re actually just warming up muscles that surround.
[00:09:27] But did you hear those? That word diagnostic, hyoid, swallowing muscles, anything? Outer muscles. The larynx never heard that first session. I think the only thing I heard was, can I get you a water or a Coke? Yeah. Or a Coke or a. Actually. I don’t think that’s wrong. Yeah, I think I’ve, that’s, I may have been offered a Coke.
[00:09:45] Yeah. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had some of this other coach, I’m not even say male or female, this other coach’s, uh, uh, clients. And, and I, I have respect for this particular coach’s order of exercises. I listen to a warmup said That’s a pretty good warmup [00:10:00] if you know what you’re doing. Yes. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s like watching an, uh, an exercise app can help you.
[00:10:06] You know, I can sit there and say, do pushups, do squats, do pullups. You’ll get in shape. Yeah. And some planks too. It’d be good. Your phone. Just sit there. Great job, Sally. Yeah. Keep up the good work. Yeah, but what about form? The form is everything. When I learned to do a correct pullup, even a correct pushup, but changed.
[00:10:24] Everything I was told push my shoulder blades together as I go down suddenly. Wow. I got strong fast, really fast because I was doing it right. So doing a thing over and over again expecting a different result. We all know is the definition of insanity. Sanity. Yes. Thank you. So you had been doing that, you, did you hear about dropping the larynx?
[00:10:45] Okay. What was, I mean, dropping there? You pick it up and drop it. No. Lowering the larynx because as you sing higher, the propensity is for your larynx to raise up. If you’re putting your hand on your Adam’s apple, that v-shaped notch, if you go to the top of your neck, slide down, don’t push hard, you [00:11:00] push gently and you’ll, you’ll feel a, a little v-shaped notch you swallow.
[00:11:04] That goes up, you yawn, it goes down. Now you don’t see with it all the way dodge can see muddy line. sing in the middle. It’s okay. But the problem is, is you go higher, the larynx wants to raise up. So if I yell a lot of techniques that, or yell techniques that we talked about, the one that busted up that particular girl who was calling me, cussing like a sailor saying mm-hmm.
[00:11:26] cussing like a, why do we say that? I, all the sailors I’ve known don’t cuss, but if I say, yay, yay, yay. Cussing like a natural driver. How’s that? Oh, that’s good. Yay. The larynx goes. And as with the larynx goes up every note, hire gets harder, and eventually I run outta real estate. I’m not gonna have any more room to raise that larynx.
[00:11:50] So the larynx stays neutral. And for those of you watching, I don’t know if you can see my larynx, but if I say this, if I say, uh,[00:12:00]
[00:12:03] It’s three octas. My larynx didn’t move.
[00:12:12] If it doesn’t move, maybe I can do it. That with my mouth open
[00:12:21] doesn’t hurt. Now that’s not my full sound, but. Go and yelling and he go, S spotty, that will hurt your voice. So when people say you can speech level singing hurt your voice. And the reason we say that is the particular guy that was teaching this girl was doing all these videos saying speech level singing and preventing stuff will hurt your voice.
[00:12:42] And somebody left a comment. Now this person actually slandered me. Uh, actually libeled me. Cuz they did it in writing technically. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not going after ’em. I don’t care. They’re kind of small potatoes to me. I mean, you know, bless ’em. I would, I would have coffee with this person. I’d give ’em hug and say, what’s up [00:13:00] bro?
[00:13:00] But, well, it’s never a good idea to try to, you know, Promote your own stuff by slamming somebody else. Exactly. That’s why I’m not gonna mention, mention poor taste, if not completely incorrect. Exactly. And that’s why I just won’t mention names of other people. I just won’t I, but I’ll talk about techniques.
[00:13:16] But this particular person, somebody wrote on sing and said, I use singing success and started making my ears ring. What are you talking? If you have tinnitus, then yeah, maybe your ears are ringing. Had nothing to do with speech level singing cuz speech level singing implies singing on the level of speech.
[00:13:35] If you talking, if I’m saying 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That’s not speech level singing. That’s a, an to, you know, I’m reaching my chin up and tightening up on the outer muscle larynx. That’s not speech level, level singing that will hurt you, but causing your ears to ring. And then the person responded to this person who was probably a setup.
[00:13:59] Uh, yes. [00:14:00] I’ve also heard that singing success can do that. You have, you want to provide some proof, you know. I heard that you bombed the World Trade Center. Well, that’s really horrible. If I make that type of accusation against you, that’s a terrible, terrible thing. Make an accusation without proof, doesn’t make me a bad person.
[00:14:20] Makes you a bad person. So if you’re that type of person that wants to come out and slander something, eventually you gotta expect me to defend myself just a little bit, and I’m doing it hopefully as winsomely as possible, but with a little bit of intensity because we’ll give you this one, you know, because it’s just make your ears.
[00:14:36] Yeah, it’s frustrating cuz it makes, it makes no sense. And what’d what’d you experience from the technique immediately when you had your first session? Uh, the first word that comes to mind is freedom. Freedom. So freedom. Let freedom ring. Let free freedom. Make your ears ring. Wow. . Well maybe it is a ringing cuz you singing Right?
[00:14:56] And more people are high in as a singer. That’s right. Or maybe, maybe you’re standing in front of too [00:15:00] many guitars cuz you’re singing a lot. Yeah. Maybe ears start ring. I have more power. I’m making my own ears ring. Whoa. That’s whoa, whoa, whoa. So singing success cannot hurt you. Now, anybody can over sing, push, try to outs, sing the song, which I have a quote up there that was from Claude McKnight in a session I did with him where we say, don’t out sing the song.
[00:15:25] Don’t out sing the original artist. Don’t out sing yourself. So I’m my little marker board if, if you’re following me on Instagrams occasionally you’ll see. Post up little things from my board here. Um, a chalkboard wall actually. And, uh, so when we say don’t out sing the song, the song is not asking you to sing as hard as you are.
[00:15:44] Um, there’s some people, I hear girls that sing, I wanna sing as big as Adele. You can’t, she’s got an enormous voice. Sure. Huge voice. and sometimes it’s caused her, I mean, it’s public, we know. Yeah. It’s caused her a little bit of issues. Yeah. She’s had to cancel, I think a couple [00:16:00] tours. Didn’t, hasn’t she in the past.
[00:16:01] Yeah. Cause of, you know, vocal fatigue. And so if she’s singing big and you’re trying to sing as big as her, it’s gonna cause trouble. Yeah. And there’s always that added stress of like the, the live situation that you, you can’t always account for beforehand. Mm-hmm. , you know, when you’re, when you’re on the stage, lights are on you, you know, however many people or eyeballs are staring back at.
[00:16:22] It’s kind of hard to always think about technique and you know, honestly you shouldn’t be mm-hmm. , you should know the technique. You should put the 10,000 hours in before you’re mm-hmm. on that stage and really having to give it your all. But, um, there is that live thing that needs to be accounted for as well.
[00:16:39] And that the, I think the, the key is to it is, is. , you’re confident, you’re comfortable. I mean, you’re com comfortable. You’re in control. You don’t have to work so freaking hard to get this song out. And if, if the song is too hard, there’s Dr. I mean, some of the drummer guys that you’ve worked with, mm-hmm.
[00:16:58] would you try to [00:17:00] trade off riffs and souls with them? You’re like, nah, man, you’re in a whole nother place. Some of these jazz freaks and you know, immense amount of respect for those guys. Oh yeah. , like that’s again alluding to where I’m from, originally from New Orleans. And, uh, it’s, it’s the birthplace of jazz.
[00:17:15] Yeah. Um, I, it’s one of the things that I’m still currently working on is having, having more voicings and particularly in that genre, but I would never, I would never try to trade licks with anybody who, who lives in that world. Cuz I, I, yeah, I know my thing. You stay in your lane and it’s the same thing.
[00:17:33] So if you’re losing your voice when we’re talking about voice injuries today, If you’re losing your voice, it’s because you’re trying to out sing the song. The song didn’t ask you. You’re trying to outing yourself or outing the original artist. I would say the outing yourself is the last one, but outing the original artist.
[00:17:51] Remember this girl singing Mariah, Carrie going, you know, Mariah sings uhk. This goes Treat me Ka.[00:18:00]
[00:18:03] Oh, you know why Mariah didn’t do that? Because she has some wisdom cuz she had the wisdom and the producer saying, don’t do all that, Mariah, hold off. Get the melody. Establish the melody. Why are you out singing that song? And if people hear from the other, they say, I bet I can yell louder, net, hurry up from the other.
[00:18:25] And eventually like, you gotta stop, man. How loud do you think you need to sing? 95% of my coaching in the studio. back off. Yeah. You’re overs singing. Mm-hmm. back off. Back off. Because we hear in our mind these contests on TVs and they say, vote for contestant number one. And it’s tv and it’s cool. I, I’m, I’m all for it.
[00:18:48] I really am. But I, but it’s not radio, right? Radio doesn’t artist number one. And they go R number two, R number three, [00:19:00] you know, and they’re holding out these long money. There’s no money notes on the radio. Hardly ever. Yep. Adele’s one of those few people that that does those just huge voice. But even then, she pulls back and we’re given more to her subtlety.
[00:19:16] So usually you hurt your voice because poor technique. And then if you have great technique, you hurt your voice. As I have, and no singer alive who is honest will tell you that he hasn’t hurt his own voice because we just get foolish. You know, we, we, we, we can push harder and harder and harder because we get our egos take over.
[00:19:35] Well, and you can’t, you can’t compete with, you know, guitar amps and drums, no. Stuff like that. Even though you try to sometimes and Right. Just you back yourself into a hole. It happens to everybody. Like you said, you have to be. Like you said, just stop and realize why am I, what am I doing this for? Why am I trained to out sing myself?
[00:19:54] So don’t give more than you possess. If you find out what is a hundred percent of your voice and sing 60 to 70% of [00:20:00] it. Um, Mari engineer here, LAN Beck over here who will be a guest on here eventually, and we’ll have some great conversations. When I was in the studio with him, I said this very last place, uh, this says,
[00:20:17] and at the very end I says,
[00:20:23] she needs. She me and I’m like going for it. I’m like, is it too much? She goes, well, if you’re ever gonna go for it, it should be now. And I was very, it was good wisdom. It was like the end of the sound. She hits me one song where I get a little risk, that little bit of RAs, because I wanted to just that punch.
[00:20:44] He said, yeah, give one of those. and everybody says, oh, this is my favorite song. Part of the song, well, it’s calculated, it’s right. One money note where I didn’t out sing myself. Sure. And even then, you know, I’m not singing to the full place of my voice. Mm-hmm. , I’m holding back a bit [00:21:00] because I would ruin the song.
[00:21:02] But me, I mean, I don’t listen. People try to make everything squeeze opera like Shees dude, and that even that ain’t even good opera because even Pavarotti. The most resilient vocalist of all time of our time canceled several gigs. He says, T no, I didn’t hear him say this as somebody told me, so, mm-hmm.
[00:21:27] You probably Google and verify this, but I’d heard that he said, better to cancel a concert performance than give bad performance and disappoint like that, huh? Absolutely. So if you’re having a bad day, it’s not, the worst thing to do is to cancel instead of trashing your voice. Then you get a steroid, and a steroid shot puts you back about six months because it’s, even though you get your voice back immediately, it’s six months before you, you build up your vocal endurance again because you atrophy the vocal chords.
[00:21:54] It’s essentially, Bandaid on a bullet wound, they, Ooh, bandaid on a bullet. [00:22:00] Write that down. That’s our song. You, you can’t steal it. We already own it. We bandaid on a bullet. Don’t it. Don’t it. Don’t do it. We’re watching you Bandaid on a bullet wound, you know? You know, Hey, this is a side note. Never lose a good high idea.
[00:22:14] Band-Aid on a bullet. Even in the middle of this podcast. I’ll write that down because I never lose a good hook. I’ve written over 2,500 songs and I keep adding to that. because when somebody says something clever, I’m like, bandaid on a bullet wound. So we did talk about the lip rolls and, uh, the low larynx positioning.
[00:22:33] Yeah. Uh, what, let’s maybe talk about one more technique in a pinch. You know, like getting, getting your voice in place right away. Uh, which I, you know, actually had to do recently as well. Yeah. Uh, from a long time of being dormant cuz I’ve been so in, in producer and writer and drummer mode. I was called upon on a split second notice in front of a live crowd to front a band for a song.
[00:22:58] Cause the, the lead vocalist had to run off [00:23:00] stage, uh, for a moment. So we talked about the liberals and the low layering state. What, what would be one more thing that you would throw at me in this particular case? If I said, Hey, I have to sing in 30 seconds and be convincing in front of a crowd in 36, let’s say my, I wake up, my voice is, uh, cold, I’m gonna go.
[00:23:26] And then
[00:23:31] just to be able to scale,
[00:23:36] and then one big stretch, then head voice, whoa, whoa.
[00:23:49] You try to connect from head into chest, then I’m going to meow, meow, meow. And if I can get a little bit violent with it and get some [00:24:00] force and it’s downhill. I don’t know if that’s coming across on, on, on the mic or Yeah, but it’s, it’s all connected. There’s no break whatsoever. Yeah. And so, and doing that 30 seconds now, can everybody just do that in 30 seconds?
[00:24:13] Pavarotti says, one of my favorite quotes, he goes, these, and it’s easy after 20 years, of course, . So, uh, because the sounds that he would make would be so epic. And he literally, his face would look like this, doing it. And, uh, if you haven’t seen him on YouTube, go to where he talks about. It has to be covered.
[00:24:33] The chords generally vibrate, very relaxed, which is what we talk about low lengths. And first he goes up and he sounds like he’s going to hit the note beautifully. He goes, he goes, ah. And he goes, ah, I suspected strangle, huh? But it is ah. And you think, well, that’s really, it’s bad opera. But if you’re not familiar, he starts to sound pretty good because he can’t sound bad.
[00:24:54] Right? But then he goes, oh, and you think, oh, that’s different. [00:25:00] Oh, Oh, okay. You can float up there. Ah, you can’t pinch his whiny, distorted and you watch him do it. You, it’s just insane what he does. Um, the greatest singer of our generation, if you have to pick one Pavarotti, I can do that one. And let me talk about this more stuff about people.
[00:25:21] Say there’s another criticism that I’ve heard. With my program, I set you free by teaching you to let go of your preconceived notions and all. That’s nice. Psych psycho babble stuff. I, I, I love psychology. I’m, I’m big into that, the mental aspects of the game, but sometimes it becomes psycho babble when you lose the practicality because life is incredibly practical.
[00:25:45] Sure. And you cannot violate certain laws with imp. And one law you cannot violate with impunity is the laws of musculature. So this person said, I will teach you that skills are actually harmful for your voice. And I giving his accent a way you might know who he is because I [00:26:00] kinda like the guy kind of thing.
[00:26:01] He’s charming. You know, I like, I would be good friends with him, but I would say that, but dude saying that, You’ve literally just kicked every 95% of the vocal coaches in the face. You took a drive-by shot at him. So we gotta respond. Sure. Because anybody hearing that scales hurt your voice. You’re too late, man.
[00:26:19] You’re too late. We already had a Pav rod who just scales every single day of his life when he was, you know, getting ready to perform or training because scales meter out. The control of your voice, and they are incrementally warming up. So just to go, he say, I just relax
[00:26:40] and then I get louder. I say, well, that’s kind of like a scale. Yeah. But it may not be as, they’re trying to make music more emotional rather than intellectual. But you gotta have guidelines. It do. I mean, what, how, how else do you have a foundation to set the technique? Thank you. Without scales, we’re we’re Thank you.
[00:26:57] It’s almost like saying, well, there’s X amount of [00:27:00] car related deaths every year. So by that principle, you should not be driving a car to work today. Thank you. Okay. Sounds great. But not all of us can afford afford private jets. So now what do we do? ? We learn individually how to be better, safer drivers.
[00:27:16] Put the phone down, . Yeah. Thank you. Put both hands on the wheels. Stop thinking. your friend did to you yesterday that caused you to feel inadequate or whatever. Focus on staying in between the lines. Yeah. Ooh, that’s very practical. So, to the answer to the question, that rhetorical question as can singing success or speech level singing hurts your voice?
[00:27:42] Absolutely not. As in, in fact, uh, Franco Fusi, who is the. Uh, throat Doctor for Andre Belli brought me out to this, uh, uh, seminar, Dave voa. Um, voa. It’s a seminar for the Mixed voice, and I was a keynote speaker [00:28:00] out in Forte DeMar, um, in 2000. 14, 2014 and didn’t bring me back any nichi. I know I should have brought some meat.
[00:28:09] I could have froze it for you in a dry ice. But anyway, I was out there teaching out here. It was horrible. You know what? My luggage got lost, so I had to go to any store to get something to wear besides the. Filthy clothes on my body and all they had was sweats. And everybody has dressed in suits and all those clothes I’m wearing.
[00:28:27] You were before your time. That is basically all everybody wears these days. Oh, I know. I was, and the worst thing is they didn’t fit. There were baggies. So up there teaching them baggy sweats, like, well, the good thing about it is, is in Italy you can’t throw a rock without a place to buy some clothes.
[00:28:39] That’s right. So the next day I did go buy something nice, but uh, That was the only store open. It was a little sports place, but I wa I taught there like two blocks from Bocelli’s house. It was really cool. And Franco Fusi had done a. Research program on the mixed voice. That’s why he had me as a keynote speaker cuz I wrote Mastery Mix.
[00:28:59] If you’re not [00:29:00] familiar with it and if you don’t own it, own it. Just go to my website and get it. It’ll change your life. Get it, stream it, buy it, do whatever you want, but get it. Well, he did, um, some vocal therapy on people who had nodules, polyps, cysts, all kinds of vocal trouble using the mixed method, the blend of head and chest because when you blend.
[00:29:20] Which is the lightest with ah, which is your foundation. You need a chest voice. That’s your foundation. You need a top which releases, and then you need to be able to blend those two. If you can’t, ah, if you can’t blend them without a break, and I’m not talking about going, ah, ah, and we to soften up and like you’re sneaking through there, you’re not really connected.
[00:29:43] You’re basically connected. You because maybe not flipping at a false but truly connected is when it’s a seamless. Rug. You know when you, you have one big, huge rug and then there’s a seam in the middle, but you, sometimes you can’t see it cuz the guy is so good at putting the, laying the carpet down that there’s no seam.[00:30:00]
[00:30:00] The voices should be like that. So some people go,
[00:30:06] it’s not necessarily breaking, but it isn’t truly connected. Truly connected is
[00:30:18] over and over and over. And I’m not warmed up. No, I’m sitting three feet away from you and I can tell you there’s zero break. and, and you know, and it’s just because it’s easy after 20 years. Of course. That’s all we’re gonna say, that like every podcast easy after 20 years, of course, to make Pavarotti famous.
[00:30:35] Oh, . See, we could do that . You know, I know kids who don’t know who he is. Who’s Pavarotti? Oh my gosh. Your parents need to educate you so, Scales help, technique helps. But that technique should mean that you keep your larynx fairly neutral. You have an even transition from your mouth up into your head cavity, and it’s like the letter sees in the back of your throat, starts into the mouth, ah, and every note, higher.[00:31:00]
[00:31:00] Slides further and further behind the saw palette. Ah,
[00:31:10] Not bad. I guess it’s easy after 20 years. Easy after 20 years, of course.